DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS 5.1 Introduction
5.2. The conceptualisation of heritage
The selected textbooks presented heritage in very different ways with regards to understanding the concept. This was achieved in the books either by explicit provision of their understandings of the concept in a section for that purpose or it was achieved implicitly through case studies. The In search of history. Grade 10. Learner’s book is the only textbook among the three that attempted to acknowledge heritage in terms of concept clarification. According to this book, heritage refers to particular places, people of the past, events, and objects of the past that the present generation has inherited and should pass on to future generations. These icons help shape the identity of the people who have inherited them. However, the book also stated that heritage is not solely about the past in simple terms, but it also entails a construction of the past in ways that
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are useful to the people inheriting it. For example in the book it is stated that “we remember the heroes among our ancestors and not their failures” (Bottaro et al., 2005, p. 217). This explains that heritage is also concerned with making choice of what to inherit from the past. These different views from this textbook are then encapsulated in both case studies, in the form of, Zimbabwean nationalism and Saartjie Baartman (a case of humans on display).
Shuters history. Grade 10. Learner’s book also attempted a clarification of the concept though very superficially. Here the focus was still on inheritance (individual or groups) that helps to understand the past. This is also in the form of events, symbolic objects and people from the past that are celebrated as heritage today. Finally in Making history. Grade 10. Learners’ book, there was no attempt to conceptualise heritage.
Rather the meaning of the concept is to be deduced from the examples and choices of lexicons used in the case studies within the text. In this regard, the textbook’s reference to the following: public holidays; important battles; Great Zimbabwe and the Bastille;
and to humans on display, is an indication that in this textbook the views on heritage are expressed from the perspectives of examples or as a broad body of knowledge outside the conceptual parameters.
Therefore, the understanding of the concept of heritage in the three textbooks could be summarised as follows: That heritage is about important people, days, places, and events that people have inherited from the past. But not everything from the past is considered heritage, so heritage is also about how the present generation construct their past in ways that make meaning and are useful to them; above all, it also means that according to the textbooks, heritage cannot be expressed in a single meaning. It is understood and expressed differently in different contexts and space – hence the differing views from the different textbooks in South Africa as a post-conflict society.
These findings concur with the literature reviewed in chapter two on the conceptualisation of heritage. Fundamentally, the literature acknowledged the fact that the concept of heritage is a very malleable one, largely ambiguous, very difficult and debatable and full of paradoxes (see page 14). Different authors and scholars cited in the literature, conceptualised heritage in different ways with each conceptualisation having its own specific focus. For example, Vecco (2010) submits that the concept of
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heritage has been characterised by expansion and semantic transfer through the years.
(See Table 2.1, pp. 15-16). The implication is that the different meanings attributed to heritage in the different textbooks are in accordance with the revelation from the research literature about the difficulties of conceptualising heritage.
Furthermore, the textbook’s position that heritage is a construction of the past in the present correlate the views of Saunders (2007) and Copeland (2004; 2010). While the former viewed heritage as what is created in the present to remember the past, the latter simply suggests that the process of heritage alludes to making choices on what to inherit and what to discard from the past. The link between both views in relation to this particular finding from the textbooks is that, heritage is not merely about everything that happened in the past. It is a present day construction of the past based on particular choices made by the present generation (by textbook producers in this instance) on what is valuable about their past that merits to be celebrated as heritage, and what should be discarded. However, it must be noted that this process of choice according to Copeland (2004; 2010) is not a straight forward, linear one. It evolves over time and in space and this is largely based on the temporal historical context – which is the selected textbooks for this study; a post-conflict South African society explaining the contemporary context within which heritage is conceptualised with the NCS-History and the constitution providing guidelines for the conceptualisation and implementation of heritage in the education milieu.
Moreover, heritage according to the textbooks also comprises buildings and other structures such as monuments, museums and memorials for the preservation of icons.
Examples of such structures used in the texts include buildings such as Taj Mahal and the Elmina fortress; monuments such as the Voortrekker Monument, the Diaz Cross and the monument commemorating the Zulu participation in the Battle of Blood River;
museums such as the Liverpool Maritime Museum, and the Apartheid and District Six museums; including statues such as Van Riebeeck in Cape Town. The structures listed above are all important in the preservation and conservation of heritage so that this can be bequeathed to future generations. This resonates with Nora’s argument that links the idea of recreating the past in the present to the discourse of memory (Nora, 1898). He argues, as quoted by Phillips (2006), that memory is always a phenomena of the
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present and for this memory to be celebrated, there is the need for a place for the recreated past called lieux de memoires or sites of memory (see p. 19). There are these places or sites of memory that are represented in the textbooks in the form of museums, statues, memorials and other similar buildings and infrastructure of historical value and significance.
Therefore, with reference to the conceptualisation of heritage, the findings from the analysis of the textbooks are confirmation of the trend reviewed in the literature.
Apropos this discussion, the following points are advanced to account for why heritage is conceptualised as such in the textbooks:
Firstly, it is because of the complexity of the heritage phenomena itself as identified in the literature. Hence heritage is obliged to be understood from different perspectives since the origin of it as well as its evolution, including its delimitations is highly contested. As a result, the textbooks’ representation of the conceptualisation of heritage could be seen within the context of the ambiguous nature of heritage from the point of its inception up to its present use.
Secondly, the different conceptualisations of heritage in the textbooks are also a result of the inability of the policy documents to clearly define what heritage must encapsulate.
For example, the NCS-History that purports heritage as one of it outcomes is very superficial and passive on the conceptualisation of heritage. Although this document states what is expected of learners in terms of heritage in the different grades, the inability to clearly define what heritage is leaves the different textbooks with the opportunity to fill the gap with their own different views. Such is the situation of the textbooks selected for this study whereby heritage is conceptualised in different ways.
Thirdly, the producers of these textbooks are destined to make certain pedagogic moves, such as was seen in the analysis of the selected textbooks, recollecting that these textbooks are commercial entities that also determine how and what learners think and learn. Therefore the different conceptualisations of heritage in the selected textbooks are a result of the textbook’s producer’s desire to impose on learners what to think and learn through the history textbooks.
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