3. Discourse analysis of the NPDE Social Science learner guide
4.3 SECTION TWO
4.3.3. The geography component of the learning material
60 The structure of the history section of the learning material suggests that the intended learning is largely content knowledge and that the learning is organised from singular event or individual to more complex organisations, like communities.
61 The writer makes use of deductive teaching methods which progress from the general concept to the specific. This chapter is relatively short and consists of three tasks, employing the use of the atlas to find lines of latitude and longitude. The intention of the writer of the geography component of the SS NPDE learning guide is that students must understand and be able to apply what knowledge they learnt in chapter one, and only then would they be able to engage and apply themselves with chapter two. This chapter sees the end of unit two, i.e. map work, and the use of the atlas, and moves on to unit three, which deals with another section, being population, resources and development.
Unit three, chapter one, deals with population growth, size and distribution and the concern with the human interaction with the environment in space and time. This section is concerned with the interaction of humankind within the global environment in space and time. This aspect does gel with the previous section and is not studied in isolation as it examines the increasing growth rate of the world‟s population and how this affects the earth negatively. There is a pie graph, line graph, bar graph and population pyramid, finding out the population growth rate. This section like the preceding section requires mathematical calculations. This is unlike the history aspect, which does not require mathematical calculations, rather essay writing, paragraph writing, studying of pictures and providing opinions.
Unit three, chapter two, looks at resources, which also include the natural physical environment, ecological and economical resources, renewable and non-renewable and sustainable development. This aspect ties up with the previous chapter as it also deals with issues that relate to the environment and human interaction. This section includes maps, tabulated data and diagrams to explain concepts.
Unit three, chapter three, deals with environmental issues, concept of ecosystem, global warming, soil erosion, depletion of the ozone layer, pollution, deforestation, and human impact on the ecosystems. There are some aspects relating to natural science as well. All the chapters in unit three thus far examined human interaction with the environment, and the negative affects, together with solutions such as sustainable development and nature conservation.
62 Unit three, chapter four, looks at human settlement patterns, urban and rural. This is the final unit and chapter of the SS IP NPDE learner guide. This chapter basically concludes as this unit dealt with population, resources, environmental issues and lastly human settlement patterns. The position of the geography component within the NPDE learning guide suggests that it follows the trends of deductive learning in that the deductive teaching methods progress from the general concept to the specific.
Revised National Curriculum Statement Grades R-9 (Schools) Policy – Social Sciences (2002) states that the knowledge focus for Grades 4-6 should include health and welfare and development issues, but these aspects have been excluded from the NPDE IP SS learner guide. It seems that the content, which has been privileged deals with map work and the use of the atlas. The researcher‟s experience of teaching social science in the intermediate phase of school, as well as some anecdotal evidence from colleagues, suggests that many of the students are experiencing and even failing these sections of the geography part of the syllabus. Hence, the construction of the SS learning material related to the geography section of the syllabus does not match what is expected of the Revised National Curriculum Statement Grade R to 9, but that due to the scope of the module, some sections of the geography curriculum are left out and that the sections that are included are those that have been perceived to be either difficult to teach or for learners to learn.
The assessment focus and structure of the geography component of the NPDE IP SS learning guide is unlike the history aspect which involves writing essays and providing opinions and looking at a picture and then writing about it or on it. The assessments here deal greatly with the use of the atlas and on how to locate coordinates, measuring distances between two points on a map, with reference to the maps, compiling a table with links of climatic types to vegetation types, using the physical map of South Africa to fill in the names of rivers, calculate the population growth, refer to the population pyramid and answer questions and write down solutions to problems of rural deforestation. These assessment focuses and structure require students to be focused and have a flair for the sciences and maths. This concludes the global analysis of the SS learning material and before moving on to section two, the researcher wanted to make mention of the changes brought about by the government of the day.
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“The curriculum and school culture share a particular relationship with ruling class forms of social life and the power of the ruling class defines what counts as legitimate forms of school knowledge,” (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1986: 147). This could help explain the discarding of history and geography by the newly elected democratic government and the introduction of social sciences combining both these subjects.
(Foucault 1979: 27) reiterates similar sentiments that „power and knowledge directly imply one another‟ and power and knowledge are therefore correlative. Like the government introduced C2005, RNCS and NCS in having committed the education system to an outcomes-based education system, the emphasis is on learning areas rather than on discrete and separate subjects. They for example combined two discrete subjects into the SS learning area.
4.3.4. Concluding comments on the global analysis of the social science learning