History Matters

Some people are so indistinct, its difficult to imagine that they are there, even when alive.  Others have so much presence, that its impossible to imagine they have gone, even when dead.  Kader Asmal was irrepressible, wonderfully so, at times unrestrainedly provocative.  He engaged lustily with life.  Ever full of spirit, he fought the battle [...]

It is a cruel fact that in the last 15 years the Humanities and the Social Sciences have been severely affected by the dire need to respond to the obvious deficit in engineering, natural scientific, informational and managerial needs.  This downscaling of the importance of the human and social forms of scholarship has had a [...]

Mar 5, 2011 11:42 PM | By Mamphela Ramphele Mamphela Ramphele May 5th Sunday Times Successful societies focus on ensuring that future generations perform better than past and present ones. The crisis of underperformance of our education and training system lies at the heart of the growth of inequality, continuing poverty and dependence on welfare [...]

What makes a history exam? Published in the Cape Times, 27 January 2011 (p.11) “After yet another disappointing set of results for… History I am wondering what more we can do, and whether anyone else has the same experience? Some excellent and hardworking students have got at least a grade lower than they should have, [...]

by Rob Siebörger Published in the Cape Times, 27 January 2011 (p.11), under the title ‘Examining exams: History is not what it used to be’. “After yet another disappointing set of results for… History I am wondering what more we can do, and whether anyone else has the same experience? Some excellent and hardworking students [...]

by Charlyn Dyers One of the untold stories about language is the large percentage of Xhosa learners in former coloured schools and the ways in which they adapt their language skills. Research done at Wesbank, one of the newest townships in Cape Town, showed that the ongoing migration from the rural areas to its cities [...]

Nick Taylor, JET Education Services Presentation to the CSR in Education Conference, TSiBA Education, Cape Town 21 November 2008 1.     Introduction There are many teachers and schools who provide their learners with the opportunities to become skilled and confident citizens able to sustain their families and contribute to building a new society. While most successful [...]

Inaugural Speech of the 13th Rector and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Free State (UFS) For such a time as this Jonathan D Jansen In Honour of Adv. Bram Fischer Preliminaries Welcome, welcome, welcome. I thought this would never happen. In fact, many of you told me it could never happen because of my [...]