Teachers in the United States are currently facing backlash against using “critical race theory” in their classrooms, or the term far-Right activists use for engagement with historical and present-day racism. While critical race theory analyzes how racism is embedded in social structures, the far-Right has taken up a caricatured version of this to push for legislation limiting discussion of racism in educational spaces. Around nine hundred school districts, serving about a third of America's schoolchildren, faced local campaigns to restrict the teaching of “critical race theory” in 2021, a number that has almost certainly risen since then (Pollock & Rogers, 2022). Additionally, about half of American teachers have reported being subject to state and/or local restrictions on how they can discuss issues of race and racism in their classrooms (Woo et al., 2024). Yet, contention around how to teach a nation's history of racial injustice is not unique to the United States. As Chana Teeger writes in Distancing the Past: Racism as History in South Afri can Schools, “the attack on history education puts a spotlight on how threatening discussions of white privilege are to those who hold that privilege. It reminds us that history makes demands of the present” (134) to address past inequalities. In this book, Teeger goes into the history classroom to look at how teachers avoid discussions of historical inequalities and white privilege and to understand the consequences of doing so for student learning.
Specifically, Teeger investigates how the history of apartheid is taught to the first generation born in postapartheid South Africa. By centering the experiences of students and educators in in two multiethnic schools, Teeger argues that the teachers, most of whom were white, discussed apartheid in a way that distanced it from present-day inequality and promoted the development of color-blind ideologies in students. The book masterfully shows how these broad institutionalized narratives of racial ideologies work their way into microinteractions taking place in grade 9 classrooms and the consequences of this. Part of Teeger's argument comes from what she did not see in her field-work: when students in the history classrooms she observed learned about apartheid, discussions about systemic racism and the ongoing consequences of apartheid were absent. As Teeger notes, “History lessons failed time and again to help students understand how the past informs, influences, and circumscribes the present. Instead, ironically, history lessons distanced the past from the present” (3).
The book's argument unfolds over the course of five chapters and a conclusion. Chapter 1 situates the research within the history of South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy. Particularly, Teeger describes the negotiated end to apartheid in the early 1990s and the decisions to provide amnesty to the perpetrators of human rights violations, as long as they showed political motivation for their actions. This helped lay the foundation for narratives of apartheid as being conducted by individuals rather than being a system of oppression. Even after the end of legal segregation, South Africa has some of the highest levels of inequality in the world, much of it between racial groups. In addition to describing the South African context, chapter 1 locates the study in scholarly discourse on color-blind racial ideologies and racial inequalities in schooling through the hidden curriculum.
Chapters 2, 3, and 4 analyze three mechanisms through which teachers distance the past: juxtapositions, equivalences, and simulations. In chapter 2 Teeger describes how the official state curriculum for social sciences in grade 9 centers on human rights issues, juxtaposing the history of the Holocaust with the history of apartheid. This results in teachers discussing apartheid absent such historical context as the colonization of South Africa and subsequent dispossession, racism, and economic exploitation. This way of teaching limits students’ abilities to understand causal processes about the emergence of apartheid and its ongoing legacy.
Chapter 3 focuses on how teachers drew equivalences between black and white suffering under apartheid, as well as between white South Africans realizing postapartheid that segregation was wrong and the activists who fought against apartheid. These practices come out of nation-building myths used to promote solidarity among South Africans. By reducing the racialized dimension of apartheid, teachers sought racial harmony but made it harder for students to recognize how historical racial injustice impacts present-day racial inequality. As Teeger argues, “In trying to ease boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ teachers taught students to draw a firm line between ‘then’ and ‘now’” (19 - 20).
In chapter 4, Teeger depicts how one high school used historical simulations during the apartheid unit in an attempt to build historical empathy. During these simulations, students entered the classroom by their race and sat in segregated rows while their teacher played the role of the apartheid state, enforcing racial divisions. Problematically, the simulations made racial differences appear natural and the past seem wholly different from the present. Given the concerns about these simulations, one might hope that at least they would lead to a deeper understanding of the history of apartheid. Yet, Teeger did not find improved learning outcomes for students in the school that used simulations compared to students in the school that used projects to teach the same ideas.
Finally, chapter 5 discusses the consequences of this type of education that “strives to leave the past in the past” (128) and individualize the systemic nature of apartheid. It props up an image of a harmonious, multiracial, present-day society that “rests on a denial of the realities of enduring racism” (128). While students were more likely to link apartheid to present-day issues facing South Africa after they learned about apartheid in grade 9, most still thought of apartheid in relation to interpersonal racism, and about a third of them thought the legacy of apartheid largely continued because black South Africans could not get over it. As Teeger reminds in the concluding chapter, teachers were drawing from wider narratives of an inclusive present-day society and apartheid as an individualized problem of the past. This has the potential consequence of socializing “young people away from collective action” (134) for social justice and racial redress, of making students more likely to embrace ideas of color blindness.
Teeger collected an impressive array of data, including around four hundred hours of ethnographic observation over the course of two school years and interviews with 160 students and ten grade 9 history teachers. Half of the student interviews took place before they learned about apartheid in grade 9 and the other half after. These observations and interviews were split across two schools that represented the ideas of racial diversity and opportunities for upward mobility. Teeger supplemented this main analysis by looking at national curricular documents and observing teacher-training sessions.
Teeger's methodology allowed her to make claims that she could not have otherwise. Her pre- and postapartheid interview sample helped her demonstrate that what teachers discuss in class does, in fact, shape students’ understandings of apartheid. For instance, in interviews students spoke about how whites suffered under apartheid three times more often in her postapartheid learning sample than in the pre-apartheid sample. By observing teacher training programs and the national curriculum, she is able to make claims about the institutionalization of history education as she witnessed teachers in training put aside their own views about the legacy of apartheid to embrace state-sponsored narratives.
The effective methodology is accompanied by clear writing that offers insight into the two schools Teeger studied. The book contains well-chosen quotes to prove the argument and provide glimpses into the field notes and interviews, making the classroom setting come alive. I only wish there were more stories from what are likely extensive field notes. In addition to telling a clear and compelling story, Teeger weaves in moments of truth about her expectations going into her fieldwork and the process of data collection. In doing so, she subtly reminds the reader that it is okay, and even good, if our research does not conform to our expectations.
While outside of the scope of this study, it would have been revealing to read about a classroom that taught the history of apartheid well and to see how students learned from that. This would help show what conditions are necessary for teachers to engage with the structural and temporal history of apartheid and its continued effects. For example, what support, training, or resources are required for teaching about how racism persists today? How can this learning occur in a way that does not make teachers’ fears of classroom animosity and damaged interpersonal relationships come true? Even without this, however, Teeger paints a vivid picture of how history curricula play an important role in students’ understanding of the world around them.
Distancing the Past has implications for a wide range of readers, including scholars of race and racism, education researchers, and those interested in collective memory. It deftly shows one way that young people can learn color-blind ideologies in schools through institutionalized national curricula shaping what happens in classrooms. It also articulates the inequalities in schools when present-day experiences of racism are minimized or dismissed. In doing so, it contributes to scholarship on the ways education can reinforce racial inequality.
This book should also be read by all teachers and curriculum developers who might touch on historical inequalities in their instruction. While engaging with scholarly conversations, Distancing the Past is a relatively quick and easy read, accessible to a general audience. This book shows that the work of teachers matters. Teachers shape the ideologies students learn and take with them into the future. Thus, it is important for educators to learn about the impact they have when they encourage or avoid difficult conversations surrounding social issues. This compelling book helps us understand how the way we teach history, particularly hard history, has very real consequences for students who are “future voters and decision-makers,” and “how they learn to understand social inequality in school will impact those roles” (129).