Unit 1: South Africa and Apartheid

Welcome to a new year in the Program for Upper Level Students at Happy Kids. Each year I try to plan unique, interesting, and challenging students of this class. This year's first unit is about South Africa. We will look closely at South African history, especially that of the Apartheid Era (1947-1990). This era of South African history is very well known the world over. While it was a horrible and unjust system that set the country back tremendously, students rarely get the chance to really analyze events like this from history. With this unit I hope to not only teach students about the era, but also the big picture concepts of historical perspective, importance of empathy when learning history, and minority rule. In short, we will be focusing more on the why and how of the events rather than the what.

For this unit, we will be reading Beverley Naidoo's Out of Bounds. This is a collection of short stories set at different times of the Apartheid and post-Apartheid era. We began our first assignment this past week: a lesson in the origins and composition of the Apartheid system. You can find the assignment here or take a minute to view it below. Stay tuned for more lessons in this unit.