I never did continue with history at school, after the ninth grade. It bored me senseless. I remember mostly endless repetitions of the colonial history of South Africa, the Zulu Wars and the Great Trek. It was with some surprise that I found myself reading more and more history as I grew older, however. Why, then, the disinterest as a kid? Was it just because of the parochial scope of Apartheid education? Or was there some other reason history seemed dead and insignificant?

Sheryl Longin has a theory:

I wonder if we aren’t using a hopelessly irrelevant, archaic framework to teach a subject that is absolutely vital to our children if we care about the future of the modern world. How about basing primary school history education on the evolution of the material, of inventions, of progress? From the evolution of toilet paper will come a thousand other history lessons, touching on everything from economics to politics to religion. And those lessons will be remembered, because they will be answering questions that children (and adults) naturally have.

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Samizdata calls Barry Goldwater “the greatest president America never had”. The quotation they offer in support of this view is, indeed, compelling:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents ‘interests’, I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

Since a change in South Africa’s ruling party is not very likely in the next generation or so, who in the African National Congress would approximate such a position? Who is honest (and brave) enough to state publicly that although the liberation struggle succeeded in casting off the injustice of racial oppression, it has yet to achieve true liberty? Who recognises that ending poverty and creating sustainable prosperity requires true liberty? One can dream, can one not?