Ethics and intergenerational programming: a critical reflection on historic environment education in South Africa

Abstract

This article critically reflects on the ethical issues that emerged from an intergenerational project in post-Apartheid South Africa. An international organization from outside the South African borders utilized Time Travel (TT) as an educational method to implement Historic Environment Education (HEE), by proposing to reenact historical events during the Apartheid struggle in 1986. The project was conducted in an informal settlement in the North West Province in South Africa. In preparation for the project, learners (between ages 15 and 19 years) had to interview older people (60+ years) on their experiences during Apartheid. The data obtained were to be used to reenact experiences on the basis of experiential learning principles. On completion of the TT project, researchers unrelated to the initial initiative were requested to critically reflect on the past project. In this subsequent follow-up evaluative exploration, additional reflections (on which this critical discussion is based) were obtained from the participants in the initial project by means of interviews, a questionnaire, and reports as they appeared in a local newspaper. Drawing on these perceptions, the aims of this article are to critically reflect on the ethical issues that emerged in this intergenerational project in post-Apartheid South Africa, to demonstrate the importance of an ethical approach to intergenerational interventions in vulnerable societies in transition, and to make suggestions for future research on intergenerational programming.