Universidad de British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada)

Center for the Study of Historical  Conscioussness

Summary:

This talk will consist of an attempt to describe, in an international context, the current situation of history teaching and its contribution to the construction of historical memory and national identity.

My point of departure is the intense transformation of school history curricula in numerous countries in the past decade. I attempt to provide a comprehensive thesis, which helps to explain the global nature of the "culture wars" that underlie this transformation.

To do so, I examine three arenas of history: school, academic and popular.   This examination opens up the implicit contradiction between the "rational enlightened" objectives of history teaching (understanding history critically and as a discipline), and the "romantic" objectives (promoting the construction of national identity through feelings of belonging). While both types of objectives are necessary, they must be rendered explicitly and the tensions between them considered openly.

I will present some of my empirical work about how education contributes to the construction of national identity and historical memory. Interviews with pupils of different ages (6 - 16 years as well as adults from Spain, Argentina and Chile) will be presented, analysing the ways in which they construe their historical narratives. These interviews took place in the context of national holidays, which are a common historical celebration at schools in Latin America, as well as in North America and Europe.

I will conclude with possible futures for history teaching.

http://www.cshc.ubc.ca/

COULD HISTORY TEACHING CONTRIBUTE TO DEVELOP A CULTURE  OF COOPERATION IN LATIN AMERICA  IN THE CONTEXT OF A GLOBALIZED WORLD?

A comparative study of history teaching in Argentina and Brazil.


In the last 15 years I have been working extensively on history education and national identity in Latin America. In 2001 I received the Guggenheim Fellowship (Latin American) for a project on this specific area of study. In this study I examined the relation between the teaching and learning of history and the formation of national identity. My most recent publication is a result of this Project (Documentos de identidad. La construcción de la memoria histórica en un mundo global (2007, Buenos Aires: Paidós). (Identity documents. The construction of historical memory in a globalized world. London: Routledge, sumitted; also portuguese translation, in press, Portoalegre, Artes Medicas). In this book, I analyze and compare the debates on the teaching of history in different countries, paying special attention to Latin America, specially in chapter 4, where I present interviews with students of different ages about historic-patriotic rituals and celebrations. My previous book (Enseñanza de la historia y memoria colectiva, 2006) has also been published on Argentina and Brazil (see vita), where I have been teaching and doing research.
This proposal is based on a continuation and expansion of the work of my book, working specifically on a comparison between the Argentinean and the Brazilian cases. I think both DRCLAS and HGSE offer excellent conditions and prior and specific research specific on this topic.