Remembrance education between history teaching and citizenship education

Abstract

Commemoration and remembrance are integral elements of postmodern western culture. Although academic historians are increasingly inclined to acknowledge that there is no hard and fast dividing line between collective memory and professional historiography, they do not always welcome the increasing pressure from national governments and international organizations to guide and even regulate collective memory through history education or through so-called ‘remembrance education’. The rationale of remembrance education is that modern nations have a certain responsibility for crimes or suffering that has been caused in the past, and that recognition of this forms a component of education in democratic citizenship. Remembrance education thus becomes a general umbrella for education about ‘dark chapters’ from the past, with the Holocaust as most evident example. This article focuses on a single (sub)national case. Within the Flemish Community, which is the body responsible for education in Flanders and the Dutch-speaking schools in the federal Belgian capital Brussels, remembrance education has, since 2010, been an official part of the cross-curricular final objectives of secondary education. Starting from the concrete context in which this initiative originated and is currently being developed, we examine the complex relationship between remembrance education and history teaching. The differences and affinities between both, we argue, become visible by comparing the position of the academic discipline of history in both fields, by comparing the position of the present, the role of empathy and of a pedagogy of activation and by analysing the way in which ethical questions are dealt with. The absolute moral standards and the present-centred character of remembrance education are, for instance, far removed from the ambitions to stimulate historical and contextual thinking that are central to history education. Many of the real tensions between both, however, reproduce in magnified form the equally real inter¬nal tensions that characterize contemporary history teaching, with its simultaneous scientific and civic ambitions. But unlike remembrance education, history education does not regard memory as the starting point for knowledge or attitudes, but as a subject of critical historical research in its own right.

Learning About Sensitive History: “Heritage” of Slavery as a Resource

“…Researchers hold various positions regarding the extent to which heritage and history are distinct concepts (Jonker, 2008;M. Philips, 2004;Van Nieuwenhuyse & Wils, 2012). Over the years scholars have criticized the 'heritage industry' because it mainly stimulates instrumental and mythical uses of the past for political and commercial reasons (Hewison, 1987;Lowenthal, 1998).…”

“…Various authors stress that acknowledgement and investigation of the wide range of distances that are constructed in various historical practices are particularly valuable during a time in which historians increasingly focus on the intimate or everyday experience (Grever, 2013;M. Philips, 2004;Van Nieuwenhuyse & Wils, 2012).…”

Torn between patriotic, civic and disciplinary aspirations. Evolving faces of Belgian and Flemish history education, from 1830 to the future

“…Both of them orient history education towards supporting certain identity construction processes and the transmission of values. In so doing, they do not solely rely on academic historiographi-cal representations of the past, yet include social representations and historical myths within collective memory as well (Van Nieuwenhuyse & Wils, 2012). Both clusters hence testify to the fostering of a rather naïve historical consciousness.…”

“…On the one hand, the standards expect teachers to learn their students, in line with the academic history discipline, to place historical facts in their historical context and detach themselves from the present. On the other hand, however, history education is expected to look at the past on the basis of a concern for contemporary social problems; students should testify to a historical consciousness and learn lessons from the past that are relevant for the present and the future (Van Nieuwenhuyse & Wils, 2012). This creates a field of tension.…”

“…They approach the past in a very presentist and even anachronistic way. In so doing, they build hence a very biased understanding of the past, leading to a distorted historical consciousness (Van Nieuwenhuyse & Wils, 2012;Von Borries, 1994). The question then arises if it would not be advisable to orient history education particularly towards a detached, critical and reflective study of the past and of history?…”