Was it only a year or two ago that the teaching and learning of history in this country seemed to be in a moribund state? In earlier columns I have discussed some recent initiatives which have made most observers rethink this view.
There is yet another initiative on the horizon. In the end, this one may have greater impact on the teaching and learning of history in this country than all the others put together. It is the establishment of a Center for the Study of Historical Consciousness, at the University of British Columbia. Peter Seixas, historian and professor in the Department of Curriculum Studies, will direct the Center. The appointment was made in December, so by the time this column appears, the center should be underway.
Since I think it is key that history teachers in this country be aware of the work of this center, I decided to interview Peter Seixas on the ground floor, so to speak, as he sets about the task of clarifying his purposes and establishing the parameters within which the center will operate.
What is the basic idea behind the Center?
I have been thinking about this kind of thing for some time. By now, in Canada, we have a situation where provincial governments, various funding bodies, teachers, the press, and the general public, have a renewed interest in the teaching and learning of history, so there are a number of major initiatives, like Histor!.ca projects, the new Institute for Teaching Canadian History, the Begbie Contest, and, of course, the much-advertised film series, "Canada: A People's History," to name only a few. Readers of your column are aware of this renaissance.
At the same time, outside of Canada, particularly in the UK and the United States, and elsewhere as well, researchers have made major new advances in understanding students' historical understanding. My recent book, edited with Peter Stearns and Sam Wineburg, surveys this work. Outside of Canada, it is a vibrant field.
I see important needs and opportunities here. First, we need to make sure that recent, international research advances inform the new Canadian history projects. This is really only possible if we start to participate more actively in research on questions of historical consciousness, here in Canada. But I also think researchers in other countries will benefit by a much more intensive interaction with each other and with us. There is currently no international forum where people interested in questions of historical consciousness can share their work, their questions, and their conclusions.
The purposes of the Center flow from these needs and opportunities. It aims to 1) stimulate research on historical consciousness in Canada, informed by international developments; 2) develop forums for exchanging these ideas with those actively involved in teaching history, in schools, universities, museums, and public media; and 3) provide opportunities for international exchange among researchers in historical consciousness.
Can you tell me how this center came about?
Last year the Canadian government announced a program to establish Canada Research Chairs in universities across the country. The UBC Faculty of Education submitted a proposal for a research chair, with the Center for the Study of Historical Consciousness as a major component of the work. I see the success of the proposal as a sign that historical consciousness is becoming recognized as a field where Canadian-based research is going to be very important. The chair comes with some funding, but we plan to raise more research dollars in order to have a significant impact.
What do you mean by "historical consciousness"? It is a term that is unfamiliar to many of us.
It is a tough one, and I have already discovered that it is prone to misunderstanding. I can put it in terms of the contrast between studying history and studying historical consciousness: when we study history, we are looking at the past. Researching and writing about John A. Macdonald, for example, is studying history. When we study historical consciousness, we are studying how people look at the past. Researching and writing about how Canadians view John A. Macdonald today, what he means to them as a "founding father" from their standpoints in a multicultural, regionalized, gender-conscious 21st century: this is studying historical consciousness. Of course, this is closely related to the well-developed field of historiography, which studies how historians look at the past.
But historical consciousness is not just interested in historians' views of the past. We are interested in what Carl Becker called "everyman's" history. Even, for example, how the 6-year old looks at her family's past. And there is another dimension: historical consciousness examines not only how all of us look at the past, but also, how we use it in the present, and how it helps us imagine the future. So there are identity issues (Who am I? What groups am I part of? What are their origins?), social policy issues (How should we judge each others' past actions, and therefore what debts does my group, or nation, owe to others and others to mine?), as well as core issues of truth (which story about the past should I believe, and what is its significance today?) Thus, South Africa's "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" activities are a quintessential exercise in historical consciousness. And then there are also land claims here in British Columbia, all of the reparations cases for historical wrongs, and so on. All of these are about uses of the past in the present for the future.
How do you see these questions relating to what we do in school history classrooms?
Once we understand the significance of the past in the present and, again, the significance of the past for our working towards a future, then I think school history assumes a very central role in helping students think more clearly about these crucial questions. Films and news stories that invoke the past may raise students' interests and passions, but it is really the job of the school to make sure that young people learn to sort through a whole range of questions about the past, so they can use it in the best, clearest, and most rational ways in shaping their own attitudes, values, decisions, and actions.
I understand that you are beginning with two major initiatives. Can you tell me about the first?
The first project will involve an international, comparative investigation of the historical consciousness of young people as they leave high school. I have invited eminent researchers from Australia, China, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US, to work with historians and educators from across Canada. Among them, Joern Ruesen is President of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Institute in Essen, Germany, which has pioneered much of the European work on historical consciousness. Chris Lorenz of the Netherlands is currently one of the world's most prominent and prolific philosophers of history. He has written specifically on how professional historians handle the past differently from those who are not (and it is not just that the former "know more facts.") Others include Sam Wineburg, who has been at the forefront of American research on teaching and learning history and Tony Taylor, who chaired the recent Australian National Inquiry Into School History, and who will now lead the National Center for History Education that grew out of it. The Canadian team is being assembled as we speak.
What is your second project?
The second project will involve an examination of historic sites and symbols across Canada. Sites will be chosen on the basis of their telling a story about the past that implicitly makes claims about the present and future. Thus, for instance, the memorial to the victims of the Montreal Massacre, here in Vancouver, is not only about the past: it makes a claim on the present and, implicitly calls for a different and better future. I want to see what this site means to various different populations who pass by it or who visit it intentionally: what different meanings does it have? I also want to understand how various sites and symbols interact with each other. And I am particularly interested in looking at potentially conflicting stories about the past. A women's monument implicitly sets up a different past than a war memorial honoring dead men. Are the stories complementary or contradictory? And who notices?
I assume sites would include museums, heritage buildings, monuments, and reconstructions of various kinds. Are you considering other kinds of sites?
Sites will include those you mention, as well as film, textbooks, curriculum debates, and classroom instruction, product marketing, and legal confrontations. A BC social studies textbook is called "Building the West": do students notice whose perspective is represented in this title, and whose is not? Do teachers?
There are innumerable such sites in Canada. How will you choose?
I am really only at the beginning of my thinking here. I want to have a range of kinds of sites, and a range of geographic locations. The main criterion for choosing will be the question of conflict and contradiction: I am looking for sites that are at least potentially controversial. But as with the other research, I envision this as a collaborative project, with contributors across the country. I imagine that I will rely on the collaborators to help identify particular sites.
Are there ways that history and social studies teachers can become involved in the work of the center?
There will be work, early on, for any who are interested in participating in research, either as graduate students or as teachers. Conferences and speaker series involving teachers will be of interest to a broader group. And teachers will have an even more crucial role to play, as we focus on discussions of how the insights from the research can inform the work we do in schools.
What impact do you hope to have on the teaching and learning of history in Canadian schools?
I hope that the work on historical consciousness will make us all more aware of the nature of historical knowledge, and the possible uses and abuses of stories about the past. A lot of school history instruction conveys the notion that there is one large and complex story about the past, and the job is for students to learn it. I hope that the work on historical consciousness will help teachers teach in such a way that their students end up with a very different conception of knowledge about the past: specifically, that history is a dynamic and often conflicting set of stories that must, by their very nature, be judged, criticized, revised and supplemented, so that they can answer questions that are relevant to the issues we face today.
I am curious. Your primary interest is in the teaching of history. However, you are working in a province that places history within the context of a social studies curriculum. Is this to your satisfaction? Or do you advocate, as Kieran Egan of Simon Fraser University does, that social studies be abolished, to be replaced by separate courses in history and geography?
Personally, I think that things would be easier in some ways, if social studies were replaced by history and geography, but I also think the debate on that issue is somewhat sterile at this point. Thoughtless history and geography teaching can be just as deadly as bad social studies teaching, so I would not put much energy into that level of curriculum revision as the answer to the problems we face in schools.