Nijmegen Conference A Bridge too Far, Friday, 26 March 2010
In search for commonalityHistory and plurality in multicultural
classes
Maria Grever
Center for Historical Culturehttp://www.fhk.eur.nl/chc
Social need for a common past and a sense of belonging
Globalization and global interactions
• Multimedia world • Mobility• Migration
Recently: focus on content-constructed approach
National Historical Museum
design Francine Houben
Research Center for Historical Culture
How people make sense of the past in various cultural forms
Construction, transmission and circulation of historical knowledge in:
• Youth movements and popular culture• Organizations of concentration camp survivors• Autobiographies• Historical museums and art exhibitions• History classes
Research Center for Historical Culture
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (2009-2014)
Heritage Education, Plurality of Narratives and Shared Historical Knowledge
Research leaders (EUR): Maria Grever en Carla van Boxtel
Key question lecture relates to tension:
How can we acknowledge both commonality and plurality in history education?
Outline lecture
1. Theoretical aspects of commonality
2. Commonality does not necessarily contradict plurality
3. Balance between local, national and global history
Last slide: recent publications Grever
Commonality
HistorianaEUROCLIO and Netherlands
Heritage Institute
Commonality
Historiana
The aim is to develop: 'an online, interactive multimedia tool that will provide a framework for constructing common historical knowledge about Europe
without losing a plurality of perspectives and inter- and intrastate diversity for educational purposes in classrooms, museums and heritage settings'
Aim too ambitious …?
Commonality
Historiana
Most nations in Europe count large numbers of students whose immigrant or minority families do not share a common historical experience
Is the link between shared historical experience and common historical knowledge valid?
Explanatory research, book
Maria Grever and Kees Ribbens, National identity and plural pasts (Amsterdam University Press 2007)
Explanatory research, book
Maria Grever and Kees Ribbens, National identity and plural pasts (Amsterdam University Press 2007)
Netherlands, Rotterdam City center; Vreewijk (southern part); district IJsselmonde; Schiebroek (near Rotterdam airport)
5 schools42 nationalities
N=305
United Kingdom, Greater LondonCricklewood (northern part), Fulham (center), Hounslow (direction Heathrow airport)
3 schools30 nationalities
N=174
France, Nord-Pas-de-Calais (Lille) Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing and Maubeuge in departement Nord; Hénin-Beaumont in departement Pas-de-Calais
4 schools15 nationalities
N=199
Total 12 schools N=678
Number of high schools, nationalities and respondents per country (age students 14/15 - 17/18 years)
(Grever & Ribbens 2007)
Commonality
Rotterdam high schools 42 nationalities from:(Grever & Ribbens 2007)
Europe: Spain, France, Poland, Croatia …Former colonies: Suriname, Aruba, IndonesiaOther continents: Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan,
Argentina, Australia, China, Zimbabwe, Peru ...
How to create commonality in this multicultural context?
Commonality
We live together in that globalizing world
Commonality refers to the very fact that we share the same world that makes it possible to value and exchange interpretations about human beings and behavior
Traces of human actions in the past: mask of a Roman equestrian, found in Nijmegen
Traces of human actions in the past: mask of a Roman equestrian, found in Nijmegen
Narrative about human actions in the past such as the Batavian revolt against the Romans near Nijmegen, leaded by Julius Civilis in 69 ACE (painting Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661)
Narrative about human actions in the past such as the Batavian revolt against the Romans near Nijmegen, leaded by Julius Civilis in 69 ACE (painting Rembrandt van Rijn, 1661)
Commonality
Yet, commonality does not necessarily imply harmony
Commonality
Exchanging interpretations, agreeing and disagreeing, assumes some understanding about what is interpreted.
We all participate in the stream of meanings and texts (Gadamer's Wirkungsgeschichte)
This is the start of commonality.
Commonality
Chris Blanken, Jan Dirk Tuinier and Geu Visser, (small scale research)
Antisemitism at school? Research report amongst students with an islamic background in confrontation with the history of the Holocaust (Utrecht 2003)
Commonality
Frank Ankersmit, Sublime historical experience (2005)emphasis on experience
Students do not experience the meaning of a text or a teacher's lesson
They translate the meaning in language that will be driven by (transmitted) experience
The translation of experiences to the level of language generates the possibility of conflicts
Commonality
Importance of historical reasoning
• Anachronism & presentism• Continuity & change• Intended & unintended effects
Peter Seixas (2004)
Carla van Boxtel (2009)
Commonality
But what about incomprehensible experiences?
Are there limits to historical reasoning?Yes, there are.
Mass atrocity and trauma: the Holocaust, Cambodia, Srebrenica, Ruwhanda …
• too terrible to re-enact in the mind?• too traumatic to put into language?• too foreign to be understood?
Plurality and diversity
The world we all live in consists of several (partly overlapping) communities to which we commit ourselves and with which we identify
Overlapping (memory) communities:• Family, class, gender, family, religion• Neigborhood, city, nation, Europe, virtual
communities
Plurality and diversity
Nation-states are creations of the mindErnest Renan (1882):
'More valuable by far than common customs posts and frontiers conforming to strategic ideas, is the fact of sharing, in the past, a glorious heritage and regrets, and of having, in the future, a shared program to put into effect, or the fact of having suffered, enjoyed, and hoped together. These are the kinds of things that can be understood in spite of differences of race and language.'
Plurality and diversity
1820-1970: professionalization historiography based on the emergence of the nation-state
1970-1990: the nation-state was no longer a self-evident frame of identity in many countries
School history was criticized for its antiquarian, nationalistic character
1990s: start of re-nationalization process; identification with the nation and its history became popular again, presented as our history
Plurality and diversity
Rotterdam interviews (Grever & Ribbens 2007)
What kind of history do you consider as your own history?
Necad (Turkish Dutch boy): History of my religion and the history of my country of origin, Turkey.
Nadia (Moroccan Dutch girl): In the first place my religion. Also the history of my parents' country. But I think it is important to know what has happened in the Netherlands, because we live here.
Plurality and diversity
Outcome survey questionnaire 450 students (Grever & Ribbens 2007)
Native students in the three urban areas appreciate 'national history of the country of residence'
Dutch data: 87% place Dutch history in the top-5; nobody
put that kind of history on the first place
Non-native students are less interestedDutch data: 44% place Dutch history in the top 5 of most
interesting kinds of history
Plurality and diversity
Outcome survey (Grever & Ribbens 2007)
Differences are greatest for the 'history of religion'. This history scores high among all migrant groups
Dutch data: students of Turkish and Moroccan origin put that
kind of history on the first place
Native youth demonstrates much less identification. This history did not belong to their top-5 of most mentioned kinds of history
Dutch data: of all three urban areas Dutch native students value history of religion most
Plurality and diversity
Outcome survey (Grever & Ribbens 2007)
All students declare an interest in world historyNo significant differences between natives and non-
natives in this respect in the three urban areas.
Students hardly show interest in European history Native students appreciate it a bit, significantly more in
the Netherlands and France than UK. None of the migrant students put it in their top-5.
Plurality and diversity
It is imperative that young people acquire historical knowledge about the country of residence
Also important that migrant students experience a sense of belonging and commonality
How can we reconcile both requirements?
Plurality and diversity
Active Citizenship and Social Integration Act (2005) requires that primary and secondary schools educate all students about Dutch culture -commonality
Key-concepts underlying the history curriculum of Dutch secondary schools include the application of plurality of perspectives
Plurality and diversity
Diversity of student population:• different social and cultural backgrounds
Plurality of perspectives, formal distinction:
• different positions historical actors• differences historical actors and readers• different historiographical perspectives
Plurality and diversity
Quebec's History and Citizenship Education curriculum (2007)
Benchmark 'perspective of identity formation' 'All students must develop a sense of who they are relative to other individuals characterized by numerous differences (…).
Taking otherness into account is thus an essential element in identity development. This process enables students to
observe that the diversity of identities is not incompatible
with the sharing of values, such as those related to democracy.'
Plurality and diversity
Jörn Rüsen agrees that different points of view makes sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system
intercultural communication
Plurality and diversity
Hannah Arendt (1961)
'Greeks learned to understand - not to understand one another as individual persons, but to look upon the same world from one another's standpoint, to see the same in very different and frequently opposing aspects.'
Plurality and diversity
The awareness of a plurality of perspectives provides the common ground
This involves a hermeneutic understanding that we should learn all students
The plurality of perspectives enlarges historical understanding, because it opens up reasoned discussion about the interpretation of (contingent) historical facts
Local, national, European and global history
What about the contents of the school-subject?
Because historical facts will be discussed from several viewpoints it will generate a deeper sense of historical reality, be it local, national, European or global history.
Local, national, European and global history
Aim of history education
preparing students for the renewing of a common globalizing world
Local, national, European and global history
Historiana Commonly taught events
Turning dates
Long term develop-ments
Case studies
1 People on the move
2 Human rights
3 Life and leisure
4 War & Peace
WW I 19141918
Global encoun-ters
1917Chinese came to Europe
5 Work and technology
Possible themes
Local, national, European and global history
Flanders Field Museum (April-August 2010)
Exhibition on Chinese workers in World War I
Local, national, European and global history
From 1917 140.000 Chinese workers were brought to the First World War in Europe; 2000 Chinese died
Exhibition is organized in cooperation with the municipal archives of Weihai (China), brings a forgotten chapter back to life.
Heritage: tombs of Chinese, songs, anecdotes
Local, national, European and global history
Thank you
Publications
Maria Grever and Siep Stuurman ed., Beyond the Canon. History for the Twenty-First Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
Maria Grever en Kees Ribbens, National identiteit en meervoudig verleden (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2007).
Maria Grever, Terry Haydn and Kees Ribbens, ‘Identity and School History: the Perspective of Young People from the Netherlands and England’, British Journal of Educational Studies vol. 56 (2008) nr. 1, 76-94.
Maria Grever, 'National pride and prejudice. Teaching history in societies with many nationalities', Canadian Issues (Fall 2008) 44-51.
Maria Grever, 'Fear of plurality. Historical culture and historiographical canonization in Western Europe', in Angelika Epple and Angelika Schaser eds., Gendering historiography: beyond national canons (The University of Chicago Press 2009) 45-62.
See also: http://www.fhk.eur.nl/english/chc/publications/g/