Deanna Troi and the Tardis: Does Historical Empathy have a Place in Education?

Abstract

Abstract This paper attempts to challenge objections regarding the place of historical empathy in education which are related to ideas of empathy as identification, sympathy and imagination. Drawing from literature within the areas of history education, philosophy of history and philosophy of mind, the paper argues for the impossibility and incompatibility of these notions in relation to historical empathy. It also discuss what is involved in understanding past behaviour and briefly suggests key issues that should be taken into consideration when teaching towards the development of ideas of historical empathy. Keywords Historical Empathy, Identification, Sympathy, Imagination, Understanding past behaviour Introduction What happened in the past is related to human behaviour which was guided by certain ideas, beliefs and intentions. In this sense, understanding why people in the past acted the way they did, means that we need to understand these ideas, beliefs and intentions. We also need to understand the way they viewed their world and the historical context in which they were situated. In the case of history education, we cannot claim to develop our students’ historical thinking without helping them to understand people in the past. This kind of understanding in history education was given the label historical empathy, originally in the UK, mainly due to its adoption by the Schools Council History 13- 16 Project (Lee and Shemilt, 2011; Lee and Ashby, 2001). Since then, the concept has been one of the most contested aspects of history education. Much of the criticism is related to the kind of mental act that historical empathy is supposed to be. Teaching methods related to historical empathy (such as role play and simulation) have been accused of as being low quality and promoting an unhistorical approach by letting students imagine themselves in the past (Harris and Foreman-Peck, 2004). Historical empathy has also been attacked as being a complex and vague concept which promotes ‘generalised sentimentality’ (Deuchar, 1987, p. 15 cited in Harris and Foreman-Peck, 2004). Finally, some explicitly questions its place in education claiming that the concept ‘belongs within the affective rather than the cognitive domain of knowledge’ (Low-Beer, 1989, p. 8) and is therefore problematic in terms of teaching and assessment. In this paper, I argue that the above objections are mainly due to a problematic association of historical empathy with impossible tasks. Tasks which resemble the abilities of Deanna Troi and require the use of a TARDIS.