Remember lest we forget: the link between long-term memory and narrative, empathy and previous knowledge in Israel

Abstract

ABSTRACT One of the most demanding challenges teachers and educators face is the need to engage their students with ‘difficult knowledge’ topics. The need to unwrap controversial issues that are the subject of cultural or historical debate, without oversimplifying them, making them accessible and their morals apparent, all while committing them to memory, is an ongoing challenge for most pedagogical approaches. How to teach difficult knowledge in the classroom, especially the topic of the Holocaust, is a question that all educators in Israel face during their career. A common teaching tool is the use of film in both first and third-person narrative. Focused on the effect of narrative perspective in the teaching of difficult knowledge, this article examines the effect of first-person and third-person narrative in film on both short- and long-term memory among a cohort of students enrolled at a college of education in Israel. It also seeks to provide news insights into this issue by looking at the connection between empathy, previous knowledge, and perspective taking.