TLO 3: How Historians Influence the Present and Future

Abstract

TLO 3 requires students to explore the relationship between historians and wider society. In order to achieve this goal in the classroom, teachers can usefully employ concepts and methodologies that have emerged in the field of memory studies. Academic history is a particular type of ‘collective memory’. The history classroom, and the texts that are written by historians, are sites where collective memory is negotiated and contested. Moreover, the production and teaching of academic history are inherently political because the organisation of knowledge about the past always has implications for the distribution of power in the present and future. Using these concepts as a starting point, this chapter recommends five classroom activities which can help students to improve their understanding of the nexus between historians and society. All five activities are illustrated with examples drawn from the history of World War II in Europe, but they could all be adapted to the teaching of any period of the history of any continent.