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Negotiating historical distance: Or, how to deal with the past as a foreign country in heritage education

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 48; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230.2012.709527

1477-674X

María Grever, Pieter de Bruijn, Carla van Boxtel,

Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation

Abstract The current heritage fascination signals the omnipresence of the Present. Recently it has spawned a distinct type of teaching and learning: heritage education. In this article we argue that, despite its presentist connotations, heritage education offers interesting opportunities for understanding the foreignness of the past, a precondition for historical thinking. We examine how heritage education negotiates historical distance from affective, moral and epistemological perspectives. A comparison of two exhibitions on transatlantic slavery and some of their educational resources reveals distinctive constructions of historical distance. The Dutch NiNsee exhibition Child in Chains carries a strong affective and moral perspective through a bridging technique of rhyming. These perspectives can be adopted in assignments that discuss the synchronically compared contexts of past and present. The Atlantic Worlds gallery of the English National Maritime Museum constructs a more complex narrative with little reference to the present. Here students' sense of the historical comes from the physical experience of authentic objects on display; some educational activities emphasise an epistemological perspective, allowing students to unravel the narrative plot. Precisely the performative dimension of heritage can challenge students in heritage education settings to make them aware of the dialectics of the pastness of the past and its inevitable presentness. Keywords: heritage educationhistorical distancepresentexperiencehistorical thinking Notes 1David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Kevin Walsh coined the term "heritagization" concerning urban regeneration in The Representation of the Past: Museum and Heritage in the Post-modern World (London: Routledge, 1992), 135; Maria Grever, "Presentism and historical distance: Or how to deal with the past as a foreign country in heritage education" (lecture, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, 18 August 2010). 2Robert Phillips, "Government policies, the state and the teaching of history", in James Arthur and Robert Phillips, eds. Issues in History Teaching (London: Routledge, 2000), 10–23. 3For various viewpoints, see Kaat Wils, "Geschiedenisonderwijs en erfgoed: een terreinverkenning", Hermes 14, No. 47 (2010): 1–6; and Carla van Boxtel, Stephan Klein and Ellen Snoep, eds., Heritage Education: Challenges in Dealing with the Past (Amsterdam: Erfgoed Nederland, 2011). 4J. Tunbridge and G.J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (Chichester: Wiley, 1996). 5David Lowenthal, "Heritage and history: Rivals and partners in Europe", in Rob van der Laarse, ed. Bezeten van vroeger: Erfgoed, identiteit en musealisering (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 2005), 29–39, 29. 6This article is part of the NWO research programme Heritage Education, Plurality of Narratives, and Shared Historical Knowledge, conducted at Erasmus University Rotterdam by Maria Grever, Carla van Boxtel, Stephan Klein, Pieter de Bruijn and Geerte Savenije. See www.heritageeducation.nl. 7Lynn Fendler, "The upside of presentism", Paedagogica Historica 44, No. 6 (2008): 677–690, 678, 681. 8Sam Wineburg, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001), 12. 9"Historical distance: Reflections on a metaphor", special issue, History and Theory 50, No. 4 (2011). See also Marc S. Phillips, "Distance and historical representation", History Workshop Journal 57 (2004): 123–141. 10For an elaboration of these concepts, see the introduction in Maria Grever and Harry Jansen, eds., De ongrijpbare tijd: Temporaliteit en de constructie van het verleden (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), 7–16. 11François Hartog, "Time and heritage", Museum International 57, No. 3 (2005): 7–18, 14. 12Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz, "National history writing in Europe in a global age", introduction in Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz, eds. The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–23, 19. 13Jerome de Groot, Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Culture (London: Routledge, 2009). 14Niek van Sas, "Towards a new national history: Lieux de Mémoire and other theaters of memory", in Joep Leerssen and Ann Rigney, eds. Historians and Social Values (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2000), 169–184. 15Charlotte Tacke, Denkmal im sozialen Raum: Nationale Symbole in Deutschland und Frankreich im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995); Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women and Historical Practice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); 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 (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2009), 45–62. 16John Willinsky, Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 115–134. 17De Groot, Consuming History, 11–13; Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney, eds. Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 3. 18Peter Seixas, "Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting", Curriculum Inquiry 23, No. 3 (1993): 301–327; Maria Grever, Ben Pelzer and Terry Haydn, "High school students' views on history", Journal of Curriculum Studies 43, No. 2 (2011): 207–229. 19A pioneer in the Dutch context is Leo Dalhuisen. See his article "Structuurbegrippen voor het schoolvak geschiedenis: Inleving, standplaatsgebondenheid", Geschiedenis in de klas 13, No. 39 (1993): 29–40. For a recent review on historical thinking and reasoning, see Jannet van Drie and Carla van Boxtel, "Historical reasoning: Towards a framework for analyzing students' reasoning about the past", Educational Psychology Review 20, No. 2 (2008): 87–110. 20 Take Historical Perspectives, in Peter Seixas, "Scaling Up" the Benchmarks of Historical Thinking. The Vancouver Meetings, February 14–15, 2008 (Vancouver: CSHC, 2008), 2, 10. 21Maria Grever and Siep Stuurman, eds., Beyond the Canon: History for the Twenty-first Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 1–16. 22Lynda Symcox and Arie Wilschut, eds., National History Standards: The Problem of the Canon and the Future of Teaching History (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2009); Carla van Boxtel and Maria Grever, "Between disenchantment and high expectations: History education in the Netherlands, 1968–2008", in Elisabeth Erdmann and Wolfgang Hasberg, eds. Facing, Mapping, Bridging Diversity: Foundation of a European Discourse on History Education (Schwalbach: Wochenschau Verlag, 2011), 2: 83–116. 23Van Boxtel and Grever, "Between Disenchantment and High Expectations", 102. 24 Entoen.nu: De canon van Nederland deel B (Den Haag: Ministerie van OCW, 2006). The website provides for every topic reference to "tangible traces". See http://entoen.nu. 25Frans Grijzenhout, "Introduction", in Frans Grijzenhout, ed. Erfgoed: De geschiedenis van een begrip (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007), 1–20, 12. 26Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels, "Value and significance in archaeology", Archaeological Dialogues 15, No. 1 (2008): 71–97. 27For instance, G.J. Ashworth, Brian Graham and J.E. Tunbridge, Pluralising Pasts: Heritage, Identity and Place in Multicultural Societies (London: Pluto Press, 2007); Willem Frijhoff, Dynamisch erfgoed (Amsterdam: SUN, 2007). 28Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006), 3. 29Rob van der Laarse, "Erfgoed en de constructie van vroeger", in Bezeten van vroeger, 1–28, 10. 30Hartog, "Time and Heritage", 13–14. 31Erfgoed Nederland, Nieuwsbrief Educatie, 12 (2007). 32Ibid, "Canonkaravaan van start", news release, 15 November 2007. 33Eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 14–16. 34 www.noordhollandsarchief.org/canon–van–haarlem/canon–van–haarlem/85/385. 35 www.regiocanons.nl/noord–holland/west–friesland. On this issue, see Heleen van Londen, "Cultural biography and the power of image", in Wim van der Knaap and Arnold van der Valk, eds. Multiple Landscape: Merging Past and Present (Wageningen: Wageningen University, 2006), 171–181. 36For a theoretical framework to analyse historical distance in educational practices, see Stephan Klein, Maria Grever and Carla van Boxtel, "Zie, denk, voel, vraag, spreek, hoor en verwonder: Afstand en nabijheid in geschiedenisonderwijs en erfgoededucatie in Nederland", Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis 124, No. 3 (2011): 380–395. 37Grever, "Fear of plurality"; Smith, The Gender of History. 38P.B.M. Blaas, Continuity and Anachronism: Parliamentary and Constitutional Development in Whig Historiography and in the Anti-Whig Reaction between 1890 and 1930 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), xi. 39Jo Tollebeek and Tom Verschaffel, De vreugden van Houssaye: Apologie van de historische interesse (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1992). 40Phillips, "Distance and historical representation", 125. 41Frank van Vree, "Beleef het verleden! De enscenering van de historische ervaring in de populaire cultuur", Groniek 180 (2008): 277. 42David Lowenthal, "Fabricating heritage", History and Memory 10, No. 1 (1998): 5–24. 43Dolly Verhoeven and Marc Wingens, Geschiedenis van Gelderland: De canon van het Gelders verleden (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2010), 206. See also www.regiocanons.nl/gelderland/gelderland. 44The analysis is based on the research project of Pieter de Bruijn, Engaging Heritage: Constructions of Historical Distance in English and Dutch Educational Resources. See www.heritageeducation.nl. 45Zerubavel, Time Maps, 25. 46Ibid, 45. 47Ibid, 18–19. 48Ibid, 43. 49Seixas, "Scaling Up" the Benchmarks of Historical Thinking, 11. 50Johan Huizinga, "Het aesthetisch bestanddeel der geschiedkundige voorstellingen", in Johan Huizinga, Verzamelde werken, vol. VII (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1950), 69–73. 51Jo Tollebeek, De toga van Fruin: Denken over geschiedenis in Nederland sinds 1860 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1990), 219–221, 233. 52Frank Ankersmit, "Can we experience the past?", in Rolf Torstendahl and Irmline Veit-Brause, eds. History-making: The Intellectual and Social Formation of a Discipline (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1996), 47–76, 72–73. For an elaboration of the "sublime historical experience", see Frank Ankersmit, De sublieme historische ervaring (Groningen: Historische Uitgeverij, 2007). 53Ankersmit, "Can we experience the past?", 69. See also Siep Stuurman, De uitvinding van de mensheid: Korte wereldgeschiedenis van het denken over gelijkheid en cultuurverschil (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2010), 30. 54Ankersmit, De sublieme historische ervaring, 274. 55See on this issue, Siân Jones, "Negotiating authentic objects and authentic selves: Beyond the deconstruction of authenticity", Journal of Material Culture 15, No. 2 (2010): 181–203. 56Fendler, "The upside of presentism", 679. 57François Hartog, "Time, history and the writing of history: The order of time", in. R. Thorstendahl and I. Veit-Brause, History-making, 85–113, 111.