The teaching of “difficult” history: Dilemmas in the enactment of SEL in divided societies

• In Event: What’s love got to do with it? Social and emotional skills in sustaining learning in low-income and post-conflict contexts

Proposal

History teaching in schools is assumed to be relatively easy if the history being taught is consistent with the “everyday history” children and young people bring to school. This “everyday history” like much of the “school history” or “official history” typically taught in school often presents a valorous and positive picture of the people and nation. Typically less positive parts of a nation’s history, aspects that in retrospect contradict the current values and positive self-image of the nation’s people, are downplayed or ignored. Such “difficult history” is indeed difficult to teach, especially in contexts of internal division or conflict. Aspects of a nation’s difficult history may be controversial or contested—there may not be a consensus about what happened. Alternately, a nation may not have come to terms with its difficult past. Teachers may be reluctant to venture into the teaching of difficult history, to avoid conflict in the classroom or criticism of parents or school officials. In many cases, teachers may not know how to introduce difficult topics in the classroom in a pedagogically appropriate way or to deal with conflict productively. This paper considers pedagogies of teaching difficult history, looking across cases at the contexts (including as possible, Germany, South Africa, Rwanda, Canada, U.S., Australia, East Asia, Afghanistan, Bosnia) in which documented attempts were made to teach difficult history, the conditions which favored and inhibited those efforts, and the effects and effectiveness of such initiatives.

Authors

• James H. Williams, George Washington University

• Mady McClay, George Washington University