"It Was Like We Were Not Even There": Pastness as Position in the Teaching and Learning of History

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching the Past and Past Teaching: History and STEM as Sites of Curricular Intervention (Table 18)

Abstract

Curriculum is not neutral; nor are the vantage points from which we apprehend the past. This paper explores the racialized narratives of US history produced in classroom and other educative settings. Amid current debates over what version of US history should be taught, this analysis aims to uncover some of the ways that inattention to accurate renderings of the nation’s history of racialized violence and inequality can permeate educational spaces. I ask what might happen if we attempted to see the past – “pastness” – as “a position” rather than as distant, neutral and completed actions. What might this shift in how we view the past and our relation to it entail for the teaching and learning of history?

Author

• Beth C. Rubin, Teachers College, Columbia University