PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick
(Fredericton)
At the risk of self-promotion, I would like to draw your attention to a research note that has just been published in the Journal of New Brunswick Studies. As a graduate student who has devoted the past 5 years to exploring the phenomenon of historical consciousness, I am (needless-to-say) thrilled and honoured to see a small piece of my research published in a scholarly journal.
All this
aside, the findings also warrant further discussion, since they provide an
intriguing glimpse into an age group less commonly discussed in conversations
around historical consciousness and historical thinking in Canada. The data was
collected as part of a pre-survey that expanded upon the Canadians and their Pasts (2013) investigation with an entire class
of Anglophone 7th graders. In
working with this group of students, I had the privilege of learning a little
bit more about their relationship with the past, and the narratives that they
carry. Over a period of 15 weeks, we worked together to explore a material
history framework for historical thinking in museums, which served as a
cultural tool for deepening students’ historical consciousness.
As Stéphane Levesque (2014) has pointed out, “the study of historical consciousness makes
it possible to understand how people use
the past.” For the students participating in this inquiry, it was evident that
they initially used the past to
situate themselves within a Canada narrative of privilege and war. These “broad
pictures” for remembering represented common themes that (just as Levesque has indicated) served
as “backdrops” for acquiring new knowledge. For these students, their themes of
privilege and war were predominantly optimistic.
In somewhat contradiction to this optimism, however, many
of the students paralleled this schema with more pessimistic perceptions about
change over time. In this regard the students were very unlike adult samplings
in the larger Canadians and Their Pasts
study. Hence, rather than perceiving things as getting better over time, nearly
half (42%) of the students recognised progression as a contradiction. For these
students, while technology had made life easier, the resulting pollution and
conflict had also made life worse. In this sense, students’ narratives of
privilege seemed to be somewhat at odds with their beliefs in change over time.
