Mapping the Historical Consciousness of 7th Graders.

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
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 7^th 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.

“Because, although I don't know much about it now, I really want to know more about my family.”

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey,
PhD Candidate
University of New Brunswick (Fredericton)

After 15 adventuresome weeks of classroom fieldwork, I am nearing the end of the data collection phase of my research. It’s been an invigorating experience, working with a group of 5 community history museum volunteers, as well as 24 grade seven students, and their teacher, to explore how a heritage community can assist middle school students in deepening their historical consciousness. By “deepening”, of course, I am referring to Jörn Rüsen’s (1993, 2004) typology of historical consciousness—in particular, what Rüsen has labeled as a “genetic” sense of how we know what we [think we] know, and how this relates to our temporal relationship with the past.

Through my research, I am particularly interested in exploring how 12 - 13 year-olds perceive the concept of “truth” in history; and in turn, how they may be empowered to reach their own understandings about the past, using museum collections as tools for historical thinking. As a result, I have adopted a phenomenological single case study design (Yin, 2009) that is bounded by time, as well as by the formal arrangement of a seventh-grade classroom, and a specific community history museum fieldwork experience.

In this blog entry, it is not my intention to discuss the details of the fieldwork experience. Instead, I’d like to reveal to you a little bit about the importance my students place upon the past.

At the outset of developing my research design, I pondered whether this particular case study could be considered “typical” or “exceptional” of other Canadians. As Bent Flyvberg (2001) has asserted, both breadth and depth are necessary elements of research (p. 87). Hence, Flyvberg has argued, both are equally valuable, because both work hand in hand “for a sound development of social science” (p. 87). Since I have found this argument to be very compelling, when developing my research design, I turned to the well-known national survey Canadians and Their Pasts to establish breadth against which I could compare my case study of seventh-graders.

Launched in 2006 (with data collection completed in 2011), Canadians and Their Pasts, represents an elaborate alliance of 7 academic researchers, 19 collaborators, 6 universities, and 15 community partners, for the purpose of “exploring the role that history plays in the lives of Canadian citizens” (Canadians and Their Pasts, 2012). In the subsequent survey, participants were asked questions designed to: 1) measure levels of general interest in the past; 2) identify activities participants engage in that relate to the past; 3) probe how these activities aid in their understanding of the past; 4) measure the perceived trustworthiness of specific sources of information; 5) probe the relative importance of various pasts; and 6) identify participants’ individual sense(s) of the past (Conrad et al., 2007; Muise, 2008). The resulting data provides a rich profile about what adult Canadians (18 years and older) think about the past, and the role of specific sources of information in shaping their thinking.

Adopting the exact same set of survey questions as Canadians and Their Pasts, I began my phenomenological case study in January, by administering these questions to all of the case study participants. For the purposes of this blog entry, I will limit my discussion to items 1 and 5 of the original survey. Let me tell you a little bit about my seventh-graders…

With regard to interest in history, the largest majority (63%) of the 12 - 13 year-olds reported that they are somewhat interested in history. This figure is slightly above Canada’s national adult average of 50% (Conrad et al, 2010), which might suggest that more than most of the students occupy the ambiguous position of having a budding interest in history (that perhaps could just as easily be nurtured or squashed at this point in their education). It is also interesting to note that by contrast, only 18% are very interested in history. This figure places my students well below the national adult average of 34%.

With regard to the relative importance of various pasts, an overwhelming majority (69%) of the 12-13 year-olds reported that the past of their family is most important to them. This is distantly followed by the past of their country Canada (10%), and their ethnic or cultural group (7%). Students’ explanations for placing such an importance upon family past ranged from such reasoning as “Because I love my family”; to “Because I want to follow them…”; and “Because, although I don't know much about it now, I really want to know more…”. These survey figures, while slightly higher than the national adult Canadian average, are not significantly different, since 54.5 % of Canadians also place the past of their family as most important to them; while the past of their country Canada (6.5%), as well as that of their ethnic or cultural group (6.5%), remain equally lower than the student average. Interestingly, what sets my students apart from other Canadians, however, is that none of these individuals (0%, versus a national average of 3.5%) considered the past of their province as important. They also did not seem to possess any concept of a regional identity.

As to how these findings relate to historical consciousness is another discussion for another day. Also of note is how my students perceive “truth” and complexity within history. In the interest of providing you with a little carrot… preliminary findings certainly suggest that, like many Canadians, these students believe that museums will present them with the truth about what happened in the past… But such discussions must wait for another day. Currently, I am looking forward to conducting a post-survey with the students, to see how their perceptions of history and the past may (or may not) have changed as a result of the experience of doing historical thinking with a museum collection.

Les Acadiens et leurs passées - Jeanne Mance Cormier et Hélène Savoie - Musée acadien de l'Université de Moncton - le 20 janvier 2011

Les Acadiens et leurs passées - Jeanne Mance Cormier et Hélène Savoie - Musée acadien de l'Université de Moncton - le 20 janvier 2011

“What might it mean to live our lives as if the lives of others truly mattered?”

by Cynthia Wallace-Casey
PhD Student, University of New Brunswick

“What might it mean to live our lives as if the lives of others truly mattered”? This is the question that Roger Simon poses in his discourse on the pedagogical significance of remembrance-learning. His response: if the lives of others truly matter, then we should accept the memories of others as counsel and learn from them. Memory and remembrance provide the framework by which individuals have the ability to re-experience the past through the lives of others. Although highly transient in nature, memory and remembrance are the triggers that allow us to make connections between the past, present and future.

Engaging with the past is a profoundly personal experience that is driven by memory. Be it personal, collective or historical, each of us finds our sense of identity by (to borrow the words of Robert R. Archibald) “connecting the dots” between ourselves and others across time. In this way, we are able to make sense of the events that happen in our lives or in the lives of others.

Preliminary research findings from the national survey project Canadians and Their Pasts confirm that a vast majority of Canadians engage in the past as part of living their daily lives. As with similar findings in the United States and Australia, Canadians do this in a variety of ways, but activities that relate to the collective memory of families are considered most important. In explaining why family history is so significant to Canadians, most speak about issues of identity: “it identifies who I am, gives me an idea of where I come from, where I am going”. Such early findings confirm that Canadians possess a deep connection to their past – provided that it is encountered through the people who mean the most to them: the family unit, culture group, or nation to which they closely associate.

In his thoughtful publication about returning home, entitled A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community, public historian Robert R. Archibald addresses many of these same memory connections. Returning to his boyhood home of Ishpeming, Michigan, Archibald wanted to use his own memory as a “personal historical experiment”; to explore relationships between place, memory, identity and community. In the places of his youth, Archibald re-remembered his past and learned a great deal about himself:

Here I cannot escape my present or past self. Here my own aging is apparent and I mourn my very own lost boy. And here I assess the proud successes and dismal failures of my own life. (15)

Archibald found that his personal memory was sparked by certain locales – a particular sight, sound, smell or sensation – and some of these memory triggers were unique to him alone. Walking and reminiscing with his sister Anne, for example, Archibald witnessed the power of memory and the experience of historical perspective in real life:

As Anne and I walk in the midst of these memory places and as we recollect with each other, we find noncongruent memories. First there are events and places that Anne remembers and insists that I must also, but I just do not; and vice versa. Then there are points where we agree that something took place but each of us has remembered or interpreted it very differently. We agree to not agree… (41)

But there were also times when Archibald’s personal memories shared a common thread with others in the community. Such memories (associated with locations or events that touched the lives of many) were not unique to Archibald, and were thus part of a collective memory. Some of these locations, such as the community’s landmark hotel (the Mather Inn), serve as memory anchors for many individuals, including the author:

… as the site of major events… combined with thousands of shared memories of proms, parties, visiting friends and relatives, dinners, and receptions, as well as more private memories of honeymoons, meetings, and partings, this building is a repository of civic memory that accords it a community-wide significance. (33-34)

Other landmarks, however, were shared by others who were not part of Archibald’s own collective memory nor collective group. Within the city of St. Louis, for example, where Robert Archibald is currently President of the Missouri Historical Society, the Homer G. Phillips Hospital, located in the center of St Louis’ historic African-American neighborhood, serves as a collective memory site for the African-American community of St. Louis:

… a place of nativity, a hall of hope, a promise broken, a place defiled, a legacy lost, a future imperiled. (12)

Both the Mather Inn and Phillips Hospital are equally significant to communities who extract their shared identity from these sites; the latter, however, is even more significant than the former, since it serves as witness to a community that (in the past) was excluded from the powerbase of the former. By preserving a landmark such as the Phillips Hospital, the community of St. Louis is reconciling historical memory (factual evidence that St. Louis’ African-American community truly did exist and contributed to the economic development of the city) with collective memory (concepts and remembrances held true by those who are still living). Such reconciliation of memory could provide a context for what Roger Simon describes as “remembrance-learning” – that is to say, not just representing the past as a foreign relic, but bringing the past into the present: finding counsel in the remembrances of others, relating this to the present, and learning from it.

To “live our lives as if the lives of others truly mattered” is to find counsel in the memories of others and in so-doing learn from the past. Such a prospect requires an acceptance of what Jörn Rüsen describes as “otherness” – either the otherness of another culture or the otherness of another space in time. Roger Simon describes such an encounter with otherness as “historiographic poetics” – the juxtaposition of differing points of view or remembrances – and he presents this as a pedagogical strategy for bringing the past into the present, drawing out personal meaning, and enabling societal re-generation through empathy and reconciliation.

Interview with Dr. Margaret Conrad, OC, FRSC - August 31, 2010

Interview with Dr. Margaret Conrad, OC, FRSC - August 31, 2010

Sharing her thoughts on Atlantic Canadians and their pasts...