The goal of the good historian
is to find out and explain what really happened in the past. But
not everyone who uses the past has such noble ambitions. What
makes historians special users of the past is that they alone
are concerned with making sense of the past, simply for the sake
of making sense of the past. History is the study of the past in
itself, for itself. David Lowenthal makes a useful distinction
in this respect in that, if the user of the past is using the
past for present day purposes – whether positive, benign or
harmful – then what they are doing is not history, but rather
‘heritage’.
‘‘The past can be used for
almost anything you want to do in the present. We abuse it when
we create lies about the past or write histories that show only
one perspective’ Margaret Macmillan
...heritage is
not history at all; while it borrows from and
enlivens historical study, heritage is not an
inquiry into past but a celebration of it, not
an effort to know what actually happened but a
profession of faith in a past tailored to
present day purposes.’ David Lowenthal
Never has our interest in
heritage and our ‘profession of faith in the past’, been as
fanatical as it is at the start of the 21st century.
The past provides stability and certainly in a time of
unprecedented social and cultural change: the past is
everywhere: on dedicated television channels and in hundreds of
successful Hollywood films, heritage sites, folklore
celebrations, glossy magazines, bestselling novels and nostalgic
commercial adverts (see below).
They may borrow from history and may
even be produced by historians, but heritage shares a common
non-historical, present orientated purpose: they use the
past to entertain, to inspire, to engage, to provide identity
and to sell to us, in the here and now.
What is so attractive about
the past that makes us want to buy into it?
Heritage: reworking the past to sell in the present
Because the past is central to
our emotional sense of identity, the state has always sought to
control how we interpret the past through, for example, national
memorials, public holidays and the teaching of history in
schools. As Arthur Marwick once explained, ‘As memory is to the
individual, so history is to the community’.
A shared sense of the past is central to our national identity,
because the nation is in Benedict Anderson’s memorable phrase ‘an imagined
community’.
But it is also an exclusive community; national ‘history’ is
our history often defined in terms of opposition to those
outside the national group. Only historians stand in the way of
those who use the past as part of a patriotic agenda, because
historians have the means and interest in exposing partiality
and challenging the myths that often constitute the national
story.
The Texas school
book controversy 2010
Good history,
therefore, is one in which the historian is ‘open about their
closures’; consciously aware of their present orientated
prejudices, both cultural and personal but determined to remove
this from all aspects of their work.
Student activity –
School history text-books
School history has a clear present
orientated function, if it didn’t, I wouldn’t be
paid to do what I do. But as an international
school history teacher the one question I am
always asked is ‘whose history do you teach? ’IB
history if different to most national history as
one of the key aims of the IB history curriculum
is ‘The international perspective in Diploma
Programme history provides a sound platform for
the promotion of international understanding
and, inherently, the intercultural awareness
necessary to prepare students for global
citizenship.’
In many parts of the world, the content of the
history curriculum and writing of history text
books is a carefully controlled, politically
sensitive operation. For example, recent
controversies over history textbooks in Japan
and Turkey became significant diplomatic
incidents. In contrast, in 2006, wartime enemies
France and Germany brought out a common textbook
written by authors from both countries and used
in schools in both countries at the equivalent
of IB Diploma level.
• Research the textbook controversies in Japan
and Turkey. What made the textbooks so
contentious?
• Have you or any friends had experience of a
national history curriculum? Perhaps you still
have a textbook you can bring in to class? From
your own experience consider history topics that
are common or compulsory in your national
curriculum, but unlikely to be found in a
textbook of a neighbouring country.
(Above) South
Korean protesters in 2005
demonstration over Japanese textbooks.
