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What does it mean to think historically?
Do we see the past as an unchanging entity,
standing alone through the annals of time?
Or are we constantly re-interpreting it through the prisms of the present?
At what point should history be understood on its own terms, within its own context?
When Rousseau said ‘man is born free but everywhere in chains’, he could easily have been referring to
the mental prejudices that we bring to the table when thinking about the past.
As long as there is history, different interpretations will exist.
There will be conflicting interpretations on crucial historical events.
Two roads open:
a lawless road where each person...
tries to impose on the other
their own narrative,
and the road of broad consultation
in societies which have the maturity to realise,
that there are things which divide us, but many things which unite us.
In places with ethnic, religious or different types of conflict,
history education becomes an organic part of the conflict
and it’s the case in Cyprus.
We need to find alternative approaches to change this.
Supposedly, this is a place obsessed with history but…
there’s a scarcity of research on historical understanding amongst children,
and in my mind this is kind of a paradox.
If you want to teach history effectively
why not start from how are children thinking
and what can we do to enable them, to think in more historical ways.
The most crucial role is perhaps not that of the school
or history lesson.
It’s the public dimension of history.
We are under the illusion that...
what’s being formed in the historical consciousness of pupils,
has to do exclusively with school textbooks.
This is not true, all the studies show it.
From the first moments of a child’s socialization, the child forms ideological structures.
They go to school armed with ideological structures which they are not even aware of.
To think that really, everything is learnt,
or the majority is learnt, of what is written down in curricula and in textbooks,
is a very bad mistake.
We know, meanwhile, very well from empirical studies,
that often the textbooks are not understood, even if they are read.
You can use the most nationalist textbook as a masterpiece of critical thinking.
You can show your students and encourage them not to memorise,
and believe in everything told to them and what is in the textbook,
to be able to think, evaluate the facts,
have a multiple perspective approach, and always inquire..
That is why I speak of a more general, collective process of self-knowledge,
where certainly the educator plays a key role.
But one who is aware of the science of his profession.
Not an educator who operates as a conveyor belt for some ideology.
An educator who will operate as an active intellectual,
not just recycling official knowledge but also creating knowledge.
A first of it's kind study on the perceptions of history teachers from both sides of the divide,
highlighted the common needs of educators across the island.
A lot of people actually say that we don’t feel comfortable teaching,
after we finish our undergraduate studies, to teach history.
So, they want in-service training,
They’re very dissatisfied with the current history textbooks,
the majority in both communities.
So there is, I think, a great need for educational reform,
of the curriculum of history teaching, not only of just changing the content of a textbook,
but the methodology and the orientation of the educational system.
It’s really important, the role of dialogue, the role of...
dialogue in interpreting a source, of listening to what other people say,
of taking that on board, considering it, maybe agreeing with or not.
It’s really important that you are able to say why you think what you think,
that you can listen to others, possibly change your view,
and at this really very elementary stage, begin to learn that there are maybe lots of answers.
Sometimes we don’t know, there maybe more than one answer.
In the UK, we’ve avoided certain things and we still avoid them.
We avoid guilt from the Second World War because...
Britain was responsible for a very major war crime,
in terms of the nature of the bombing campaign.
And that is not fully admitted, people have not faced up to that as yet,
but we’re going to have to face up to it at some point,
and voices are starting to be heard.
Here’s the issue, if you let specific historical experiences have dominance over the present and future,
then you close down the channels of communication and the potential for open, democratic dialogue,
that allow for mutual understanding and recognition of differences.
If you want a future,
then this future will be a common future.
Any idea that we will be deeply separated and isolated from each other,
from now to the last judgement
is not really intelligent.
And this is where the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research comes in,
approaching consensus on how to see the past in a more dispassionate way.
The very methods we use to teach and learn history,
can give us the tools to understand the past in a substantive way.
Of course, we're not saying that political
or national history should not be taught.
However, this does not mean that it should be taught
in a nationalist, racist way to exclude and alienate the other.
Presenting students with multiple perspectives,
showing that there could be different points of view,
aims at developing their thinking skills
and showing them that there are different historical constructs and perspectives.