Why are there contested histories

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Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Who We Are Our Story. About Contested Histories. Why Contested Histories? What we do CHI seeks to learn from these complex and divisive histories to build a world that is more just and equal.

Our Story. Get Involved. Cookies We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent. Cookie Settings Accept All. Manage consent. References: Raimundo Cuesta La venganza de la memoria y las paradojas de la historia.

Salamnaca: Lulu. Revista Perspectiva Educacional, vol. Mistakenly they have been incorporated anonymously with nick "Kant palleiro". I agree that professor Arie Wilschut was expecting other kinds of contributions in the book, mainly to critique the prevalence of national perspectives in history teaching today. But as we can see in the chapters, national history still provides a frame of hard importance as a reference in history teaching.

We, as History teachers, must teach students to think historically about the national past in the schools, especially to break this perennial link; and the best way is to teach future teachers to demystify or demythologize national narratives and learn historical thinking. In fact, if we don't teach future teachers in this way nationalization will remain as the principal role of teaching history at school; anyway banal nationalism Spanish or English gives teaching history at school this function.

Contested histories. London UK : Bloomsbury. Can history be owned by anyone? This would imply that the key to a true understanding of the past would be experiencing a shared identity, which in some mysterious way extends beyond the vicissitudes of time. For the rest, history is publicly owned knowledge open to anyone, regardless of race, sex, creed or ethnicity. However, the collection of essays edited by Robert Guyver in the volume Teaching History and the Changing Nation State shows a strikingly different reality.

If there is one paramount impression after reading them, it is the extent to which history, especially school history, is the plaything of political and ideological forces everywhere in the world, even in the most advanced democratic countries.

The creation of national identities by means of forging stories about the past seems a need so urgently felt by politicians, that there can be no escape from it. This may appear obvious in cases of open conflict, such as the Israeli-Palestinian issue or the conflict between Russia and Ukraine — two of the topics which are dealt with in this volume.

This indicates one of the two bottom lines present throughout the papers collected here. First, the histories taught in schools do not reflect what actually happened in the past, but the current political needs felt by the authorities of a country. Second, the chance of any veracity in the accounts presented about past events is greatest in countries where democracies are more developed: history and democracy are mutually dependent upon each other.

Yet, democracies are not exempt of the idiosyncrasies of political pressure. This is clearly visible from the chapters about the UK and Australia.

Both Putin and Howard strived for a school curriculum capable of enhancing feelings of national pride among students, even if this implied smuggling away certain less favourable elements of the past. The main difference between Australia and Russia is then that in the last case there were no checks and balances, resulting in Putin having his way, while Howard was halted by Australian democratic institutions. Comparing situations in different countries, sometimes within one paper, sometimes between different papers, is one of the hallmarks of this volume.

It must be noted, however, that the volume authors and its editor have not always succeeded in getting the maximum out of these comparisons. In some of the chapters, for example the one about Australia and New Zealand written by the Australian author Tony Taylor and the New Zealand author Mark Sheehan respectively , no effort is made to really compare what is described or even come to joint conclusions.

The analysis is often lacking as authors are caught up in describing the peculiarities of each national situation, taking the existence of national perspectives more or less for granted. The headline? Supreme Court Decided the Presidential Election of In the race between Al Gore and George W. With just a few hundred votes separating the candidates in Florida, the lawsuits and recounts began in full force, including heated disputes over confusing or improperly punched ballots, missing names on voter rolls and multiple requests for ID from minority voters.

Five agonizing weeks after the election, the U. Bush v. Gore may have been the first time in modern history a president was elected despite losing the popular vote, but it wasn't the last. In , businessman and reality TV host Donald Trump defeated former first lady, senator and secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton , even though she received three million more votes than him in the popular vote.

The election was unprecedented in many other ways. Trump, who ran despite never having held elected office, brought unabashed populism to the campaign trail. Trump made frequent headlines with his statements on immigration—he called for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the United States. In June , he said that when Mexico "sends its people, they're not sending their best.

In October , after Trump had accepted the Republican nomination, an audio recording from surfaced of him bragging about sexually assaulting women. Republican officials condemned the comments but did not renounce their support for Trump. Despite trailing Clinton in national polls, Trump won several critical states in the Midwest and Rust Belt, giving him an advantage in the Electoral College.

He was inaugurated on January 20, The day after, upwards of five million people around the country protested his new administration at the Women's March. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!