Histoire et education civique, meme combat? Des ambitions aux realites quotidiennes
School history and civics together? From ambition to everyday realities
- Histoire et education civique, meme combat? Des ambitions aux realites quotidiennes
- In France, since its beginning, school history is linked with civic education, in order to develop a shared culture, common values, and, together, sense of proportion and critical mind. But most of teenagers seem remember only snatches of knowledge, and the main shared memories are common sense assertions, or better "social representations", useful in our society, as myth for example, but giving more or less a misshapen view of the past. This may be not only the result of memorising process, but an effect of school teaching. Furthermore, the young students learn more to recognise the teacher's authority and to reproduce normative knowledge than to think, to examine critically, and to argue. The values are very discreet in the history lessons, which are thought to be objective reports of historical truth. When mentioned, they are not the ones valid in the past, but the nowadays democratic ones. So the aim of educating the young citizens through school history is not so clearly reached,In France, since its beginning, school history is linked with civic education, in order to develop a shared culture, common values, and, together, sense of proportion and critical mind. But most of teenagers seem remember only snatches of knowledge, and the main shared memories are common sense assertions, or better "social representations", useful in our society, as myth for example, but giving more or less a misshapen view of the past. This may be not only the result of memorising process, but an effect of school teaching. Furthermore, the young students learn more to recognise the teacher's authority and to reproduce normative knowledge than to think, to examine critically, and to argue. The values are very discreet in the history lessons, which are thought to be objective reports of historical truth. When mentioned, they are not the ones valid in the past, but the nowadays democratic ones. So the aim of educating the young citizens through school history is not so clearly reached, and may be contradictory with the usual way to teach history.…
