The US government under Donald Trump wants to make history teaching – under the pretext of abolishing ideology via an Executive Order– once again an ideological celebration of its own greatness and the glory of its own, purely white nation:
This not only means a politically motivated distortion of history itself and presumably a serious encroachment on the freedom of scientific historical research, but also a disregard for all the findings of historical didactic research and development. In particular, it may also be a state-prescribed renunciation of one of the central concepts of history teaching in recent decades, namely the ability to think independently – and necessarily critically – as the central goal of learning history at school.
That such independent critical thinking is necessary not only in the domain of history, in view of the alterity of past life-worlds and ways of thinking, but that it is also a core concern in view of the changed communication structures (“digitality”) and the associated contact of everyone with unfiltered assertions (to a certain extent as a “price” for improved access to the “market of opinions” with one’s own statements) is also necessary in general as a competence for members of modern societies has been the central topic of Sam Wineburg at Stanford in recent years.
But Trump’s executive order makes it clear that, when it comes to history, there is and must be more at stake than overcoming a tendency, real or imagined, that we all have to view the past through modern eyes (“presentism”). Historical thinking consists of more than taking the past seriously as belonging to a different time and culture and being able to recognize and think about it with the help of primary sources.
History is not (only) the exotic, strange and therefore incomprehensible, daunting or interesting past, but rather the access to this past that takes place out of a present interest and works with present questions and concepts, and the processing of its knowledge. The knowledge of its otherness and its connection to other times, the present and the possible future for the purpose of one’s own or someone else’s orientation. This insight only seemingly contradicts Wineburg’s quoted concern, namely only if in such access to the past, the present, the today’s as well as socially, culturally, and politically own conceptions would be set absolutely. But that would be precisely a non-critical historical thinking. Such historical thinking is critical, reflective and reflexive when it does not absolutize the past or its own and subordinates the other “pole” to it, but when the past is considered in the light of the present, but then in the light of the recognized past and its connections. This process is called sense-making (Jörn Rüsen). Historical thinking aims to make sense of the connections between human (and natural) conditions, states, actions, developments, etc., located at different times, in order to orient us today. Such enabling sense is neither found in the past as pre-formed nor imposed on it from the present. Rather, such meaning becomes capable of orientation when it is approached in the form of interests, questions, hypotheses, concepts, etc. to the data of the past, in contact with them, in the recognition of the past as the past, is changed and sharpened. This is the process of historical thinking in its synthetic, re-constructive mode. It results in historical narratives of very different kinds and media presence – from short statements in which the different points in time may only appear implicitly (“then it was like that” implies that today it is different or the same, but that both are worth mentioning and probably also open to some kind of explanation), in short reports, to extensive presentations. It is the nature of such historical statements that they – precisely as constructions of meaning over time – make a claim to validity, because unlike, for example, fictional stories, their very basis is that they refer to an actual past. Their relevance and concrete significance do not arise from the fact that what is narrated in them in a meaningful and orienting way seems plausible as a thought, but that it refers to an actual past.
Our world is full of such historical statements – statements and stories of very different quality. They are each told from specific, particular points of view and perspectives and with equally particular interests, but they are not necessarily bound to be orienting only for their authors – on the contrary: the vast majority of stories make a well-founded claim to validity that extends beyond the respective author’s own perspective. This is connected with assertions of relevance and significance that must be honored. And it is by no means a binary question of for whom such a story can be relevant and orienting – whether only for its author or for “everyone”. No, in such stories very different statements are made about who (which “we”) they are supposed to apply to and who the respective counterpart (an “you” or also a “they, the others”) is. Similarly, norms and values are incorporated into such stories, the validity of which can either only be asserted or justified. The same applies to a whole range of other elements of history – images of humanity and the world, explanatory models, etc.
Moreover, all these facets can be related to all temporal levels of history – and in no way uniformly. Whether and how, for example, a stable historical depth dimension is constructed to link authors and addressees to the present “we” (e.g. “our ancestors”), whether the two are opposed to each other (“then enemies – now together”), whether and to what extent present and past norms and values are presented as the same or as having changed, whether, for example, the past is narrated as fortunately overcome, as the basis of a positively evaluated development, as unfortunately lost or differently related to the present – meaning is always presented.
In addition to the ability to independently construct plausible (and recognized by others) orienting meaning in the sense of the above-mentioned synthetic re-construction, what is needed in today’s society (and actually for some time or even always), especially in democracies, is the ability of everyone to analyze the endless number of such “finished” narrated stories that they (all of us) encounter, to question them about what they specifically tell us, why and how they do it and how plausible it is (deconstruction).
In this sense, critical historical thinking is not reduced to distinguishing “good”, i.e. credible or trustworthy, from “bad” historical stories, and then ignoring the latter and trusting the former. Precisely because all stories, even the problematic ones, not only make claims to validity, but also offer validity and orientation, it requires the willingness and the ability to analyze them in terms of their construction logics and the elements incorporated into them – that is, “we”/they” conceptions, norms, world and human images, explanatory models, etc.
Against this background, the goal of democratic history teaching should not be to provide the members of a democratic society with a single narrative decreed from above, an interpretation of history that everyone must accept not out of an understanding of its orienting power in the face of current challenges, but by means of state decree and pedagogical measures (grades) – and certainly not a historical narrative that either excludes significant parts of society from the “we” or forcibly incorporates them into a particular “we” while disregarding their (also) specific positions, perspectives, identities and orientation needs.
As – in democracies – society and the state must acknowledge different political interests of their members which need to be both formed into a common interest still acknowlegding the different perspectives and safeguarding their very cores, so democratic history education must be history teaching that is not arbitrary, but does not deny the diversity and variety of positions, perspectives and orientation needs, but recognizes and takes them up for two purposes: (1.) to get to know and recognize not only one’s own (particular) position, perspective, world view and interpretation of history, but also those of others, even where one does not share them, and thus to broaden one’s own horizons, also to recognize one’s own particularity, and (2.) to piece together different stories and the experiences on which they are based in such a way that they do not merge into a single homogenized story, but into a spectrum of different stories that are recognized as such but compatible with each other from a superordinate perspective.
Furthermore, democratic history education should acknowledge that — as it is the normal state of democratic decision-making to acknowledge a diversity of interests — people’s historical perspectives and interpretations are different.
Consequently, historical judgments (both in the form of factual conclusions and value-based judgments) should not be imposed on students in the form of pre-formulated interpretations and evaluations, but rather be made possible for them as an independent achievement in the course of joint, guided considerations and discussions. Whether (or rather, to what extent) a story is “ennobling” and “admirable” should not be prescribed, but rather discussed, considered, and judged in a differentiated way – controversially if necessary.
But there is more at stake: in the way the executive order uses the term history, it is nothing more than an uncritical and irresponsible celebration of the self, and as such an instrument of indoctrination. The potential of history to not only affirm the existing (and also coercive), but to orient, is completely hidden. History always has the potential to question one’s own existence, a question that can yield both affirmative and transformative and reorienting results – and not as alternatives, but usually closely interwoven. If a nation’s history is so noble, this should not be difficult. Imposing such judgments from above is more a testament to the fear of independent judgments – especially when they are well-founded.
In this sense, Trump’s executive order is not only an expression of authoritarianism in a state under the authority of the law in terms of the politics of history, but also in pedagogical and historical-didactic terms.
