Engaging the Fray: Preparing Teachers and Students for Critical Encounters with the Past

This chapter applies pedagogical principles and approaches to the arguments about the relationship between the arts and history developed in earlier parts of this book. It sets the discussion of these in the context of four arguments: the past is hotly contested terrain, and should be taught as such; people’s engagement with the past is not restricted to academic history and therefore history education has to engage substantially with non-academic presentations of the past characteristic of the arts; people’s engagement with the past is profoundly shaped by their community’s collective memory and the cognitive frames shaped by that memory so these have to be actively engaged in history education; and, people’s engagement with the past is often not about the past at all but focused on the present and the future, particularly the shaping of collective or civic life. History education, therefore, is a key component of education for citizenship.