Historical culture, uses of the past: challenges of teaching and learning in school and non-school contexts

Abstract

The text presents a two-volume dossier devoted to historical culture, the uses of the past, and the challenges of teaching and learning History in school and non-school spaces. Its central idea is that History circulates not only in schools or universities, but also in digital media, museums, public spaces, communities, textbooks, games, heritage sites, collective memories, and political disputes. Therefore, teaching History today means confronting a context marked by denialism, problematic revisionism, fake news, the platformization of education, and ideological uses of the past. Based on the notion of historical culture, especially in Jörn Rüsen’s work, the text argues that the past is constantly interpreted, narrated, and disputed in different dimensions: aesthetic, political, and cognitive. This historical culture can contribute to critical formation, but it can also be used to legitimize power, erase subjects, manipulate memories, and reinforce authoritarian narratives. The articles in the two volumes address a wide range of topics, such as the formation of historical thinking, curriculum, textbooks, digital culture, video games, heritage, democracy, urban quilombos, Indigenous education, gender, race, community museums, traumatic pasts, and teacher education. Taken together, they show that historical learning must engage with practical life, with subjects’ experiences, and with the conflicts of the present.