Justifying educational acquaintance with the moral horrors of history on psycho-social grounds: ‘Facing History and Ourselves’ in critical perspective

Abstract

This paper challenges a pervasive curricular justification for educationally acquainting young people with stories of genocide and other moral horrors from history. According to this justification, doing so favours the development of psycho-social soft skills connected with interpersonal awareness and the establishment and maintenance of positive relationships. It is argued that this justification not only renders the specific historical content incidental to the development of these skills. The educational intention of promoting such psycho-social soft skills by way of studying moral horrors in history constitutes an ethically problematic instrumentalisation of the historical material itself.

Keywords:

• Psycho-social development
• human rights education
• genocide education
• moral education
• history curriculum

Notes

Notes

1. For descriptions of each of these programs see respectively Schultz, Barr and Selman (2001) and Van Dreil (2005).

2. These distinctions are discussed in Britzman (1998) and Russell (1911).

3. For representative articulations of the view that moral activism is an essential condition of transformative learning see Baxi (1997) and Tibbitts (2005).

4. See reviews in Tibbitts (2005) and Taylor (1998).

5. On this research see Baridge (1988) and Glynn, Bock and Cohen (1982). It is cited and briefly assessed as well in Brabeck et al. (1994).

6. This point is treated in Halstead and Taylor (2000, 173–5). See also various contributions in the edited volume by Lee et al. (1992).

7. For summarizing statements of FHAO's aims Barr (2005), Schultz et al. (2001) and Brabeck et al. (1994).

8. For the most authoritative and comprehensive presentation of the Risks and Relationship Framework see Selman (2003).

9. ‘Eve's dilemma’ is a vignette standardly analysed in recent versions of FHAO. See Barr (2005, 147).

10. The study of which Selman (2005, 226 ff.) recommends as particularly auspicious for the development of the set of psycho-social competencies he refers to as ‘social awareness’.