On ethical judgments in history education: A response to Milligan, Gibson, and Peck

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On taking a more encompassing view: A response to den Heyer

This article responds to:

Enriching Ethical Judgments in History Education

Notes

1. I trace a North American disciplinarian school and compare such to a “disciplined ethic of truths” in den Heyer (2012). The authors of the article to which I respond also provide a reading of this school’s development and antecedents. Briefly, we can say that the disciplinarian school premises its proposals on the need for students to work with second order historical concepts (e.g., cause and consequence) so as to learn “how to question historical accounts and understand the evidentiary base upon which they rest” (Sexias, 2000, p. 24). Historical second-order concepts provide “a rational way, on the basis of evidence and argument, to discuss the differing accounts that jostle with or contradict each other” (Seixas, 2002, para. 5).

2. There is, of course, a theory in play in such proposals that, if accepted, provides logical internal sense through appeal to particular prevailing commonsense about schooling, education, and disciplinarity. See footnote 4.

3. In this piece, Tuck (2009) outlined the necessity for a desire-based research stance with significant implications for history and educational pedagogy.

4. Constructivism (or constructionism) is not an educational theory, but a theory of cognition wholly amenable to either any critical theoretical orientation or, equally so, as is the case here, none at all (see Davis & Sumara, 2002).

5. The authors, in their article, correctly acknowledge the entangled nature of ethical judgments in real life as they proceed through their proposal.