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Citation: 

den Heyer, Kent. "History Education as a Disciplined ‘Ethic of Truths.’” In New Possibilities for the Past: Shaping History Education in Canada, edited by Penney Clark, 154-72. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011.

Abstract/Summary: 

According to den Heyer, the disciplinary interpretation (“second-order concepts” or “procedures”) of historical thinking is inadequate since the preferred form of history education has “ethics and social action at its core.” Throughout the chapter, den Heyer explores the shortcomings of the disciplinary interpretation of historical thinking, outlining that it does not invite or enable students to use their own inventive knowledge of the past as they explore the possible, probable and preferred futures. The author proposes that, in a disciplinary interpretation of historical thinking, students see historians as though they work in a vacuum and students are unable to grasp the complexities surrounding race, gender, class and other factors that affect historians. den Heyer further presupposes that the disciplinary interpretation fails to take into consideration historical engagement that is grounded in ethics, using the example of the Grand Narrative view of Canadian history. It is important to study history in relation to students’ lives as it forces them to take a stake in history rather than simply view it as another school project. den Heyer concludes the chapter with a study of Badiou and how using a “disciplined ethics of truths” will work against what den Heyer has called an “over-determined ideology.”

Source/Credit: 
Erika Smith