I always commence teaching my Year 9 Australian history class with a series of photographs that outline the key points in the syllabus. I ask the students to try to empathise with the people in each photograph. What were they thinking? What would they be saying to each other? What do the surroundings tell us? What would they have been feeling about contemporary events? After pausing on each slide, when we get to the colour photograph of the family at the beach, I ask if they notice anything. And then I quietly point out that the young fellow on the right is me. I then take them back through my family history from my Canadian and Scottish grandparents, to my Italian and Scottish great-grandparents, to my Italian great-great grandparents. As a simple introductory exercise at the start of the year, it dramatically reinforces the linkages between history, identity and global connections.

I intend to examine these three themes: history, identity, and global connections, by looking at three global projects that my history classes have participated in this year. And I would like to consider these themes in the light of what is now possible in schools. Fernando Reimers draws our attention to this contrast when he writes,

“The educational paradox of the beginning of the twenty-first century lies in the disconnect between the superb institutional capacity of schools and their underperformance in preparing students to invent a future that appropriately addresses the global challenges and opportunities shared with their fellow world citizens.”

Global Pedagogy

I made my first forays into global educational connections a couple of years ago when I organised Skype calls for our professional learning committee and arranged for a US History professor to answer questions about Ho Chi Minh from my Year 12 students. However the real turning point for me was when I set up a Skype call between my Year 9 History class and a school in Turkey to discuss the 1915 Gallipoli campaign in World War One. My connection with Turkey was inspired upon hearing that academics and high school teachers in France and Germany had collaborated to produce a common history textbook. Just think about the combined histories of France and Germany, and consider what it would have taken for those two countries to agree on a common history. By connecting with Turkey, I hoped to expose my Australian students to a different perspective about World War One.

Some background to the Gallipoli campaign is needed here. Australia federated as a nation in 1901 and World War One was regarded as the first great test of Australia’s nationhood. The English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett was full of praise for the heroism of the Australian soldiers and this gave rise to the Anzac legend. Anzac qualities of bravery, mateship, and larrikin humour, were linked to the pioneer spirit of Australia’s early settlers, and became central to the Australian identity. The legend was needed to justify the 60,000 Australians deaths by the end of the war.

However, while Australians are quick to laud the good side of the Anzacs, scant attention is paid to the bad side – the deserters, the drunks, the thieves, the mutineers, the rapists and the murderers (superbly described in Peter Stanley’s Bad Characters, 2010), the unquestioning willingness to follow suicidal orders, Anzacs behaving “like overbearing bullies in their dealings with the people whose countries they were occupying” (Reynolds & Lake, 2010), and the fact that Australians did not have stranglehold on bravery, mateship or humour in wartime. As a teacher I lamented the lack of a clear Turkish perspective of the war and I decided that a Skype call with Turkish students might provide the perspective that I was seeking. I found a Turkish class who were keen to practice speaking English, and most of my class volunteered to spend an afternoon after school asking and answering questions via a Skype call. My students were astounded by the Turkish students’ descriptions of the starvation on the Turkish homefront and the chilling winter conditions in 1916 and 1917. “Why isn’t that in our textbook?”, they wanted to know.

Following this initial success, this year I advertised a similar project on ‘Skype for Educators’ and sent a message out on Twitter. In next to no time I had three Turkish schools eager to work with my class. A Turkish primary class researched Ataturk and translated their research into English for my class.

“In 1915, when the Dardanelles campaign was launched, Colonel Mustafa Kemal became a national hero by winning successive victories and finally repelling the invaders. In our schools, in each class we have his photo to remember our hero.”

“How come we have never heard of Ataturk?” my class inquired.
Then, to avoid the 9 hours’ time difference, I decided that the best way for two Turkish high school classes to communicate with us was via video posted to YouTube. My class prepared a video introducing themselves and asking some historical questions. The Turkish students did the same in response.

My students were keen to know about Turkey’s role in World War One, what it was like for Turkish women and children who stayed home during the war, how Turkish soldiers are remembered, and what Turkish students knew about the Gallipoli campaign and the Australian involvement in it.

The Turkish students were able to explain to my students the geo-strategic importance of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish belief that Germany would most likely win the First World War. They also explained the very active role played by Turkish women on the homefront because “they knew it was a life and death situation.” In response to my students’ question about how Turkish soldiers are remembered, they wrote, “They were heroes because they fought for our independence and glory.”

In turn, the Turkish students were particularly keen to know what my students thought of Turks in relation to World War One and how the war affects Australian students today.

My students reassured the Turkish students that their soldiers had merely been defending their country from attack and the Australians were invading their homeland. “We feel that the Turkish soldiers were the same as the Australian soldiers, in the sense that both were just trying to do their duty.” In response to the question about how the war might affect them today, my students commented, “One way that the war affects us all today is by how much it hurts to think of all the people who died in the war and the families of all the soldiers. Also, some people argue that we have more freedom today as a result of the war, but we are not sure about this point.” My students continued,

“You have helped us understand the Turkish side to World War One, which we had no idea about. We learned how the Ottoman Empire shrank to being the size of Turkey. We learned how the Turkish people really want to remember the men and women who died in the war fighting for their country, and we also learned about Mustafa Kemal becoming president of the republic and creating a new political system and giving power to women. We are proud that Turkey and Australia are now such good friends.”

My students exhibited a growing awareness that Australia had attacked a foreign country and the Turkish soldiers had fought bravely defending their homeland. In fact, my students became quite concerned about what the Turkish people might think of them today. This sparked a powerful exchange where the Turkish students explained to my students the role of imperialism and the place of Australian colonial troops in relation to Britain at the time, assuring my students that Australians had little choice about their involvement at Gallipoli. The connection concluded with the Turkish students photographing a war memorial and providing the text for my students:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours…You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.” (Ataturk, 1934)

The end result of the project was that my students had a far greater global awareness of the Gallipoli campaign than any class I have previously taught.

Thinking about the Past

The second global project that one of my classes was involved in was in May this year when my Year 12 Modern History class participated in a research project with Dr Liz Dawes Duraisingh from Harvard’s Project Zero. The research project was examining how young people think about the past and the role of reflection in learning about history. My students responded to a weekly online prompt for ten weeks. They were initially asked to produce an ‘identity map’ showing how history was connected to their lives. One student commented,

“I’ve never been asked to reflect back on the history of my life and how it constructs who I am. This is the first time I’ve ever had to think about major events in my life.”

They were then shown their classmates’ identity maps and asked for their reactions. My students quickly identified sport, family and school as common themes. Following this, the students were shown the identity maps of students in Canada and the US who were also participating in the project. My students were immediately drawn to references about the Civil Rights movement and 9/11, and they recognised the cultural impact of films and music, such as Tupac. Multiculturalism and feminism also clearly emerged as themes. It was fascinating for me to then hear my students discuss how they felt that Australia was too remote from anything of real importance in world history and they struggled to connect with the themes expressed by the US and Canadian students.

World War Two Global History Project

At the moment, my Year 9 students are currently engaged in a 3-month World War Two History project with US educator Ron Peck’s class in the US. Students introduced themselves on the Project Ning (a task that my students found unusually challenging), they edited inquiry questions on a wiki in teams, and they interviewed grandparents about their recollections of World War Two. These recollections are fantastic primary source material replete with memories about rationing, food shortages, blackouts, and more dramatic events.

Alex’s grandmother commented that:

Cowra was lucky because a prisoner of war camp for the Japanese was built here. This meant lots of business for the local shops. I remember the day the day the prisoners broke out of the camp. My brothers and I were at home alone because my parents had gone to town and we didn’t know why so many planes were flying around. They were looking for the escaped Japanese prisoners. It didn’t take long for guards to find the escapees. My father found one a few days later on a farm near where we lived.

Graham’s grandmother reflected on the Japanese occupation of Beijing:

I distantly remember the day when the Japanese came into Beijing. I think I was 6. I don’t know much about the world war, but a bit more about the war between China and Japan. I actually didn’t see the Japanese on the day because my parents hid me from them. I think it was because I was so small and they didn’t want me to see what was happening outside but I could hear gunshots and screaming. I had 3 brothers and 2 sisters and I told you that they tried to hide us but eventually they found our parents. They didn’t get executed like what I saw happen to everyone else, I never found out how they did it because they never wanted to speak of it again.

And Rory reported on his interview with his grandfather:

My grandfather’s cousin’s role, which he helped him with sometimes, was to spot aircraft off the coast of Sydney and report every aircraft seen. He would then radio back information on all the aircraft and this information would be checked to ensure the aircraft was friendly. He also remembers how the waterfront houses with boats around Woy Woy on the Central Coast had their boats removed from the moorings so that if a Japanese invasion were to occur there would be no small boats to assist their transport. The small private boats were stored at the Gosford Racetrack.

There is no doubt that my students were motivated and inspired by the fact that their interviews were going to be posted online for an international audience to have access to. Ron’s US students are about to post their interviews and the comparisons will provide us with much food for thought. Then the students will move into the feedback and reflection stages of the project. The project, modelled on the Flat Classroom Project, will finish in a few weeks, so it is still too early to provide detailed feedback on the project’s effectiveness. I am going to be taking two of my students to the Flat Classroom Conference in Japan during March next year to build on the steps that I have taken this year. Hopefully Ron Peck will be doing the same and some of our students will be meeting in real life.

History and Controversy

Both Ron and I were hoping that a third class from another country would join the project. It is my hope that in the near future, classes from Germany or Japan would feel comfortable joining this sort of project. I look forward to the day when it is easy to find a Vietnamese class to discuss the Vietnam War, although of course there are sensitivities and difficulties which cannot be ignored. When teaching units on the Chinese government and Tiananmen Square and on Tibet, I have had to caution classes about the danger that locals could be placed in by communicating openly online.
However, teaching about the past is inherently controversial and we should embrace this controversy. Former Australian State Premier Bob Carr (2006) argued that teachers should keep history “filled with as much contention as possible, don’t turn it into a cheery Disney history.” Sensitive discussions about contested histories forged through trust and dialogue are some of the most powerful learning experiences we can provide our students. If we can create safe online spaces to discuss past conflicts it might help challenge our parochial views of history, and highlight how history is often used to define and distort heritage and values at both a collective and an individual level. By helping students to connect globally and listen to each other we can enable them to see behind the veil. As I am writing this I am thinking of a scene in the movie “13 Days” when Bobby Kennedy is visiting the Russian embassy in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The silence, the sweat, and the tension perfectly reveal the opposing worldviews of the Russians and the Americans at that point in history.

A recent blog post by Homa Tavangar, author of Growing Up Global, shows how to turn controversy into a teachable moment. As issues in the world “become more complex, children need the tools to think about multiple, sometimes contrasting, perspectives; so that as adults they can work with people from far-flung places to solve seemingly intractable problems.”

He shares a metaphor that kids can relate to:

“During President Obama’s inauguration four years ago, there were many people in the crowd who ‘boo’-ed when President Bush came out [to make his farewell]. Our young children were with us at that historic inauguration. They were surprised by the booing. We asked them to consider how our family would work if once we made a decision together, those of us who weren’t happy were bitter and undermining, and those who were happy gloated and put down the ‘loser.’ … What could our family really accomplish?”

This example shows how paralysing such contention can be for a family. If you see your fellow global citizens as a human family, you might treat them differently, even if you disagree with them, and start to build the empathy that allows you to put yourself in their shoes. Comparing the nations of the world to the members of a family is a simple idea that most kids can get.

Historical Understanding

Sam Wineburg (2001) has criticised the textbook mentality in schools which presumes that historical knowledge only needs to be known rather than understood. Seixas (2000) argues that what is being taught is not history at all—but myth creation, and Wilson (2001) believes that history has become impenetrable for students, “resulting in little intellectual engagement, a dominance of teachers and textbooks, and minimal problem solving or critical thinking.” History is the collective memory through which individuals develop a sense of their own social identity and develop their imagination, and it is always of a tentative nature. Historical truth is not absolute, but interpretive. There are many paths into the past and the historian’s task is to impose an order upon the chaos. History can provide a critique of the myths that pervade society and it helps us to see the present within a context of past differences and future possibilities.

Effective history teaching requires encouraging an understanding of multiple perspectives, but students tend to view history as a continuous, uncontested, predetermined story with a uniform picture of the past. Holt suggests that instead of handing over stories, history teaching should provide students with “the raw materials of history” (Holt, 1990, p. 10) and let them decide what story should be told. Students need to learn that the purpose might be different depending on who constructs the narrative.

History is about fundamental questions of identity. Identity is formed from multiple narratives and national identities serve a social function. The concept of historical consciousness means that we come to think about history at both a collective and an individual level. Van Sledright (1997-1998) argues that history teachers should devote more attention to the way that students’ historical thinking is affected by the cultural messages they have absorbed about the past, and Chapman and Facey (2004) argue,

“Our students can and should be encouraged to think globally – to broaden their horizons and their historical consciousness alike. It is doubtful that they will understand much history if they do not.”

Each of the global projects discussed here demonstrates that history is about identity and historical truth is interpretive. Global connections help students break out of the straitjacket of single identities by teaching them to listen across borders. In his book Global Citizens (which is rather sadly called American Citizens in the US) Mark Gerzon (2010) writes of viewing borders as connections between countries instead of divisions, and in Who Owns the Learning, Alan November (2012) believes that empathy, the ability to identify with others, is the most important 21st century skill. Rather than being places where students learn about the world, schools are now places where students can learn with the world. My key premise is that global connections can help students move away from a predetermined notion of history and enable them to view history as a continuous process of interaction between the present and the past. As the old saying goes, “When the peasants learned to read, the kings began to look stupid.” Perhaps the new saying is, “When the learners connected globally, the teachers began to look stupid.”

Links

Australia-Turkey wiki: http://turkey-australia.wikispaces.com/

WWII Global Connection History Project: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pz5yMYH6eani2ULDTrMKE-EBDdLy1e4Afp3fBl4Q0XM/edit

Australia-US wiki: http://wwiiglobalconnections.wikispaces.com/

Flat Classroom Conference: http://www.flatclassroomconference.com/

References

Carr, R. (2006, January 31), ‘Students want to study something that’s contentious’, Response from Bob Carr, Interview with Phillip Adams, Late Night Live, ABC Radio National.

Gerzon, M. (2010). Global Citizens: How our vision of the world is outdated, and what we can do about it. London: Random House Books.

Holt, T. (1990). Thinking historically: Narrative, imagination, and understanding. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.

November, A. (2012). Who owns the Learning: Preparing students for success in the digital age. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Reynolds H. & Lake M. (2010, April 2). Letting Go of Anzac. The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/letting-go-of-anzac-20100402-rif5.html

Seixas, P. (2000). Schweigen! die kinder! Or, does postmodern history have a place in the schools? In P. N. Stearns, P. Seixas, & S. Wineburg, (Eds.), Knowing teaching & learning history: National and international perspectives. New York: New York University Press.

Stanley, P. (2010). Bad Characters: Sex, crime, mutiny, murder and the Australian imperial force. Millers Point, NSW: Pier 9.

Tavangar, H. (2012, November 10). Post-Election: Teaching Kids How to Respectfully Disagree. Global Learning. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/global_learning/2012/11/post-election_teaching_kids_how_to_respectfully_disagree.html

Van Sledright, B.A. (1997-1998). On the importance of historical positionality to thinking about and teaching history, International Journal of Social Education, 12(2), pp. 1-18.

Wilson, S.M. (2001). Research on History teaching. In V. Richardson (Ed.), The handbook of research on teaching (pp. 527-544). Washington, D.C.: Educational Research Association.

Wineburg, S. (2001) Historical thinking and other unnatural acts: Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.