The Impact of Memory Work within the Colombian Education Community: An Exploration in Historical Consciousness

本研究通过哥伦比亚教育界的历史意识诊断来调查记忆工作与其社会结果之间的关系。为了做到这一点，我们分析了几种媒介，通过这些媒介，对过去进行了不同的解释，并对历史意识的发展提出了建议。在和平进程的背景下，哥伦比亚政府一再承认其纪念义务，并与国家历史记忆中心（Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica， CNMH）合作，甚至成立了这个机构来履行这一义务。虽然近年来中心发表了80多篇报告，在这一领域的学术工作也有了显著的增长，但中心工作的社会影响却很少。拟议的研究解决了制度和学术努力与实际的集体和个人构建的记忆之间的差距，以便更好地理解导致记忆文化构成的社会动态。为了做到这一点，这个项目的研究人员将历史意识的概念作为他们的中心研究范畴。作为历史教学的中心学习目标，历史意识被用来描述和评价个人和社会在重大政治变革后对过去的态度。拟议的研究侧重于在过去的谈判中占据战略地位的群体：学校及其相关社区。学校及其教育团体在这一过程中发挥着关键作用，因为在这里，记忆和历史的政策实际上得到了实施，制度化的记忆与过去的替代结构相遇并竞争。基于这些理由，本研究调查了制度化和非正式的历史学习渠道，特别考虑了两种媒体：历史教科书和电视连续剧。虽然教科书主要传递的是对过去的制度化解释，但电视剧也展示了另一种非霸权的版本。这两种媒体都依赖于现有的社会解释模式，但同时也为这些解释的发展提供了机会。为了研究记忆工作与其社会结果之间的关系，我们采用问卷调查的方式，对来自不同地区、不同社会背景的学生、教师和家庭进行了访谈。我们预期的发现有助于更好地理解潜在的社会动态和记忆形成的渠道。

This study investigates the relation between memory work and its social outcome through a diagnosis of historical consciousness within the Colombian education community. To do this, we analyze several media through which different interpretations of the past are transmitted and offers to the development of historical consciousness are made. In the context of the peace process, the Colombian government repeatedly recognized its duty of remembrance, and with the National Center for Historical Memory (Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, CNMH) it even created the institution to settle this obligation. Although the center has published more than 80 reports over the last years and there has been a significant increase in academic work in this field, very little social impact of the center’s work can be seen. The proposed study addresses this gap between institutional and academic efforts on one side and the actual collective and individually constructed memories on the other side, in order to better understand the social dynamics that lead to the constitution of a memory culture. To do this, the investigators of this project use the concept of historical consciousness as their central research category. As a central learning goal of history teaching, historical consciousness has been used to describe and evaluate individual and social attitudes towards the past after significant political changes.The proposed study focusses on a group that occupies a strategic place within the negotiations of the past: the school and its related community. School and its education community play a key role in this process, because it is here where policies of memory and history are practically implemented and where institutionalized memories meet and compete with alternative constructions of the past. On these grounds, this study investigates institutionalized as well as informal channels of history learning, taking into account two media in particular: history schoolbooks and television series. While schoolbooks transmit mostly institutionalized interpretations of the past, television series also show alternative, non-hegemonic versions. Both media rely on existing social interpretative patterns, but at the same time, they make an offer for the development of these interpretations.In order to investigate the relation between memory work and its social outcome, we apply questionnaires and conduct interviews with students, teachers and families coming from different regions and from different social contexts. Our expected findings contribute towards a better understanding of the underlying social dynamics and channels through which memory is formed.