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

本研究通过对哥伦比亚教育界历史意识的诊断，探讨了记忆工作与其社会结果之间的关系。要做到这一点，我们分析了几种媒体，通过这些媒体，对过去的不同解释被传播，并提供了历史意识的发展。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（CNMH）一起创建了解决这一义务的机构。尽管该中心在过去几年中发表了80多份报告，该领域的学术工作也有了显著增加，但该中心工作的社会影响却微乎其微。拟议的研究解决了一方面的机构和学术努力与另一方面的实际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，本项目的研究人员使用历史意识的概念作为他们的中心研究范畴。历史意识作为历史教学的核心学习目标，被用来描述和评价重大政治变革后个人和社会对过去的态度。本研究的重点是在过去的谈判中占据战略地位的一个群体：学校及其相关社区。学校及其教育社区在这一过程中发挥着关键作用，因为正是在这里，记忆和历史政策得到了实际执行，制度化的记忆与过去的替代性结构相遇并竞争。基于这些理由，本研究调查了历史学习的制度化和非正式渠道，特别考虑到两种媒体：历史教科书和电视连续剧。虽然教科书传播的大多是对过去的制度化解释，但电视连续剧也展示了另一种非霸权主义的版本。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条件。为了探讨记忆工作与其社会结果之间的关系，我们采用问卷调查和访谈的方式对来自不同地区和不同社会背景的学生、教师和家庭进行了调查。我们预期的研究结果有助于更好地理解记忆形成的潜在社会动力和渠道。

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.