Interpretation in Year 9 (2)

Sometimes history is seen as something fixed and static. What is past, is past. This year, I took the first unit in Year 9 seriously. Theoretically, we should readdress the issue of what is history and how we make it. I decided to spend three lessons dealing with historiography. Actually, this was the last step. First, I introduced students to multiperspectives in intepretations with another activity. In this lesson, I wanted to show them why historians can say different things of the same event.


As a starter, I asked them to sort the odd-one-out from the following rulers: Napoleon Bonaparte, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Louis XIV and Adolf Hitler. I asked each student who he/she thought should be ruled out and note it down. Then I asked each one for their reasons and also wrote them on the board. One Year group came up with seven categories, the other one with eleven. 

This means that they found at least eight different ways of ruling someone out. In general, it was the same person (CFK) but for distinctive reasons: she is a woman, she is alive, she lives in South America, etc.  


After that, we plunged into different historiographic lines of thought (with the basic example of the French Revolution). By the end of the lesson, many students could make the connection between the starter and the rest of the lesson. They stated that the reason for doing the first activity was to realize that depending on what we pay attention to, we will write history in different ways. It was magical. Spontanenous. Incredible.