Global historical awareness
The term global historical awareness is an extension of the term historical awareness developed in history didactics since the 1980s . The expansion of this term to include the term global historical awareness is intended to express that the process of globalization has repercussions on the content of historically organized learning that is no longer adequately covered by the term historical awareness.
In this context, Jörn Rüsen points out that historical thinking is still strongly oriented towards national categories: “It is a widespread opinion that a new historical orientation is necessary. We have to re-envision our past because the future perspective of our life has become quite uncertain. The lines of development of our origins and future that were deeply embedded in our self-image and our political culture in post-war history have lost their contours with the collapse of state socialism and with German unification. It is not only the Germans who have to ask themselves who they are and to develop new forms and contents of their historical identity for a convincing answer, that is, in accordance with contemporary experience. […] A mere recourse to old orientation patterns, which are only considered to be tried and tested because they have determined the peoples and states of Europe for a long time, is of course not enough, because our situation does not fit in many ways with the experience of the past. This is especially true for the historical benchmark nation. "
In the historical didactic discussion on the topic of globalization, Susanne Popp criticizes the fact that the bond with a nation-state core curriculum is unbroken and that this bond is not seriously questioned in the current, anyway rather cautious, historical didactic discussion about the potential consequences of globalization for the design of future historical learning will be asked. The volume "Curriculum World History", edited by Susanne Popp and Johanna Forster, addresses the discussion about the repercussions of globalization on historical thinking and addresses the integration of world history in history lessons at schools and universities.
In contrast to approaches of interculturality or intercultural learning, which would like to take greater account of the heterogeneity of historical learners, the concept of global historical awareness assumes that the development of a multipolar world and the emergence of the information society address historical thinking that is unilaterally oriented towards the West its end has come and this should be taken into account in the history didactics. In addition to the supposed reorientation of history didactics towards competence-oriented learning, a more content-oriented discussion should take place due to the repercussions of globalization on the content of historical learning.
In this context, Andreas Heuer calls for the concept of world history to be questioned. "Awareness of history as a comprehensive interpretation of all stories in a world history is the result of diverse developments that lead in the 19th century through colonialism and industrialization to a Europe-centric world history."
The concept of world history is already Eurocentrically affected by the context in which it originated. The debate about world history that has developed in recent years and that critically reflects on this connection has received too little attention in historical teaching at schools and universities. The term global historical awareness opposes this fact. Global historical awareness is faced with the question of what content should be used to represent the transition into a world no longer shaped by the West. The problem lies in the fact that nation states still play a central role in the self-understanding of the historical reconstruction of the past. Historical thinking requires such an orientation framework if the ability to tell history continues to be seen as a central task in passing on knowledge of the past. In this sense, Susanne Popp does not plead for a world-historical masterpiece, but rather for an equal coexistence of many world histories, as they arise from the perspectives of the individual regions.
For Jürgen Osterhammel , world history should mean something more radical for pragmatic, even didactic purposes: " To think together the history of Germany or (Central) Europe in one's own historical imagination with selected historical experiences of other large civilization complexes."
In a first step, this would mean that global historical awareness as a central concept of history didactics encourages a turn to other stories that take the increasing political and economic importance of non-Western countries and regions into account. This would lead to a paradigm shift in the reconstruction of the past in organized historical learning, which would have to lead to a content reorientation of the competence-oriented curricula, which largely defy this challenge. A first step would be “that we increasingly perceive the different stories that belong to this world story. Perhaps the term world stories would be more appropriate for this. "
Global historical awareness is a way in history didactics to place the two developments globalization and critical reflection on world history more at the center of organized historical learning.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rüsen, Jörn: Historical orientation. About the work of the historical awareness to find one's way in time. Second, revised edition. Schwalbach / Ts .: 2008, p. 8.)
- ^ Popp, Susanne / Forster, Johanna (eds.): Curriculum World History. Global access to history teaching. Schwalbach / Ts .: 2003.
- ↑ Heuer, Andreas: The birth of modern historical thinking in Europe. Scientific treatises and speeches on philosophy, politics and intellectual history. Volume 68, Berlin: 2012, p. 20.
- ^ Osterhammel, Jürgen: Old and new approaches to world history, in: Osterhammel, Jürgen (Hg.): Weltgeschichte. Basic texts (p. 9–34), Stuttgart: 2008, p. 12.
- ↑ Heuer, Andreas; Global historical awareness. The emergence of the multipolar world from the 18th century to the present, Berlin: 2012, p. 186.