Empathetic Reconstruction in History and History Teaching
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4496226 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Stockley (0000-0001-8222-5374, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1983 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 50 |
| Publication date | 1983-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2505215 |
| OpenAlex | W2326161103 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Outside, it is cold and wet; a typical winter's day in Melbourne. Inside, I am watching a teacher taking a class of fourteenand fifteen-year-old girls for a lesson on the Black Death in medieval Europe. The teacher has photocopied two documents and distributed them to the class, who are taking turns reading the documents aloud around the class. One document describes in chilling detail the symptoms of the plague and the sufferings of the victims, while the other graphically describes the effects of the plague on one English village: the dreadful waiting for the first news of the plague in the nearby areas, the horror felt by the other villagers when the first victim falls ill, the desperate remedies sought by the villagers to avoid contracting the plague and the colossal relief enjoyed by the survivors when it is clear that the mysterious killer has passedat least for the time being. The effect on the class is shattering-shatteringly boring. The girls drone through their passages of reading aloud, then resume half-listening to the material. The teacher realizes what is happening and makes even more determined efforts to strike a response through questioning the students about their attitudes toward the grim descriptions in the documents; but to no avail. The girls remain listless, though not disturbingly restless; there is certainly no overt classroom management problem; and the teacher puzzles about the failure of what she clearly believes to be intrinsically interesting material. Suddenly, there are groans of revulsion from the girls. The girls call out to each other and try to attract the teacher's attention. They want to discuss something that has dramatically seized their attention in one of the documents. They are responding excitedly at last, in the few remaining moments of the lesson, and the teacher understandably is both delighted and relieved. She handles the discussion well and the lesson ends in an atmosphere of involvement and interest. All is well. But to what have the students reacted? Have they finally latched onto the teacher's proddings and pleadings to imagine terrible it must have been. . .; how would you have felt if you had been one of
Aesthetics · Epistemology · Psychoanalysis · Digital Storytelling and Education · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Global Education and Multiculturalism · History · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.12 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1993 - 2022 (30) |
| Highly cited | No |