Conflict over interpretations
Class description
Course Topic: Sociology
Student composition: BA level, domestic and international students
The situation in which the controversy occurred:
Discussing nation and the concept of nation-state can be a challenge in an international environment. Without knowing the national composition of the group, one can easily fall into a trap of different narratives related to the same historical event, or lack of knowledge about someone else’s history. One class is too short to discuss the complicated relations between different countries and peoples. What can be offered to students is an insight into how history is produced narrated in different school settings internationally. This is a way to
1) promote intercultural awareness in class;
2) endorse critical thinking;
3) minimize controversies in an international setting.
The class described below is part of a course in Sociology, and is usually conducted in the second part of the semester within the topic “Nation and Ethnicity”.
Discussing historical narratives and how they are taught at schools in different country settings has two different dimensions. The first dimension is that students can learn how other students learn about their nations – are they presented as heroes or victims, winners or losers, occupiers or liberators? Students are then encouraged to compare different stories with how their own history has been presented to them in school, as well as look for similar or distinctive patterns of historical narration. The second dimension is about lessons learnt, or, in other words, students’ critical evaluation of the way they were taught history. By being exposed to other perspectives on historical narrative, students are better able to reflect on their own.
Different historical interpretations as well as politicization of some events can easily lead to controversies in the classroom. For example, the importance of World War II (WWII) for European national histories and national identities has recently become prominent. In my sociology course, a student attended both, a Russian and an international school, where he learnt contradicting narratives about the history of WWII. In the former he had learnt that the Soviets had saved Europe from the woes of Nazism, whereas in the latter he heard a different narrative, which positioned the Soviet Union as an oppressor, a superpower that occupied Eastern Europe after WWII. The student shared that he became frustrated and upset with the second narrative, but it also made him realize that the same historical event can be narrated differently, depending on who is narrating.
How to address this situation?
