Time Machine – Narratives of the Past

Main subject: Civics, History, Political Science

Key words: Ideology, Historical Events, Narratives, Discourse, Media manipulation

 

Main questions to be reflected:

1. How does it come about that historical events can be described and assessed in totally contradictory ways?
2. How can one change meanings and assessments of the same events/situations with a choice of different words?
3. What does it mean to defend “nationalist”, “Marxist” or “liberal” narratives of history?

 

Teaching methods:

• individual work
• teamwork
• role-playing
• interpretative work with words and discourses
• discussion
• writing
• case study

Time: 45 minutes

Teaching aids: worksheet, writing implements, Internet access

 

Main aim of this exercise:

The central idea of this activity is the fictional concept of a time machine, and students are invited to imagine that humankind is endowed with the possibility of time travelling and thus teams of adventurers, scientists and journalists are setting out on their journeys to the past. Their task is to get to famous moments in history, observe the deeds of our ancestors and then tell us what “really happened.”

The material works with three distinguished historical narratives (“Nationalist”, “Marxist” and “Liberal”) which are supposed to be applied to the student’s interpretation of particular historical events (there are several examples of such events such as the Discovery of the American continent in 1492, the French Revolution in 1789 or the Outbreak of WW1 in 1914, but the events can be adjusted according to individual needs of any teacher, groups of students etc.).

All students should be divided into teams representing various editorial staff that have been sent to the past to explore the selected famous historical events and then to refer about them to our contemporary public. Each team should be composed of approximately 3–4 students. However, since there are different journals that the distinguished editorial staff work for, there are 3 abovementioned different worldviews (narratives) which these teams should advocate and write according to. Hence, even though students’ expeditions travel together to a definite historical period (for instance to the year 1492), they differ in their worldviews and so, even though they had the same opportunity to see the same historical event with their own eyes, their reflections about these events might be completely dissimilar. The selection of the narrative – i.e. which team would work for which journal – is arbitrary, it might be both defined by a teacher or students can choose it as well, nonetheless, all narratives should be represented in a similar way (for instance, if there are 20 students in a class, there will be probably 6 groups, which means there should be 2 nationalist journals, 2 Marxist journals and 2 liberal journals).

The essential meaning of this complex exercise should therefore remain the same: to present both historical events and social values not as absolutes and final facts that must be just accepted, but as a space for various interpretations. Students should also find out that even though these interpretations might be dangerous when they are misused for ideological purposes, we should still understand them if we do not want to get lost in the contemporary world of narratives, in which the ability to work with words and symbols is crucial.
 

Teacher’s Instructions:

At the beginning, the students should be presented with the basic information about the fictional situation: i.e. that our civilization is equipped with a time machine and today’s public is therefore very intrigued by the “news” regarding the historical events. We all are now journalists working for different journals that differ mainly in their worldviews (i.e. students are supposed to be informed about 3 distinguished narratives that are relevant to understanding the current society and that will be important for the exercise: Nationalist, Marxist and Liberal) and whose main task is to travel to the past events and write articles about our “everyday experience” (i.e. eyewitness account of the selected events such as the French Revolution etc.).

Before the teacher selects the first historical event that will be described by the students’ journal teams, all students must be divided into groups (3-4 students per each group) and these groups must be assigned to one of the abovementioned narratives)

When each team knows its own narrative, it will gain the List of narrative words (see Worksheet below) i.e. the list of selected words, collocations and phrases that are typical of one of the three aforementioned worldviews (Nationalist, Marxist, Liberal). This list has been created by the author of this material on the basis of academic literature and the discourse analysis of current journal language which has enabled to identify 30–40 specific terms that have been assessed as typical collocations of each of the abovementioned types of discourse (Cvrček, Čermák & Schiedtová, 2010; Fidelius, 2016).

Each “journal team” should also make up its own title of their “newspaper” that should correspond to the narrative that they support

With the help of this List, each team is expected to provide their interpretation of the selected historical event based on the world-view that they are assumed to advocate by writing a newspaper article of approximately 8–10sentences. All teams should have an Internet access at their disposal to be able to look for particular important historical pieces of information about the defined event (i.e. the thing is that the exercise should not test the level of students’ historical knowledge but their ability and skills to apply the discursive and narrative interpretation of historical reality; hence, even students who are not very well aware of the details of the French revolution are supposed to be employed and have an opportunity to find the required information online).

Of course, the differences in ideological explanations are supposed to be the first clue that the teams should follow to write article in the defined narrative (i.e. concerning the interpretation of the French Revolution, Nationalist narrative should promote the ideal of national greatness and threat, Marxist narrative an opportunity for class fight and Liberal narrative use the vision of emancipatory ideals etc.) However, since the content is not thinkable without “right” words and teams are thus equipped with the “narrative dictionaries”, the “journal teams” should focus on the precise work with the language as their primary goal.

When all “journal teams” are ready, they will present their solutions in two possible ways:

• If a teacher expects the presentation during the same lesson when the exercise has been assigned; in such case, each team should just read its article one by one and the other teams are expected to listen carefully and then decide which narrative has been presented in each case and how they were able to recognize it
• If a teacher is willing to reserve more time for the activity and students are allowed to present their articles during the next lesson, all teams can be asked to work not only on the content and discursive part of their articles, but also on their graphic and aesthetical form.

After the presentation of each team, the rest of students should decide which narrative has just been presented and to what extent the “journal team” has managed to apply their assigned narrative to the selected historical event (whether the article was intelligible, if “right” words were included, how convincing the article was etc.). It means that after the previous part of the activity is finished and the teams can present their suggested solutions, the discussion opens and students present their modus operandi, i.e., explain how they proceeded with their writing and which attributes were decisive for the usage of significant nuances in each of the articles. Thanks to these presentations, all the teams can then try to delimit and name four different styles of “history writing” as well as define their typical traits, phrases, interpretative tools etc. The extent and application of the worksheet might, of course, vary depending on the size of the groups, age of students and the main aim that each teacher wants to achieve (for example the expected length of assigned articles, amount and level of difficulty of words that are expected to be applied etc.)

At the end, a teacher should sum up with students the main principles, messages and outcomes of this activity, i.e.:

• to understand that all interpretations of historical events are contextually or even ideologically based and thus might be biased
• that history is not only the object of scientific research but an indispensable and significant part of the “cultural” and “identitary wars (i.e. the ideological tensions in the current world over the “right” interpretation of the past)
• to realize how important and powerful is the language for both political and our everyday life

In all parts of this e-module (i.e. the topics of freedom, manipulation and misinterpretation of history), it is inevitable to open issues that might be considered sensitive and controversial. Hence, it is highly recommended to use politically correct and “neutral” inclusive language which is devoid of any kinds of unequal and unfair treatment of minority perspectives, freed from both auto- and hetero-stereotypes as well as ethnic, racial, religious or gender prejudices. All established issues and questions are opened to the pluralist principles of dialogue, negotiation, mediation and discussion including Rawlsian “overlapping consensus” and liberal notion of free and peaceful of the dialogue between competing worldviews. During the whole realization of the programme, these principles and methods are treated as necessary for maintaining the pluralist and safe environment of the community of enquiry:

• Establish common and consensual principles of work in groups
• Implement safe and obligatory rules of free, democratic and non-offending discussion
• Setting the difference between “exchange of views” and “personal attacks”
• In the case of collision of ideas, the teacher is expected to argue and explain, not to criticize and evaluate
• Make sure that students can identify with the group that they work in and that they can accept the rules and principles of role-playing games and simulations
• All members of the group can feel both freedom as well as responsibility for the common collective work and should take the sensitivity of the controversial topics into account
• All topics, arguments and examples should be discussed with respect to social, cultural, political, geographical contexts and differences
• All the work should support and respect the principle of free proliferation of data, information, ideas and sources
• All arguments should be based on the free, relevant and responsible work with sources of knowledge and information
• All fake news, irrelevant sources and misinterpretation should be identified, analysed and rejected for the needs of free democratic debate
• The particular needs and opinions of each student should be taken into consideration; hence, the teacher should flexibly and continuously change the activities, methods as well as approaches
• All members (teachers and students) are expected to use non-discriminatory language and ethical approaches in the discussion
• All students should feel free not to take part in any phase of the project or to decide not to carry on in the project in the case that their worldview or personal mindset would not correspond with the essential principle of any of the employed activities (i.e. the teacher constantly takes care of their own and students’ comfort and safety).