What Should School History Be? Reflections on the aims of school history and Manifesto per la Didattica della Storia

Abstract

This paper begins by elaborating arguments about the aims that history education should serve and by discussing practical arrangements necessary to support those aims. A case is made for history education informed by strong epistemic and disciplinary understandings and by developed understandings of historical narrative and the uses of the past. This optic is then applied to the evaluation of Centro Internazionale di Didattica della Storia e del Patrimonio (DiPaSt)’s Manifesto per la Didattica della Storia.

Keywords

• history education
• historical epistemology
• historical narratives
• uses of past