Telling Children About the Past

This book brings together archeologists, historians, psychologists, and educators from different countries and academic traditions to address the many ways that we tell children about the (distant) past. The concern with this issue is founded on the principle that knowing the past is fundamentally important for human societies, as well as for individual development. The subject is introduced through a consideration of the cognitive and psychological processes that enable children to conceptualize a past at all. Then the many informal and formal contexts of telling are reviewed: digital and printed media, museums and cultural heritage sites, and schools and special classrooms. Benefits and disadvantages of various contexts and approaches are discussed, all seen through the eyes of professionals within these fields. Throughout this discussion, the authors expose many of unquestioned assumptions and preformed images that are routinely presented to contemporary children in narratives of the past. The contributors both examine the ways in which children come to grips with the past at the beginning of the 21st century and critically assess the many ways in which contemporary societies and an increasing number of commercial agents construct and use the past. Considering the widening gap between contemporary theoretical advances in archaeology and what is disseminated to the young, the question is raised about which past we want our children to inherit.