歷史教學宣言

Keith C. Barton和Linda S. Levstik說得好，他們在《Teaching History for the Common Good》中說到：「Care-less history strikes us as a soulless enterprise, a constraint on motivation that warrants reconsideration of the subject's place in the curriculum...Without care, we (teachers) could not possibly engage them (students) in humanistic study...All our concerns - whether as historians, teachers, or students - must originate in the present, because that's all we have; anything we know or believe about history derives from the questions we ask in our own lives today. If this kind of presentism is immature, then we don't want to grow up. We care a lot more about the victims of the Trail of Tears than about Andrew Jackson's thought processes.」

我不滿足於將「歷史」變成學生思考的素材，我不滿足於將「歷史」解剖成血肉模糊的主題，我不滿足於學生將「歷史」視為事不關己的「事件」，我不滿足於歷史教師手執教科書、照本宣科地重覆無意義的句子，我不滿足於「歷史教學」成為訓練生「能力」的技藝，我不滿足於將歷史教師視為無主見的課程執行者。

已忘了是誰說的話：I don't care how much you know, till I know how much you care!
我一直以這話作為學生給我的挑戰。

正如美國總統奧巴馬的Yes We Can，我也認同Barton和Levstik所說：We can care about the people and events of the past when we select some as more interesing or personally meaningful than others, we can care that particular events took place when we react to the triumphs or tragedies of the past, we can care for people in history when we want to respond to suffering by the victims of injustice or oppression, and we can care to change our beliefs or behaviors in the present based on what we have learned from our study of the past.
YES! WE CAN CARE!