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eBook details
- Title: Chapter 4: Remembering Together: Reflections on the Value of Collective Historical Memory (Festschrift in Honor of O.L. Davis, Jr.)
- Author : Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue
- Release Date : January 01, 2009
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 71 KB
Description
Memory has become more important to me as I age. The older I get, the more I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time and mental energy in attempts to bring some event, idea, name, not to mention untold misplaced items, into the present moment so that I might make use of them. When I consider the nature of historical memory, my thoughts often turn to O.L. Davis, Jr. and how he has helped me and, no doubt, countless others value the importance of remembering together about the knowledge worth knowing. In 1999, in a letter nominating O.L. for Distinguished Alumnus of the University of North Texas, I wrote that if the word mentor had not existed in our language, we surely would have had to invent it to describe O.L.'s life work with his students. He has urged, cajoled, exhorted, and at times, even demanded that we develop a collective historical memory as a people and as scholars in the field of curriculum studies, in particular. Why such a career-long emphasis on the past? After I had conceived of the focus and title of this paper, I was pleasantly surprised to find one clue in an editorial that O.L. wrote about the same topic in a 1995 volume of the Journal of Curriculum & Supervision. He began that essay by stating, "A people knows itself by what it remembers together" (1995a, p. 189) and then he warned us, "When any people--a family, a nation, and, certainly, a profession--fails to observe matters of importance, it is diminished and its fragility is magnified. Marking and remembering significance matter" (p. 189). And so I believe it is particularly fitting that we come together today to mark O.L.'s retirement and remember the significance of his scholarship and service on our own as well as on the fields of social studies education and curriculum studies. To better understand his passion for the importance of remembering together, we might be served by a brief look at some forms of historical memory and their uses to limit or to nurture the common good. For as O.L. (1995a) says, "Remembering arrives in multiple forms. Only sometimes does it require ritual observance. Remembrance enters the syntax of our lives and contributes to the rhythm of community" (p. 189). So in this essay I discuss various forms of historical memory as set forth by numerous scholars.