History Education in a Climate of Crisis

Description

Global discourse is full of hyperbole and vocabulary that, as often as not, has lost meaning through overuse – consider the terms ‘fantastic,’ ‘incredible,’ or ‘awesome’, for example, none of which retain their literal meanings in contemporary usage. Where hyperbole has become normality, it is hard to find the language to register truly ‘epoch making’ change, a fact that creates certain challenges for public history and for history education, particularly if we are to understand these as enterprises in facilitating our public ‘time management’ and an understanding of the stories through which we can make sense of our worlds. And yet, this is precisely the language that we need in the face of the literally ‘epochalyptic’ situation that it is increasingly accepted that we are now in. Can history education, broadly understood, rise to the challenge and what impact has the COVID 19 pandemic had on society's perspective regarding the climate crisis?

Keywords

Crisis

Historiography

Historical Consciousness

Athropocene

Epochality

History Teaching

Climate Change

Pandemic