Goh Chor Boon (National Institute of Education, Singapore)

Keywords
History
Junior College
Secondary School
History

In 1965, Masuji Ibuse, a native son of Hiroshima, published his Black Rain (Kuroi Ame).[i] The novel is masterful reconstruction of death from radiation sickness based on the diary of a Hiroshima survivor plus interviews with some 50 hibakusha or victims of the atomic holocaust. Ibuse’s sensitivity to the complex web of emotions in a traditional community torn asunder by this historical event has made Black Rain one of the most acclaimed treatments of the Hiroshima story.

This article aims to demonstrate how “assessment” issues go beyond testing of historical understanding, meeting examination requirements, teaching strategies and other pedagogical concerns, to include wider implications of how historical knowledge is reviewed and re-assessed by historians and history educators.  It was motivated by a recent discussion I had with two upper secondary history teachers who have been teaching for five to seven years. Both do not teach beyond the dropping of “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and “Fat Man” on Nagasaki to indicate their end of their teaching on the Pacific War in August 1945. When asked why is there no discussion on the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bombs, one teacher replied that it is not in the syllabus, while another admitted that she has no knowledge of the topic to generate discussion with the pupils.[ii] In short, pupils’ historical knowledge on the end of the Pacific War literally ended with the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”. They are not able to judge and evaluate America’s decision to drop the bombs and to appreciate the impact of the decision.

If we are passionate about teaching History, and to impart the craft of the historian to our pupils, we have to give pupils a more holistic understanding (or “Total History”) of the events in history and their relevance to our lives today. We need to allow our pupils to appreciate – and to interpret – the wider implications of development of events in the past and present.  This implies that to promote historical understanding and meaningful assessment for learning, we need to anchor decisions on ‘what’ and ‘how’ to assess to the clarity of purpose, that is, the ‘why’. Pupils would then be able to appreciate concepts of Change and Continuity, Cause and Consequence (or Causation), Similarity and Difference, and Historical Empathy. It is also important to note that, if the teacher has his/her biased interpretation of a historical event, such as the war in the Pacific, it is likely to be reflected in his/her narration of events. The sources selected could also reinforce the teacher’s biased interpretation. We all know that History is one subject that provides opportunities for the teacher to influence the perceptions of pupils towards the historical past, especially controversial, turning-points events.

One of the stated learning outcomes related to the end of the War is to “empathise with people who have lived through trying times under extreme conditions” (Division, 2012: 29). The “people” referred to were those living in Singapore or broadly human beings whose lives were devastated by war.  We know that History is one of the best subjects in the curriculum to develop empathy in the young. Historical empathy involves the ability to look at people, events and issues in the past as the people in the past would have looked at them. This means that our pupils will be expected to comment on history from the point of view of someone who was living at that period of time under discussion. To understand what happened in the past they must learn to set aside their own ideas and background and picture themselves in the past. The pupils need to think about feelings, motives, attitudes, beliefs and opinions of the people living in a specific place and time in history. To do this, they have to use their imagination. History as narratives deals with basic and powerful emotions familiar even to younger children (Egan, 1979; Levstik and Barton, 2008). Understanding history is more than just equipping pupils with knowledge. We need to make them see the significance of events, to develop insights into the social and moral values that led to the unfolding of events within the particular historical circumstances.