Page 200 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 8
who both played important roles in the Dutch colonial past. Teachers might not know how to teach such topics to students. The three-stage framework might help them to design lessons. The framework, for example, can be used to develop a case about Jan Pieterszoon Coen. What should be done with his statue in the city of Hoorn? This question can be discussed after a short description of the acts of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. In the following lesson activity, the students can examine the different frames of reference to reconstruct a historical context. Finally, the students can provide a well- considered answer to the question based on a created historical context.
8.6 A call to conduct domain-specific research
The Golden Coach of the Dutch royal family shows a painting (in Dutch: Hulde der Koloniën) in which slaves offer some of their belongings to the royal family. In one of my lessons, I asked my eighth-grade students a provoking question: should this coach be banned? Look at the painting. Is it okay to glorify slavery in the past of the Netherlands? The majority of my students found that the coach should be banned and that the royal family should be ashamed of themselves for riding in such a coach. Next, I reconstructed the historical context of the coach with my students. When was it made? What was occurring in Europe and in the world at that time? Who made the painting? Afterwards, I asked my students the same question: should the coach be banned? Now, the students were far subtler in their reactions. They considered that the coach was built in the year 1898, when the possession of colonies was common among many European countries, and that there were beliefs and values different from present-day attitudes. One student noted that the coach should not be banned but rather be used to raise people’s awareness of the differences between the past and the present. I had a great day.
How my teaching improved by conducting this PhD research is beyond the scope of this thesis, but I believe that my students are more engaged in history and that they are better equipped for participating in subsequent education and in our society. This research also taught me how to train student history teachers more effectively in teaching historical contextualization. This is therefore a call for teachers and teacher educators to conduct domain-specific research.
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