Page 32 - Balancing between the present and the past

Chapter 2
Third, students have to avoid presentism, the bias by which people assume that the same goals, intentions, attitudes, and beliefs existed in the past as they exist today (e.g., Barton, 1996; Barton & Levstik, 2004; Lee & Ashby, 2001; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Shemilt, 1983; Stahl, Hynd, Britton, McNish, & Bosquet, 1996; VanSledright & Afflerbach, 2000; Wineburg, 2001). The failure to perform HPT—and, therefore, the failure to explain, evaluate, or describe the past—often stems from this type of reasoning (Lee & Ashby, 2001; Wineburg, 2001). Its danger is explicitly mentioned in the American National Standards for History, which demands that students “avoid present-mindedness, judging the past solely in terms of the norms and values of today” (National Center for History in the Schools, 1996).
History education research has debated the extent to which HPT is an affective or cognitive achievement (e.g., Barton & Levstik, 2004; Davis, 2001; Endacott, 2010; Foster & Yeager, 1998). Some researchers claim that it is predominately a cognitive function (e.g., Foster, 1999; Lee & Ashby, 2001; Stern, 1998), and others claim that it is more an affective process (Riley, 1998; Skolnick et al., 2004). Although affective processes, such as connecting with known and familiar emotions of people in the past, may be at work during HPT, we consider it to be predominately a cognitive process in which students, based on historical evidence, perform historical contextualization and historical empathy and avoid presentism.
2.2.2 Addressing the different needs of students
Unfortunately, we know relatively little about which students suffer from presentism and which students can perform HPT successfully. In accordance with Piaget’s theory of the stages of cognitive development, researchers, such as Hallam (1970), have concluded that historical thinking is not possible for people younger than 16 years of age. These students cannot be expected to cope with abstract concepts or investigation, analysis, and interpretation—all of which are elements required to perform HPT successfully. However, Brophy and VanSledright (1997) argue that fifth graders (ages 10–11 years) can overcome their tendencies toward presentism and other biases to identify and empathize with people from the past. A general consensus among scholars concurs that children are capable of historical reasoning and HPT much earlier than Hallam suggested (e.g., Barton, 1997; Foster & Yeager, 1999; Levstik & Smith, 1996; VanSledright, 2002).
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