From JEMMS 2/2011: Learning to Remember Slavery: School Field Trips and the Representation of Difficult Histories in English Museums

Abstract

Drawing on the fields of education, memory and cultural studies, this article argues that, as important cultural memory products, government-sponsored museum education initiatives require the same attention that history textbooks receive. It investigates the performance of recent shifts in historical consciousness in the context of museum field trip sessions developed in England in tandem with the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Analysis of fieldwork data is presented in order to illustrate some of the complexities inherent in the way difficult histories are represented and taught to young people in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to citizenship education.