Education and Historical Justice: Redress, Reparations and Reconciliation in the Classroom

Education and Historical Justice explores how global movements for historical redress and reconciliation are reshaping education and schooling.

This book is the first to theorize the important and growing nexus between education and historical justice engaging questions of temporality, narrativity and responsibility. It considers how educational policy, curriculum, pedagogy, and materials are being reformed to address goals of historical justice, redress and reparations globally, with a focus on Australia, Canada, Northern Ireland and South Africa. It places these changes and challenges in historical context drawing on international human rights law, political and historical theory, and histories of education, to account for the growing role of education in the pursuit of historical justice. Finally, it assesses how education oriented towards historical justice reconfigures subjectivities and raises questions around complicity, guilt, and collective responsibility which have important implications for educators, researchers, and policymakers.

James Miles is Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Mati Keynes is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow in History and Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia.