From personal memories to public histories of education: a challenge for the historian

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the possibilities that the study of personal memories offers to historians of education. All the arguments revolve around three questions: (1) What is your first memory? From this starting point we explore research dealing with autobiographical memories, both earliest and school memories, as well as future possibilities in educational historiography. (2) How would I like to be remembered? This question is related to the memories and archives of ‘the forgotten’ – in this case, schoolteachers ‒ and the role of historians as ‘heirs’ to these memories, in line with Walter Benjamin’s metaphor. (3) What happens when personal memories become public? This question leads us to reflect on the processes that convert academic narratives into public discourse. When this occurs, the historian loses control of these narratives and is confronted with a dilemma: to become a public intellectual or to go back to the privacy of his/her archives.