Local History for Students: Research to Discover Identity and Promote Reconciliation

Despite numerous educational modernizations, textbooks and classroom approaches often pay tribute to “big history” alone, overshadowing the role of the common man, families, and communities. In addition, some instinctive emphasis is placed on major contradictions, which lead to confrontations and tensions of varying magnitude. Without denying these well-established approaches, the academic and civic community is proposing innovations that would stimulate open dialogue between generations and cultures and promote reconciliation with the past and more democratic projections in the future. A historical research competition for students, developed on the basis of European experience, promoted by the EUSTORY network in Moldova, and supported by German Foreign Office, has reached its third edition. In this ambitious endeavor, students are encouraged to discover elements of “small, grassroots history” at individual, family, and community level, as important components of “big history”, which can influence the attitudes and values of people from different generations, help direct public discourse towards sensitive issues such as identity, and contribute to the democratic course of our country. The article presents a number of practices, which we hope the readers will find both new and useful