Facing History and Ourselves and Voice of Witness have partnered to provide educators with the tools, techniques, and resources to teach students how to conduct, share, and learn from oral history. Now in its pilot phase, the project aims to marry the compelling power of oral history, as demonstrated by the Voice of Witness book series, and tested classroom instruction, as demonstrated by Facing History and Ourselves content and pedagogy.
Facing History’s work is based on the premise that we need to and can teach civic responsibility, tolerance, and social action to young people, as a way of fostering moral adulthood. The Voice of Witness book series uses oral history as a foundation to illuminate human rights crises around the world, giving voice to those whose stories might otherwise go unheard.
Our broader goal for the project is to create a national program, and to forge a long-standing partnership between the two organizations, in order to empower students with a participatory vision of history, not as a pre-determined series of events, but as a series of choices made by individuals and groups, as they learn from the oral histories of living witnesses.
Click here to read more about the project and view samples of student work.
