Education, history, and memory in the Chilean school: A perspective on Chile's recent history from the narratives of high school students

This chapter presents an analysis of the main problems and challenges related to teaching and learning Chile's recent history. This analysis relates the authors' experience with theoretical production in the context of a transitional society characterized by post-conflict. The emergence and relevance of the typical matters of teaching recent history are based on a dialogue among disciplinary perspectives including the New Social History, theorizations about memory as an interdisciplinary category, and the materialization of the secondary students' historical learning through their narratives of the past. The discussion of memory and history are contextualized within the Hispano-American context, particularly in the Southern Cone of the continent. The chapter follows a socio-cultural theoretical perspective along with the theoretical contributions from an analysis of historical awareness. The findings describe historical explanations of Chilean students, which allow them to understand the present and recognize intersection points among their narratives and the reference frameworks established by a dominant national curriculum.