Learning With the Past: Racism, Education and Reparative Futures

This chapter discusses the importance of historical thinking for futures-oriented policy in education. It proposes that a concept of ‘reparative futures’ can be a generative basis for knowledge and learning, not only in formal educational institutions, but in community organizations, workplaces and in all sites of cultural exchange. The idea of reparative futures signals a commitment to identify and recognize the injustices visited on, and experienced by, individuals and communities in the past. It understands that these past injustices, even when they appear to be distant in time or ‘over’, will continue to endure in people’s lives in material and affective ways unless, and until, they are consciously and carefully addressed. Although there are certainly different languages and forms of reparative address, the chapter suggests that critical practices of historical thinking can offer a vital starting point for critiquing and reformulating the interrelations of past, present and future.