In Roger Simon's new collection based on ten years of research, the respected scholar reminds us that historically traumatic events simultaneously summon forgetting and remembrance in unique ways. The Touch of the Past explores the ways in which remembrance, consciousness, and history affect how students learn and educators teach. Simon examines how testimonies of historic events influence learning and how communities deal with collective memory. A serious contribution to the research in education and memory and trauma studies from a top philosopher in the field.
"Roger Simon's pioneering work is distinguished by profound attention to ethical relations of learning, deep theoretical knowledge, and a demanding theoretical exposition. . . . [The Touch of the Past] is a major contribution to the cultural studies of pedagogy and ethics . . . [it is a] text of great distinction . . . rigorous in its scholarly commitment and profound in its topic." - Deborah P. Britzman, Professor of Education, York University, and author of After-Education: Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and Psychoanalytic Histories of Learning.