How children and youngsters narrate and depict the past and the future during the American independences bicentennial celebrations

Abstract

This article comments the general guidelines of a content analysis of the symbolic representations depicted in narratives and illustrations by Colombian children and youngsters aged 6 to 18 years old, who responded to the Google platform invitation as part of the celebration of American independences bicentennial.Different forms of expression, such as short texts, commentaries, drawings or doodles, reveal the current meaning and relevance of a topic that is beyond the borders of a historiographical analysis, equally dealing with the processes of subjectivity configuration in countries with a singular historical evolution of “late modernity”, the tortuous and still unachieved constitution of a collective subject —the so-called nation—, or with the way of shaping "a shared narrative, the fabric of a national history loaded with the emotions of proper names” (Carretero and Kriger, 2004: 77) .This text offers an analysis of the conditions of possibility of contemporary younger generations’historical imagination, along with a question on the effectiveness of teaching a national history that is challenged by the need of promoting social critical thinking in the clas-sroom.  generations’historical imagination, along with a question on the effectiveness of teaching a national history that is challenged by the need of promoting social critical thinking in the classroom.