Revista UNINPAHU No 9

28 Pp 23 - 31. Nº 9, octubre de 2013
en serio toda la investigación y todo. Entonces
fue como un gran avance.” 11 (Final Interview)
It is significant the way in which these
students experienced the touch of the past.
Josefina declares that seeing the telegram
was a confirmation that Saturio’s story was
real because until that point she, like other
students, still thought it was an invented story,
“algo imaginario” 12 . In Josefina’s case the touch
of the past becomes more a substantiation, an
evidential rather than a sensory experience.
The reality of the past is revealed here through
a personal and factual contact with a proof
from the past that talks about concrete events
taking place in specific times and places. In
other words, to see the telegram translates into
a validation of Saturio’s account, proof for the
students that Saturio’s life really took place in
a space and time. I suggest interpreting this
turn as an acceptance of Saturio’s historical
existence, that his life was part of the social
time of the human, and more specifically part
of our collective past.
Similarly, Mercedes remarks that they did not
even believe the telegram existed, but instead
it was made up. Carlos recalls that clearing up
doubts about the existence and truth of our
drama-remembrance process pre-text, Saturio’s
story, helped the research. Both students
highlight the positive consequence of this
discovery in the development of their research.
It helped to move the project on; “fue como un
gran avance” 13 . It is telling to realize that at this
level, at this point of the research, after all our
previous drama exploration work, they did
not yet believe the telegram and Saturio’s story
happened and hence had historical existence.
Reflecting on this, I think that for students
to confirm that the telegram and Saturio’s
story were historically real was important in
terms of the formation of a public memory
consciousness. Finding out that Saturio was
real, that his story and life events took place
in a specific location and time span of our
collective memory, was important not only as
meaningful historical knowledge but in terms
of the historical awareness this knowledge
generates. This is an important point in regard
to the work of memory understood in terms of
recovering of the past, overcoming historical
oblivion and the formation of a critical historical
consciousness; “nos tomamos mas en serio toda la
investigación”. 14
There were other trajectories within which
Montessori students experienced the touch
of the past during their visit to the Colombian
History Archive. Other participants took
different directions, different routes in their
encounter with the paths of the past: learning
through the past. Learning through the past is
a pedagogical experience that involves both the
learning of the past and the learning from the
past. We learn about the past when we get to
know the events of the past and when we pay
attention to the telling of the past.
Important history and disciplinary learning,
powerful encounters with traces of the past,
and deep individual and collective involvement
constituted the main pedagogical components
of the Colombian National History Archive
experience. Alvaro, 16 years old, and Beatriz,
15 years old, commented:
(11) “It meant so much cause to have the opportunity to take in our hands the telegram was so strange, cause we never
thought we could have the telegram like that, we always saw it in photocopies and you gave it to us but we never had
it right there in our hands, we never thought like holding it, to tell the truth. Simply we thought it was just a photocopy
and that’s it. And most of us didn’t believe that it was written by someone, instead that it was just invented. To tell the
truth we didn’t even think the telegram was real. When we could see it and everything at the National Archive, well it
was different because we then took more seriously the research and everything. It was like a big advance”.
(12) “something imaginary”
(13) “it was like a big advance”
(14) “we then took more seriously the research”