Definition - Specific Aspects

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Specific aspects of the School System, and the Role of these as Sources for the Fields of History and Education.

Why is it important for pupils to turn to pictorial sources in history lessons?

Processing past worlds and epochs via text only produces a one-sided and incomplete view. After all, pupils perceive the present via images to a large extent too. Pictorial sources provide easier access to certain fields. A map, for instance, is practically impossible to convey via text. Equally, the most authentic insights into everyday life in school, the classroom, the school atmosphere and rituals are accessible via images; the habitus and external impressions of pupils and teachers are easier to convey visually.

There are also methodological reasons for extending the approach: only thus can variety and a higher motivation level be achieved in the classroom.

Pupils encounter images in textbooks and supplementary print material, or they are provided by the teacher as objects or reproductions – electronically or via an overhead projector.  

As a result of their work with pictorial sources, pupils can:

• Improve their perceptual abilities (calm and thoughtful contemplation rather than ‘fleeting glances’);
• Learn how to interpret images through secure methodology;
• Learn how to question images and investigate their contexts;
• Become resistant to the suggestive forces of images;
• Learn how to place critical distance between themselves and the image (critical verification of sources);
• Recognise the advantages and limitations of images as a source genre;
• Develop a sensitivity to the ways in which images can be manipulative.

Pupils should also develop an awareness for the fact that images can themselves be unauthentic and thus oblivious to the ‘historically critical moment’. They may be manipulated by effects attained with soft-focus effects, certain lens apertures and filters. They may be printed as mirror images, or they may be simply counterfeit.

There are classic examples of this phenomenon from the Stalinist Era.

 Nowadays, in the area of digital photography, the editing process in the evolution of an image is taken for granted. There is therefore only a very fine line left between manipulation and – ultimately – counterfeiting.

The value of a photograph in providing evidence has therefore decreased significantly . 

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