History As Performance, Understanding Safety Beliefs
Fifty years ago, I was teaching 10-year-old children the love of History.
When I was the same age, History was presented as ‘facts’ you copied off the board into your botany book. Back then, the teacher would fill the board with text on colonialism and we’d just copy it. History was about how the white English came to rescue the black heathens for salvation. Thanks god, Captain Cook and Arthur Phillip were our saviours.
That is not the kind of History I studied at University in 1971. I was first introduced to Annales History and Historiography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annales_school) where social history of the everyday was the focus. Gone were the assumptions of ‘facts’, ‘Kings and Queens’ and the ideologies of dominant powers, to a view of History ‘from below’. This was my first encounter with the wonderful work of Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch in what became known as ‘History of Mentalities’.
In Annales History, one sees the world through the filter of experience in an existentialist History. And, in this kind of History I found that History came alive. We no longer studied the ‘facts’ of History but rather Historiography, the philosophy of History beginning with the critique of History. This involved the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of History and deconstructing the prejudices of History. Our first reading was What is History? by E H Carr (https://archive.org/details/whatishistorybye0000unse).
The purpose of this kind of History is to foster Critical Thinking and the Deconstruction of text to discover social meaning in History. This is also connected to the work of Halliday in Language as Social Semiotics (https://archive.org/details/languagecontextt0000hall). This is the kind of History that should be applied to the history of Safety.
It is this kind of History that best helps us understand the development and beliefs of Safety. In this kind of thinking we join social semiotics with the semiosis (meaning in discourse). This is what we did in our recent SPoR studies of safety beliefs: https://safetyrisk.net/safety-beliefs-by-semiotic-evidence/; https://safetyrisk.net/more-safety-beliefs-by-semiotics/
If you want to know what Safety believes, simply pull together its semiotics, semiosis, History and what it professes
So, 50 years ago, rather than study texts and events, I wrote a musical (called The RIverlanders) so the children could perform and experience History through costume, dance, music and song.
In preparation, we visited places of significance and explored the way people lived in the region 100 years ago. We witnessed their dress, customs, rituals, music, songs, dance and the way they lived and what they believed. This is what cultural studies is all about.
That’s right, you can do cultural studies with 10-year-olds.
Then, we put together a set of songs and a performance of what we had learned. You can see old photos of us putting on our performance below.
One of the most important things we learned (in the hidden curriculum) is that performance is NOT assessable.
We didn’t perform to be analysed, scored, measured or marked. We performed to experience, learn and share our learning. And what is more, the parents came and joined in and shared in our learning.
Then then took our musical on tour and shared it with all the schools in the region so that they too could experience History as lived.
Over my teaching career I wrote five musicals that were performed, including one on the History of Time. In each case, we practiced Annales History, semiotic meaning and the experience of History in performance. This is how we experienced History and taught ten-year-olds to think critically. Rather than ‘teach’ History, we experienced History in performance.
So, if you are attracted to the language of ‘performance’ my first question would be, what is performance? Are you measuring performance? What are you learning IN performance and by performance?
Further, read Elam The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (https://archive.org/details/semioticsoftheat0000elam).
Performance comes alive, just as History comes alive when you stop measuring.
The same can be said of safety. The best way to kill the meaning of safety is to frame the world through the ideology of measurement (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-measurement-in-risk-and-safety/). The best way to kill ‘real meeting’ and ‘conversation’ is to carry a safety agenda. No wonder Safety loves human organisational PERFORMANCE.
If you’re in love with the word ‘performance’ in safety, then you’re doing traditional safety, regardless of how you brand what you do (https://safetyrisk.net/the-branded-x-walk-in-safety/).
The best walks, the best engagement and the best performance in safety, is when safety is NOT the agenda and performance is about experience not measures.
Prof. Robert Long
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