Abstract

This chapter deals with the contribution of both formal and informal history education to the possibility of imagining the future. It considers that history education is indeed related not only to the past but also to both the present and the future. Also, from a theoretical point of view, this chapter develops the idea that Orwell envisaged this relation between past, present and future in his classic novel 1984. The chapter shows that both formal and informal present practices of history education should be revised in order to promote a full comprehension of the relation past–present–future and avoid an essentialist and romantic view of the past, which does not allow for understanding either the present or the future.