To educate the young first means to introduce them to shared memory and values. But education also includes an introduction to ongoing negotiations about social, political, economic, and cultural questions with respect to different actors and agencies, ensuring developments. Therefor pedagogy needs reflexive interpretations during and of these processes. Pedagogy, understood as the preparation of future generations for an unknown and unexpected future, must deal not only with the uncertainty of the future, but also with the certainty and uncertainty of values and memories. But does it need the past to anticipate the future?

Learning is - as stated before - related to the past; learning about (not from) the past is primarily about one viewpoint or narrative. Thus, pedagogical endeavours in transmitting history always run the risk of being dogmatic by insisting on one way of interpreting past and current conditions and of anticipating desired and undesired “futures”.  Nevertheless, pedagogy and “public pedagogy” (Giroux) are the most powerful actors in remembering and providing interpretations. Education in all stages thus refers to different memories and to diverse actors in the field of memory. If pedagogy aims to educate responsible, reflexive subjects, these subjects must be able to question memory without fundamentalism; additionally the provided worldview and the knowledge itself must be questioned and scrutinized. It is up to educational research to find a way to foster creative competences and skills among the younger generation and enable them to meet these requirements.

Assmann, J. (2008). Communicative and Cultural Memory. In A. Erll & A. Nünning (Eds.), Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (pp. 109–118). Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994). Reflexive Modernization. Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Benner, D. (2000). Reflexive versus affirmative Emanzipation. In C. Dietrich & H.-R. Müller (Eds.), Bildung und Emanzipation. Klaus Mollenhauer weiterdenken (pp. 33–41). Benner, D. (2004). Erziehung und Tradierung. Grundprobleme einer innovatorischen Theorie und Praxis der Überlieferung. Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Pädagogik, (2/3), 163–181. Benner, D., & English, A. (2004). Critique and Negativity: Towards the Pluralisation of Critique in Educational Practice, Theory and Research. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38(3), 409–428. Brumlik, M. (2010). Kultur als Erinnerung: Erinnerungsformen in der Kultur. Über das Verhältnis von Tradition und Bildung. In C. Dietrich & H.-R. Müller (Eds.), Die Aufgabe der Erinnerung in der Pädagogik (pp. 245–254). Cornelißen, C. (2003). Was heißt Erinnerungskultur? Begriff - Methoden - Perspektiven. Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (gwu), 54(10), 548–564. Dessí, R. (2008). Collective Memory , Cultural Transmission , and Investments. The American Economic Review, 98(1), 534–560. Dietrich, C., & Müller, H.-R. (2010). Die Aufgabe der Erinnerung in der Pädagogik. (C. Dietrich & H.-R. Müller, Eds.). Giddens, A. (1999). Tradition. Reith-Lectures 99. BBC. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/week3/week3.htm Giroux, H. A. (1999). Cultural studies as public pedagogy: Making the pedagogical more political. Retrieved from http://www.ffst.hr/ENCYCLOPAEDIA/doku.php?id=cultural_studies_and_public_pedagogy Kincheloe, J. L., & Berry, K. S. (2004). Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research. Conceptualizing the Bricolage. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1973). Das wilde Denken. Rüsen, J. (2012). Zeit und Sinn. Strategien historischen Denkens. Mit einer Einleitung zur Neuausgabe 2012. Shoham, H. (2011). Rethinking Tradition: From Ontological Reality to Assigned Temporal Meaning. European Journal of Sociology, 52(02), 313–340.