Innovative teaching and cross-border projects are key to going beyond a purely national version of history and will be vital to post-conflict teaching and reconciliation following the war in Ukraine, say European education experts.
The teaching of the war and the context from which it started will be vital to post-conflict reconciliation, said delegates at a three-day conference on innovation in history teaching in Brussels hosted by the Council of Europe.
Sociology teacher Zorana Matićević pointed to a series of partnerships between teachers in Serbia, North Macedonia and Cyprus, of which she is a project team leader, in teaching about the Second World War.
These involve twinning projects between schools, weeks of remembrance and developing joint lesson plans.
The main purpose of such initiatives is “not to reconcile with our enemies but with our own dark sides and histories”, said Christina Koulouri of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens.
“We need regional projects where bilateral conflict can be contextualised,” she added.
Hosted by the Council of Europe, the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe seeks to improve the quality of history teaching by tackling “historical manipulations” and the use of history as propaganda and to “enhance the understanding of democratic culture” through quality education.
Established in 2020, the Observatory now has the support of 17 member states across Europe and has received €1 million in financial support from the European Commission.
‘At a time when historical falsifications and manipulations are rampant on social networks, history can be used as a tool for propaganda to justify the unjustifiable,” said the Observatory.
“In this context, historical education through all its vectors has an essential role to play in promoting the contribution of critical thinking as a democratic foundation to respond to contemporary challenges,” it added.
The nature of history education in Europe has become a hotly contested topic in recent years, in large part because of its unique role as a source of national identity, values and ideology.
Well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last Feburary, educators have been wrestling with how to best approach Europe’s legacy of world wars, ethnic-based conflicts, civil wars, and recent transitions to democracy and colonialism.
Teachers across Europe face some similar challenges. Since there is no common policy on curricula or teaching, ethnocentric bias in the teaching of history is present across the continent, while any changes to the history textbooks in most countries depend on national ministries of education which exercise tight control over the content of school curricula and books.
Moreover, delegates said that putting together such projects with historians in conflict-affected regions such as South East Europe and the Balkans remains difficult.
“It is a mistake to try to get rid of national history, the question is how to live with it,” said Susanne Popp of the International Society for History Didactics.
Increasingly, the focus of educators is on teaching that there is more than one interpretation of historical events.
“We need history as a means to know what our common heritage is but that has to be balanced with multiperspectivity,” Portuguese education minister, João Costa, told EURACTIV.
“We should not be using history to create a single version of facts.”
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
