History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation

Reconsidering Joint Textbook Projects

Karina Korostelina, Simone Lässig, Karina V. Korostelina, Simone Lässig, Karina Korostelina, Karina V. Korostelina, Simone Lässig

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415523899
• eBook ISBN: 9781135100322
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Research in Education
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the role of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies, describing common history textbook projects in Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Far East and the Middle East.

Ever since the emergence of the modern school system and the implementation of compulsory education, textbooks have been seen as privileged media. The knowledge they convey is relatively persistent and moreover highly selective: every textbook author must choose and omit, condense, structure, reduce, and generalize information. Within this context, history textbooks are often at the centre of interest. There are unquestionably significant differences regarding homogeneity or plurality of interpretations when concepts of history education are compared internationally.

This volume conducts a comparative analysis of common history projects in different countries and provides conceptual frameworks and methodological tools for enhancing the roles of these projects in the processes of conflict prevention and resolution. This book is timely, as issues of history education in conflict and post-conflict societies are becoming more popular with the increased realisation that unresolved disagreements about historical narratives can, and often do, lead to renewed conflict or even violence.

This book will be of interest to students of peace studies and conflict resolution, political science, history, sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and international relations in general.

Introduction part 1

Post-conflict reconciliation and joint history textbook projects¹

Simone Lässig

In the course of the twentieth century, a period marked by violence, war and conflict, as well as the struggle for civility and relationships of trust and peace, the ambivalence of textbooks and conflicts was repeatedly an issue and was addressed on both a political and a scholarly level. With good reason: ever since the emergence of the modern school system and the implementation of compulsory education, textbooks have been seen as privileged media, enjoying more or less blanket coverage in their distribution, and thus ideal instruments of forming collective identities. What distinguishes textbooks from many other media and identity-building resources is, besides other aspects, the fact that the knowledge they convey is relatively persistent and moreover highly selective. Every textbook author must choose and omit, condense, structure, reduce and generalize information. This selection is in most countries authorized by the state and therefore often perceived either as particularly objective, truthful and relevant or, from the perspective of minority or victim groups striving for recognition, for instance, as an issue of fundamental distrust. Bearing in mind that school textbooks transport specific cultural, social and political codes aiming to come to terms with the complexity of the world and create a meaningful present and future for a given society, it becomes clear why they are such a relevant and often contested matter, especially in the aftermath of war, mass violence and conflict, and after fundamental transformations of political systems and/or cultural hegemonies.²

Within this context, history textbooks are often at the center of interest. There are unquestionably significant differences regarding homogeneity or plurality of interpretations when concepts of history education are compared internationally. Even so, in both authoritarian and democratic countries, history textbooks tend, strongly or moderately, to trace specific self-images and images of alleged “others” back into the past and to lend them specific validity, in specific cases to the point of constructing and legitimizing national superiority, collective victimhood, or hostility. History textbooks are usually seen as a key resource for shaping collective memories and fostering social cohesion. Regardless of the reluctance with which many students use textbooks and the limited impact such “old media” might actually have on identity formation for today's adolescents, textbooks nevertheless inherit a specific potential to freeze or even cause conflicts that can reach far beyond the feld of education. On the other hand, history textbooks are also seen to contribute towards overcoming hostility, to bring forward processes of social reconstruction and to support education for peace.³ In the prelude to and aftermath of World War I, pacifists and international stakeholders began to understand textbooks as sources and as a means with which to resolve conflicts, to promote mutual understanding between formerly hostile groups or nations and, finally, to encourage reconciliation.⁴

The following section of this introduction will outline how recent research has evaluated the significance of history textbooks within this framework today. It will also record what has been given particular emphasis in research, and what progress, according to researchers, has been achieved. Subsequently, the chapters of this volume will be situated within this research context, together with a discussion of the new aspects that this publication seeks to contribute to the scholarly debate. The following section will address some of the limitations of research until now, with thoughts on challenges and perspectives of textbook-related research, some of which are discussed in the chapters of this volume, while others deliberately reach beyond the scope of this book.

Current research and the status of scholarly discussion

Various studies have examined the potential of history teaching and textbooks to generate or perpetuate conflicts, as well as their potential to inspire peace and empathy. One area of focus within current research is the history of translateral or bilateral textbook revision.⁵ Alongside the widely known activities of supra-national institutions such as the League of Nations, UNESCO or the Council of Europe, regional initiatives which enjoyed success in their early years, such as the Scandinavian Föreningen Norden Association,⁶ and prominent textbook commissions such as those discussed in the contributions by Georg Stöber, Ulrich Pfeil and Corine Defrance, and Simone Lässig and Thomas Strobel, recent studies have also documented less known bilateral or multilateral activities and relevant networks.⁷

Another area of increasing focus in research since the 1990s addresses textbook-related conflicts and the connection between history instruction and the progress or hindering of understanding between (former) enemy groups or states. The result is a wealth of scholarly case studies which have formed the basis for policy recommendations on combating prejudice, intolerance and ethnocentrism through history education.⁸ Many of them demonstrate that reconciliation does not work merely as a diplomatic undertaking and top-down process, but demands bottom-up initiatives as well. If this long-term intention is seriously to be pursued, it calls for interaction between different stakeholders, networking between different initiatives in many sectors, and it would affect various areas of society, including (history) education and textbooks.⁹ Most researchers agree on this point, as on the evaluation of the activities referred to by Georg Stöber as “traditional” textbook revision, which are generally considered successful models.

The end of the Cold War brought about the implosion of multiethnic states and of the systems that had shaped them, the dissolution of familiar political models of order and the societal transformations, conflicts and, in some regions, outbreaks of collective hatred and excessive violence. This all posed the question as to how far models of international textbook revision as practiced since 1945 might be transferred and adapted to other contexts. Developments such as the end of apartheid and the introduction of the South African “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” with its various subcommittees, the wars and interethnic tension in former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet Union, the Rwandan genocide, the continuing conflicts in Israel/Palestine, the most recent transformation processes in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, or new ethno-nationalism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe – all have attracted the interest of textbook-related research and have, to a certain extent, opened up the feld to entirely new directions. Here, the focus is no longer on rapprochement in the aftermath of interstate wars, but increasingly on the consequences of the “new wars.”¹⁰ It is thus more frequently a question of lines of conflict that, legitimized with reference to historical “facts,” shape the relationships between various groups coexisting within a specific society – or at least having done so until the onset of the conflict in question. These lines of conflict emerge from experiences of violence or discrimination that continue in the present day, giving rise to strong levels of emotion and thus requiring specific concepts and instruments in order to inspire social integration and understanding.¹¹ For research on reconciliation, history instruction and textbook revision this means that, alongside the instruments developed in postwar Europe, such as waiving history instruction for a certain period or blackening/whitening textbook content as emergency activities, and international textbook dialogue as mediumand long-term projects, consideration and reflection must equally be focused on completely new approaches, ideas and experiences. The spectrum ranges from intervention or empowerment measures initiated by representatives of international civil society, as well as by supranational organizations and governmental institutions, which can address textbook reform in individual countries as well as in multinational regions, to local initiatives that develop alternative teaching materials.¹²

Thanks to various case studies, we are relatively well informed about the process and results of such initiatives; nevertheless, a couple of important questions remain, together with issues that are still under discussion, e.g., the effectiveness and impact of different types of international interventions, the recommend able dating and sequencing of textbook revisions and other activities, the place history education reform should have in different phases of coping with recent conflicts and in relation to the many other components of the complex processes of reconciliation, the stakeholders that are seen as indispens able for reli able and sustain able change, or the question as to which types of textbook revision have worked most effectively in which settings and might be successfully transferred into different contexts.

“Contexts” are also an interesting subject for more recent research on educational media, which no longer considers the textbook with its narratives and didactic principles to be an individual text, but rather locates it within a complex medial space, understanding it to be (only) one of several components that make up education systems and shape processes inspiring a sense of meaning. Researchers who follow this more complex approach also understand textbooks to be important, privileged and authorized agents of meaning, knowing, however, that learners do not necessarily give priority to textbook interpretations. And they take into consideration that narratives, symbols and cultural codes to be found in textbooks are repeatedly challenged and recoded by teachers and their biographical experiences, by family memories, peer groups and by highly diverse influences from society and the media. Neither images of the “enemy” nor empathic perceptions of the “other” emerge and grow only within the state-influenced walls of the school, or in state-approved, didactically structured media such as the textbook. Rather, they flourish, wilt or become interwoven – each in its own specific manner and with varying levels of force – in almost all areas accommodating “lifeworlds.” This makes it so difficult, from a scientific and methodological point of view, to accurately determine the actual impact of textbook projects, and indeed hardly any empirically sound results have been produced so far. On the other hand, the close interweaving of various influences and media compels us to differentiate as clearly as possible between normative and scholarly approaches, and to point out that the expectations placed on the potential of history education, textbook reform, peace education and conflict resolution are sometimes far too high.

Contributions of this volume and the selection of case studies

This volume is located within this scholarly debate and aims to offer new perspectives for further research. This applies, first, to our research subject: the authors do not limit their contributions to the analysis of textbook revisions and commissions, but focus on a specific concept with which to inspire understanding and reconciliation. The focus is on the development of common history textbooks and teaching materials that were designed to break down exclusive identities and perceptions of conflict that students and teachers may hold, and to introduce ideas promoting a peaceful coexistence with former enemies. This is the first scholarly publication to discuss comprehensively the potential, alleged achievements and shortfalls of common history textbook projects with regard to a wide range of cases and models. Bilateral and multilateral/regional initiatives among countries i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction part 1: post-conflict reconciliation and joint history textbook projects
• Introduction part 2: peace education and joint history textbook projects
• 1 From textbook comparison to common textbooks? Changing patterns in international textbook revision
• 2 Symbol or reality? The background, implementation and development of the Franco- German history textbook
• 3 Overcoming the national framework of teaching media: binational teacher's books and multinational teaching materials
• 4 Towards a joint German-Polish history textbook: historical roots, structures and challenges
• 5 Forging a common narrative in former Yugoslavia: the design, implementation and impact of the Scholars' Initiative
• 6 Reconnecting history: the Joint History Project in the Balkans
• 7 History as a project of the future: the European history textbook debate
• 8 Learning each other's historical narrative: a road map to peace in Israel/Palestine?
• 9 The Tbilisi Initiative: the story of an unpublished textbook
• 10 Striving for common history textbooks in Northeast Asia (China, South Korea and Japan): between ideal and reality
• 11 Best practice models and scholarly concepts: theoretical and methodological framework for joint history projects
• Select bibliography and further reading
• Index