European Association of History Educators

Source: Mirror.co.uk,  1st February 2010

Anyone who's studied Ancient Egypt - or seen The 10 Commandments - knows slaves built the pyramids... But new evidence reveals that what your history teacher told you might not be correct. Recently discovered graves of the pyramid builders show they were not slaves. Greatly respected for their work, they were bestowed the honour of being buried near their pharaohs. But it's not the only history lesson that has had to be revised. Here we look at some other things your teacher might not have told you...

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Source: Parent Dish, 20th January 2010

Conservatives say too much attention is paid to American imperialism and not enough to Christianity. Liberals want to know why there is no mention of farm labor leader Cesar Chavez.
This is Texas. Everyone has an opinion. Rarely a shy one.
The Texas State Board of Education is scheduled to vote this week on a new statewide social studies curriculum. What students will -- and will not -- learn about history has gotten a lot of people talking.
The 15 board members got an earful during public testimony last week.
Attempts were made to calm people on both sides. Board Chairman Gail Lowe insisted that Chavez and Christmas will not be removed from the curriculum, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports However, according to the paper, people showed up with plenty of other axes to grind. The paper reports that Austin, Texas, parent George Scaggs was among several speakers who questioned what they perceive to be a liberal bent in the curriculum.

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Source: Belfast Telegraph, 4th December 2009

"This young woman who upsets people..." was the headline in Lebanon's L'Orient Littáraire yesterday. The teenager was Anne Frank, who died of typhoid at Bergen-Belsen in 1945 after being betrayed to the Nazi authorities, along with her family, in her Amsterdam "safe house".

The upset people were the Lebanese Hizbollah, who successfully persuaded teachers at a Beirut school to withdraw an English language primer from the library after it discovered extracts from Anne Frank's world-famous diary in the book. Yesterday, in a brave and literary defence of freedom of speech, Michel Hajji Georgiou told his readers why this act of censorship was against the Arabs.

Source: Global Arab Network, 26th November 2009

Recently, I saw four boys sitting at lunch near Bliss Street in Beirut, named after Dr. Daniel Bliss, an American missionary and founder of the American University of Beirut which faces Bliss Street. They talked about politics and student elections before moving to civil war. Though only about 20 years of age, they discussed violence with a sense of normalcy, their debate echoing confessional odium and distrust.

The boys represented a sample of Le¬banon's younger generation, one with no collective memory of the 15-year civil war. That's because Lebanon's modern history is buried in a locked book with the key nowhere to be found.

But how can we build a common future when our youth ignore their past? How can we achieve reconciliation and civil peace when the history we know remains exclusive and when facts serve ideology, not truth?

Under the 1989 Taif Accord, which led to the end of the civil war, Lebanon was supposed to unify its history textbooks and civics curricula. Yet, two decades later, the state still gives schools the freedom to choose their own history books. These do not deal with post-1950 history, following the end of the Arab-Israeli War, and each presents a different perspective of historical events. For instance, some books demonise the French Mandate, which gave France control over Lebanon at the end of World War I, while others do the contrary. Schools usually select their textbook in line with their religious and political affiliation.

There have been many new calls in recent years for the adoption of a common textbook. For example, in 1997, a committee was formed to institute a unified history book and programme. This went nowhere.
The main explanation for the absence of a common history book is that communal differences have not been resolved and that there is no consensus between Lebanon's religious communities over the various interpretations of the past. Simply put, the Lebanese cannot agree on one story.

We need to change our approach in writing a common history book. However, seeking to impose a shared reading of history and using the conventional method of imposing a single interpretation of events that would represent "the truth" is unrealistic in the Lebanese context. Each of the different communities in Lebanon is attached to its own culture, memory and martyrs. Political parties have their own reading of history.

In fact, why should we look for one story in a country whose history has been crafted by the stories of different cultures and communities? Wouldn't that represent a negation of Lebanon's pluralistic identity?

What we can do instead is work on a non-political, non-ideological book compiling a chronology of facts, figures and events: "Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please," Mark Twain once wrote.
The facts, their cause and their consequences could then be described using evidence and sources from the different communities or groups involved in any given episode. Such a history book would use a comparative approach, placing one view of an event next to others. The presentation of different narratives would shed light on similarities, differences and contradictions, providing room for student analysis and discussion.

Students would then be able to engage in a constructive learning process, distancing themselves from ideologies and emotions and building an independent sense of criticism toward what happened. The multiple perspectives ensuing would enable students to enrich their grasp of reality and encourage them to respect diversity and understand the distortions and stereotypes they were previously encouraged to adopt.

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Source: Itar-Tass, December 1 2009

MOSCOW, December 1 (Itar-Tass) - School textbooks in CIS countries miss or distort key events in common Soviet history. This conclusion is recorded in a report by a group of experts on the situation with teaching history in the former Soviet republics, which was presented on Tuesday at a news conference in Itar-Tass. "If this trend persists, a very negative image of Russia as a sinister colonial empire will be moulded in the minds of the rising generation in the post-Soviet countries," the document runs. "The research work on such a scale has been carried out in Russia for the first time: 187 school textbooks and educational aids in 12 former republics of the Soviet Union - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Estonia - were collected, partially translated from national languages and examined during the report's preparation," said board chairwoman of the State Club Fund Ksenia Kostina. "The examined textbooks were printed in mass editions or are even the only ones at schools of an appropriate state," she noted. "At the same time, polls were conducted in the above countries, helping to understand what images of the past exist in public opinion of each of the states." For instance, according to the research, 50 percent of young people in Armenia, 45 percent in Uzbekistan, 30 percent in Azerbaijan and 24 percent of Georgian youth know nothing of the 1917 February revolution in Russia.

At the same time, 39 percent of young citizens in Estonia and 46 percent of Georgian young people replied that they had never heard of Marshal Georgy Zhukov or Felix Dzerzhinsky. One of the report's authors, Prof. Alexander Vdovin of Moscow State University said that "given the present trends persist, the basic events of the 20th century will be completely forgotten by population in former Soviet republics in 15-20 years". The report's authors stated with regret that "apart from Belarus and to a less extent Armenia, all other countries started teaching the rising generation history in nationalist interpretation, based on myths of ancient origin of their peoples, high cultural mission of their ancestors and 'the deadly enemy' - Russia. "A desire to present contacts with Russians and Russia as a source of calamities is the common feature of textbooks of the newly-formed states (apart from Belarus and Armenia)," Vdovin emphasised. Another author of the report, Associate Professor Andrei Shadrin of Moscow State University, noted that a logical conclusion is drawn on the basis of the above provision: national liberation struggle was the main content of the national history of these peoples during their existence in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. For instance, examples of this struggle include an event when volunteers of an All-Union Komsomol and youth construction site expressed a protest against bad every-day conditions of life. Textbooks in Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic states contain interpretations, pointing to Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as instigators of the Second World War. The report was prepared by a group of authors and co-edited by head of the history chair at the Moscow Teachers' Training University Alexander Danilov and historian Alexander Filippov. The research work was done with support from the national foreign policy laboratory and with the grant of the State Club Fund.

Source: The Malay Mail, December 2 2009

KUALA LUMPUR: Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (BN-Pagoh) has shot down claims that the content of history books used in classrooms have been distorted for political reasons.

“The curriculum development unit in the Education Ministry receives textbook (content) proposals every two years and this (vetting) is carried out by a panel of professionals. So, the question of distortion does not arise,” he said in Parliament this morning.

Source: History News Network, 29th November 2009

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The first trial to showcase the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge three decades ago concluded with the regime’s chief torturer still seemingly unable to grasp the magnitude of his actions. Yet despite that surprising end, the trial may have helped Cambodia begin to move beyond the horrors of its past...
... The case broke new ground as a hybrid of national and international justice systems with the support of the United Nations. In another innovation, it included the participation of some victims as “civil parties” represented in court by their own lawyers.
After a slow start, the trial began to draw the attention of a nation that for the past three decades has mostly hidden from the traumas of the Khmer Rouge years. Coinciding with the trial, a new textbook about the Khmer regime began distribution to the high schools, breaking a silence in the education system that has contributed to widespread ignorance.

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Source:  New Scotsman, 26 November 2009

During a debate on how history is taught in schools, all the opposition parties expressed fears it would be from an anti-English viewpoint because the Scottish Government subsidises trips to Bannockburn and Culloden.

Ken Macintosh, Labour's schools spokesman, said: "It's difficult not to worry about implicit politicisation, about nationalism creeping into the curriculum."

And the Liberal Democrats' education spokeswoman Margaret Smith asked education secretary Fiona Hyslop why children were not sent to industrial museums to learn about economic history.

Conservative education spokesman Murdo Fraser said: "The suspicion must be that this is about pursuing a narrow nationalist agenda."

Ms Hyslop said the government did not dictate the content of lessons and pointed out that teachers decided what history topics to cover. She called on Mr Fraser to apologise to teachers for accusing them of being political.

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Source: Estonian life, 20th November 2009

Many observers have long insisted that the reason why “revisionist history’ as defined by the Kremlin is pathologically rejected is not only because of national pride, Russian chauvinism, fear of losing face or other similar emotional factors. Practical considerations weigh heavily in the equation. This week Russian president Dmitri Medvedev made it clear that the prime reason for keeping rigidly to their own version of history is the fear of demands for reparations from foreign countries. Ria Novosti reported that the rewriting of history (obviously, Medvedev hasn’t been briefed on what western textbooks, historical treatises etc. contain) could spur the initiation of numerous demands for reparations.
“If power is given to falsifiers who attempt to rewrite history, then we’ll find ourselves face to face with those that demand compensation,” Medvedev said in a speech delivered to the complement of sailors on board the Russian warship Varjag. “This’ll be too dangerous for the country.” Yes, historians can debate many topics but the subject of the outcome of the Second World War is sacrosanct, not open for discussion, he stressed.
“We should be closely monitoring the situation, not let ourselves be dragged into arguments about different perspectives. We should rather be defending our position,” Medvedev added. This year the Russian president has made many statements criticizing the “rewriting of history.” Also this year Medvedev created a special commission charged with the responsibility of defending the Kremlin’s version of history – the official story.

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