European Association of History Educators

Source: Bloomberg; 24 June 2010

Seventy years after issuing his call for France to defy the Vichy collaborationist regime, Charles de Gaulle is again dividing the French. The government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political party is descended from the World War II general’s followers, has included De Gaulle’s wartime memoirs in the curriculum for next year’s high-school literary classes. Sarkozy is in London today to commemorate De Gaulle’s June 18, 1940, radio broadcast urging a defeated France not to give up.

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Source: Frontier India; 11 May, 2010

The European financial crisis is moving to a new level. The Germans have finally consented to lead a bailout effort for Greece. The effort has angered the German public, which has acceded with sullen reluctance.

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Source: The Huffington Post; March 16th, 2010

This is Not a Joke! Do Not Delete!" The email, with its urgent subject heading, found its way to my Inbox through a long series of forwards. The text demanded that I send the message on to at least 10 others, as "a memorial chain for those who died in the Holocaust." The goal: to reach 40 million people worldwide. What was the crucial information that needed to "go viral" immediately? The University of Kentucky, I learned, had "removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offended' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred.

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Source: Right Side News; March 15th, 2010

Two years have passed since the horrific massacre of eight young yeshiva students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. With the turning of administrations in Washington, and a renewed effort by the Obama administration to focus on "moving peace forward" between the Israelis and Palestinians, we are left to examine the status quo on the ground.

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Source: UKPA; March 9th 2010

Broadcaster David Dimbleby has criticised the lack of history teaching in schools.The 71-year-old's current BBC1 series The Seven Ages Of Britain takes viewers on a journey through the history of the country through its art and treasure. Dimbleby said the popularity of programmes delving into the nation's past suggests that people are hungry to know more because the school curriculum has failed to deliver on history.

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Source: Guardian; March 8th 2010

A two-tier curriculum is emerging in which a balanced education including the arts and humanities is becoming restricted to independent or more "upmarket" state schools. The proportion of pupils taking a modern foreign language at GCSE has fallen to a mere 44%. The figure for those taking either history or geography is barely 30%. ("Save our arts courses from university cuts, say academics", News). Many headteachers believe that pupils find it harder to gain good grades in "academic" subjects such as history and French than in vocational subjects.

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The news headline on the WRAL website says "A new draft of history: Curriculum change defeated by negative feedback." (www.wral.com/news/local/story/7058590/). So it looks as though the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction has backed down and won't be eliminating the teaching of American history before 1877 from our high schools.
But let's look a little more closely, because the original plan is not actually dead. It's just getting a facelift.

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It was claimed that the move by Sussex University risked jeopardising the nation’s understanding of the subject and “entrenching the ignorance of the present”.

Under plans, research and in-depth teaching into periods such as the Tudors, the Middle-Ages, Norman Britain, the Viking invasion and the Anglo-Saxons will be scrapped, along with the Civil Wars.

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Whoever governs this country next musty proclaim a commitment to higher education in the broadest sense, argues Simon Heffer. Only a fool would deny that public spending must be cut to relieve our economic mess: but only a fool, equally, would cut it as the Government is doing. All over the public sector there are overpaid bureaucrats doing pointless jobs who should be invited to test their skills in the private sector without delay. Our welfare system haemorrhages money on the undeserving poor and encourages young, able-bodied people not to look for work. There is reluctance to cut waste in more important areas too, such as in the civil service establishment of the Ministry of Defence. Instead, we seek to cripple the future of this country by savaging our universities.

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Source: EUROCLIO on the BBC World Service, February 3rd, 2010
On february 3rd, the BBC world service, with over 30 million global listeners, focused the disputed role of history textbooks in the process of European Integration. The documentary offered a multiperspective insight on the role of history teaching and the significance of history textbooks in the establishment of a balance between integration and nationalism on the path towards a common European Past. In this context, EUROCLIO Executive-Director Joke van der Leeuw-Roord underlines the need for raising historical awareness among the youth while she suggests that the current rather narrow and nationalistic-oriented teaching of history in most European countries impedes the maintenance and development of a democratic and peaceful community. To that extent, she urges the need for the development of common approaches for the formation of a shared European history based on mutual understanding and close collaboration among the relevant actors. The program concludes with a reference to EUROCLIO’s upcoming Annual Conference, entitled, “A Bridge Too Far? Teaching Common European History  Themes, Perspectives and Levels” with Mark Whitaker asking whether a common European textbook would be ever possible. Joke van der Leeuw-Roord then explained the EUROCLIO Historiana initiative, the web-based learning and teaching resource for history teachers across Europe.
The full documentary can be downloaded as a podcast and you can listen here

For more information, and a full summary of the documentary please click 'read more'