European Association of History Educators

Source: The Cambridge Network, April 28, 2010

A new research collaboration involving historians from Cambridge is to examine how early medieval societies used the past to form ideas about identity which continue to affect our own present. The project will cover six centuries of western European history, from 400 to 1000 AD, and will investigate how earlier cultural traditions, coupled with other sources, such as the Bible, influenced the formation of state identities following the deposition of the last Roman emperor in the West in the fifth century.

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Source: Asia Times; April 9, 2010

In the summer of 2007, 34 Japanese and Korean scholars were selected to participate in the second round of the Japan-South Korea joint history project. Since the release of their report in late March, it is becoming clear that very little progress has been made - many of the same issues from the first round of this project which commenced in 2001 remain unresolved. The first round report was issued in 2005.

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Source: My Fox; March 15th, 2010
ATLANTA - Revising its statewide social studies curriculum is something that Georgia did in 2004. But unlike Texas, Georgia invited teachers to play a major role in how the standards were revised. One college professor remembers that it wasn't easy, but it was rewarding.
The wrangling in Texas over how social studies will be taught in public schools is a familiar theme in our history. Clifford Kuhn, a Georgia State University professor, said re-interpreting the past has been a favorite political football for decades.

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Source: HNN; 12 March, 2010

While on a trip to the east coast from my home in Berkeley I get the news that yet another Native American site on California's northwest coast has been vandalized. Between the 1780s - when Thomas Jefferson dug up a huge cemetery containing a thousand human remains - and the 1970s, when the Red Power movement began to put amateur and professional archaeologists on the defensive, the discovery and excavation of native skeletons was promoted as good sport, entrepreneurial initiative, and sound science.

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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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Chou Wan-yao, a professor of history at National Taiwan University, revealed recently that the Ministry of Education is trying to revise the history curriculum in senior high schools to double the weight of Chinese history. The thinking of the China-leaning camp is very simple: Taiwanese history must be framed within Chinese history, because Taiwan is part of China. They are attempting to brainwash the Taiwanese people for good and train them to identify with China.

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State officials made a wise choice by declining to drop pre-1877 American history from high school courses. Apparently state educators won’t be closing the book on America’s first century after all.
 Criticism and protest have led the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to scrap a draft proposal that called for eliminating a study of American history before 1877 in high school courses. State officials said that the proposal would have called for an increased emphasis on U.S. history during middle school while incorporating some parts of our early history into required civics classes.

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In a game of brinkmanship over swingeing university cuts cherished faculties could be obliterated – it has happened before.
History is the English subject: our greatest Prime Minister was an historian. The Government is now making alarming cuts in the funding of the English universities. Next year the funds will be cut by £449 million. The minister who is making these cuts is Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, who argues that universities could use the opportunity to focus their resources on their strongest areas. These would often be historical studies.

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