Unbelievable

Today I had to write more about Croatia and their failing history teaching. The government is following right/winged media by enlarging the percentage of national history in the curriculum and by twisting the history of the serbian-croatian conflict towards the victimisation of the croatian, the free will of the serbian and more.
Soldiers are actually teaching about the war and government has not accepted a recent attempt by history teachers to introduce an unbiased and less nationalistic book.
...unbelievable.

On the other hand, dutch history lessons are also swinging more and more towards national history first.

9/11 History Teaching

While there is hard work in Eastern Europe to establish critical and nuanced history textbooks, history textbooks in the United States face another challenge as new 2005 versions are surfacing. These textbooks face the politically charged subject of the terrorist attacks in 2001, in short: 9/11.
Not necessarily a matter of history and identity, teaching about 9/11 does question the American superpower at the heart of its role in the world. A simple analysis of the five most widely used textbooks in the United States show the present variation of explanations. All the authors of these new sections explain follow the same explanation of who Osama Bin Laden is. Most textbooks then halt at the assumption that bin Laden’s success lies in the high levels of poverty in Muslim Communities. Only the very successful Give Me Liberty textbook on American History by Eric Foner connects bin Laden’s opposition to global U.S.-policies to the homeland politics of the Bush Administration and puts forward the question: What is the proper balance between liberty and security? He does not analyse 9/11 as a singular happening, but rather as another phase in American History as he connects the dots from the Civil War, the World Wars to the persecution of German-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Communists and now, terrorists. All of these periods are characterised as federal efforts to limit civil liberties.
9/11, however, remains very recent history, while most schools are working with outdated textbooks and while most teacher’s do not even manage to get to 2001 in their curriculum. Still, it is hopeful that history teaching about terrorism and United States policy can be critical and can overcome conservative opinions that teaching America’s weaknesses is betrayal.

Source: History News Network, George Mason University.

History Textbooks

While processing several press-releases I encountered the Southeast-European CDRSEE (Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe). Just a small note for now: It is strange how an entire are of the European continent can unite its history in one single textbook, while the old nations of Europe remain Nationalist, or even Imperialist.

More to follow.

Day One

Today I was assigned the simple task of ploughing through the Euroclio website in search of bad or broken links. Then I made up a list of possible improvements to the site, and presented the coworkers some additional Search-functionalilty and Calendar-functionality. Pretty easy going for a first day.
Oh, and lunch was nice.

One Day Before

So Tommorow I start my internship at EUROCLIO. My job there is mostly administrative. I will update the official website, transmit newsletters and upgrade the flyer. I also hope to write a comprehensive and systematic article for Prof. R.T. Griffiths where i will be comparing situations in Eastern European countries. All is still very embryonic, but I hope this blog will assist and motivate me in keeping an eye on this article.