Although debates on history and history teaching take place in many countries, in post-conflict societies the teaching of history in school faces particular challenges because “history is so closely tied to the emotions associated with national identity and collective belonging”. The subject of history in these societies should therefore also aim to contribute to mutual understanding and social healing, focusing on “balancing the cognitive, the emotive and the ethical dimensions in history teaching and learning”. With this in mind, educational authorities, textbook authors, and teachers need to ensure that historical empathy should not lead to identification or sympathy with a position, but should support understanding. Some limitations to the impact of teaching history in school must be acknowledged as students hold political beliefs and commitments from their communities which may be difficult to see beyond and which they are unwilling to abandon. Students seek greater contemporary relevance for history than what they encounter in a classroom.
More than ten years ago, the publication 20th Century History in the Textbooks of Bosnia and Herzegovina: An analysis of books used for the final grades of primary school (Karge (2008) analysed the history textbooks approved for the 2007/08 school year across BiH to learn about their representation of 20th century history. The study focused on the 1990s, as the most controversial period in the post-conflict society of BiH and the wider region. Most of the textbooks analysed at that time either did not cover the war in BiH at all or covered it in a very minimalistic way. Following the recent introduction of content on the 1992-1995 period in BiH into textbooks and teaching materials, further analysis was conducted, the results of which are brought together in this report: History Teaching Materials on 1992 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Building Trust or Deepening Divides? (hereafter “Report”). The purpose of this report is two-fold: to present the results of the analysis on the representation of this sensitive period in teaching materials and the subject of history textbooks currently in use and to suggest ways to teach history that would promote mutual understanding, reconciliation, and sustainable peace in BiH.
Read the report in Bosnian, Hungarian, English and Serbian here.
[The information for the description is taken from the product's executive summary.]
