JOURNAL

PAULSON
Controversy, Protest, and Political Backlash
In a number of cases, efforts to revise or reform history curricula have met with
controversy, protest, or political backlash. For instance, in Guatemala (Oglesby
2007a) and in Peru (Paulson 2010a), representatives of congress and of the armed
forces objected to content that acknowledged human rights violations by the state.
In the Peru the use of textbooks was briefly suspended after a congresswoman
claimed they amounted to an “apology for terrorism” (Paulson 2010a). Efforts
to revise the history curriculum in Lebanon also have been thwarted, first by
“vehement criticism from politicians” and most recently by student protests (van
Ommering 2014). In BiH, formal efforts to harmonize history textbooks met with
similar protests (Ahonen 2013; Freedman et al. 2004a, 20).
CONCLUSION
In her work on teaching history in Israel, Yogev (2012, 173) writes of “teaching
the past in the present tense” and of the dilemmas of an “active past.” This sense of
recent conflict as active comes through not just in cases of ongoing conflict but also in
situations considered to be postconflict. The causes and legacies of conflict, and family
and community memories, enter classrooms and shape education as an institution.
Some conceptual work on educating about recent conflict takes the implications
of an active past as a starting point. For instance, Jansen’s (2009) “postconflict
pedagogy” casts perpetrators of violence as “victims of their own history” and uses an
“epistemology of empathy” as a starting point for educational experiences that engage
with conflict. Minow (1998) and others (see Bellino 2014a) argue for an approach
that engages with historical injustices and with the process of transition itself in order
to create a “new story,” a “myth of the refounding” (Osiel in Bellino 2014a, 8), as the
basis for a new collective memory. Papadakis (2008, 143), in contrast, sees potential
in the “abandonment of the narrative form” that a social-constructivist approach
enables. Here the notion of a holding onto a single moral or lesson is abandoned,
freeing the future from a sense of historical determinism and leaving it open to be
shaped by the political choices of young people. Bellino (2014a) recommends the
development of a “historical consciousness” as the goal for history education about
conflict. The teaching method would blend the critical historical practice of the
disciplinary approach with the “inspired” collective memory approach, which aims
to foster connectedness and social engagement.
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Journal on Education in Emergencies