Learning from History

Example Pages 30/31

The German version of this shared history textbook for German and French high schools came out in time for the start of the 2006/2007 school year. The textbook took only three years to complete – considerably less time than publishers usually need to develop and produce a textbook.

The editors – and a great many reviewers – stress that this book is breaking new ground. That's true enough, but some of the spadework was done before. In particular, Georg Eckert, professor of history and its teaching in Braunschweig and later chairman of the German Commission for UNESCO, launched a debate about German and French textbooks in the 1950s: the debate culminated in recommendations for "disenvenoming" history and geography textbooks for these foes of yore in peace as in war.

A highly symbolic project

Presentation

This ambitious and highly symbolic project of putting together a Franco-German history textbook carries on that tradition. The impulse came from 550 high school pupils in the Franco-German Youth Parliament, which convened in January 2003 on the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Elysée treaty between Germany and France. The top political brass at the time took up and endorsed their proposal: president Jacques Chirac and former federal chancellor Gerhard Schröder. With this political backing, a German-French project team formed in June, worked out formal and conceptual guidelines and won over a binational team of editors to put the book together. The cooperation ran along three axes: between the German and French scholars on the project team, between the latter and the two education ministries, and between the whole project team and the publishers/editors. In March 2005 the French Editions Nathan and German Ernst Klett Verlag officially announced plans to publish the book jointly. Actually, a three-part series. In addition to "Europe and the World Since 1945", which came out last year, two more volumes are in the pipeline: "From Greek Democracy to the French Revolution" for the 10th and 11th grades in Germany and 10th grade (seconde) in France, and "From the Industrial Revolution to World War II" for the 11th and 12th grades in Germany and 11th grade (première) in France.

So this history textbook is a political milestone, and only as such could it become a reality in the first place. That accounts for the extensive media coverage it got – and is still getting. Other textbooks can only dream of that kind of exposure. The work also got waved past the hurdles in Germany's federal education system and rubber-stamped in every Land in the country in record time.

Franco-German take on postwar Europe

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History textbooks are notorious for serving up identities – in the past mostly national, even nationalist, identities. So in this 21st century, in times of mingled euphoria and scepticism about Europe, what could make more sense than educational material to help forge a common European historical consciousness? For the book is not, according to the editors, about the Franco-German relationship: it's a Franco-German take on European postwar history. As the foreword to "Histoire/Geschichte – Europe and the World Since 1945" puts it: "Never before have young people in Germany and France come into such close contact with the other's history – and from a European and cosmopolitan perspective at that […]."

So some policymakers and teachers already suggest taking it a step further: why not a "European history book"? A book by that title came out a few years ago: it wasn't exactly a textbook, but was designed for use in European schools. Detractors at the time faulted each country's edition, however, for letting its national angle on history slip back in through the back door of the translations.

That's not true of the Franco-German history book though: the two versions are consistent. They have the same structure, same documents, same make-up, maps, photographs and illustrations – even the same index of technical terms. In spite of this one-to-one correlation, however, concepts like those of nation, culture and religion are understood and construed differently on either side of the border. That had to be borne in mind by the binational teams that put the book together – and it's an important point for teachers and students to consider. Indeed, talking in class about that very difference would prove far more edifying than working with "national" history books.

Different teaching and learning cultures

Cover

In other words, despite all the common ground, the authors and editors aimed to underscore different views of history on both sides and divergent, even controversial, remembrances. Another no less formidable challenge was the need to allow not only for different curricula, but also for teaching and learning cultures that are poles apart. Whilst a pupil- and problem-oriented approach prevails in the German classroom, with an in-depth look at examples, French instruction tends to be geared toward imparting information and knowledge than can be tested later on. That's why the French version includes a CD-ROM containing important material for the baccalauréat (school-leaving exams).

Like all history textbooks nowadays, this one is likewise a workbook with plenty of period texts and pictures along with graphics and maps. The authors' texts, in consequence, are reduced and chiefly aimed at helping readers place the original and graphic material in its historical context.

It comes as no surprise that the book is most interesting where historical perspectives must part ways, as in the chapter on "Remembrances of World War II". German Gymnasiasten learn here why France had such a hard time owning up to collaboration under the Vichy regime and preferred to look back proudly on the heroics of the Résistance. French lycéens can trace Germany's arduous progress from repressing and suppressing its crimes, long wrangling – in public and in private – over the ascription and assumption of concrete responsibility, and eventually asserting the right to lament for our own losses.

Criticism of contents

Some historians – including Alfred Grosser, one of those who paved the way for Franco-German reconciliation – have sharply criticized the new textbook. But Grosser's objections, which he presented at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig on 5 October 2006, concern details in the contents, not underlying concepts. And any textbook can be faulted for giving way to didactic imperatives: highly complex material has to be reduced to schematic summaries. And as examples are paramount in history teaching today, a single school book can't possibly tell the whole story: its authors will never be proof against errors and omissions – and shortcuts.

All in all, the book is appealing in form and content to high school pupils, and provides fertile ground for an interesting and novel approach to teaching the history of Franco-German relations, of modern Europe, and the roles of France and Germany in Europe and the world. That's a tall order – and if it does that in practice, it will have accomplished a great deal. For the time being, there's really no saying to what extent this unusual history book may actually, as Etienne François puts it, "help lay the foundations for a shared historical consciousness among young Germans and French in the process of European unification". Only time will tell.