Chapter 11: Students Historical Narratives and Concepts about the Nation

History is mainly taught through narratives. Particularly national narratives are central in the educational field (Barton & McCully, 2005; Carretero & Lopez, 2010a). As Ballantyne (2005) notes, nation-states remain the organizing axis of school narratives and historical analyses. In the nineteenth century nation-centered narratives became the basis of national history within the European colonies and in much of Asia (Duara, 1995). The tight relationship between history and the nation continues to be active in the curricula of several countries (see Alridge, 2006; Van Sledright, 2008 for the United States. Grever, 2006; Grever & Stuurman, 2007; Van der Leeuw-Roord, 2009 for Europe). Despite the emergence of the disciplinary and civic approaches to history education, the national foundations of curricula and textbooks in Europe have changed little since 1989 (Foster & Crawford, 2006; Van der Leeuw-Roord, 2009). Furthermore, the number of nation-based approaches, which use a traditional methodology of teaching history, has increased (Mak, 2005). National narratives attempt to bring continuity to the past, present and future, making the nation a perpetual protagonist. In such narratives, the stories that are told—and how they are told—are as important as those that must be forgotten. As noted by Renan (2004), forgetting and even historical error-making are essential factors in the creation of a nation.