Chapter 12: What Role for History Teaching in the Transitional Justice Process in Deeply Divided Societies?: A Commented Description of a Curriculum Implementation

As recent work by Audigier and Tutiaux-Guillon (2008) has shown, several societies are currently witnessing profound and accelerated transformations of their school curricula. This movement, they claim, is linked to the introduction of a competency-based approach in programs of study, which conveys the growing influence of certain currents of thought in education. In the end, presuming that we see them through, these changes will lead to a profound reorientation not only of educational goals, but also of actual teaching practices.

This movement can also be found in Quebec, Canada, where new programs of study are currently in the process of being implemented in elementary and secondary schools. If, as elsewhere, reshaping of the curricula has faced with some resistance, the changes nonetheless seem here to stay. Interestingly, it is concerning the teaching of national history¹ that the opposition to these changes has been most ardent and the debates most passionate. This article proposes an account of the controversy surrounding the implementation of the new national history program.² I will begin with the argument that any crisis constitutes a key moment in a given evolution, because it highlights tensions between actors as well as the preconceptions upon which their positions are based. I will then propose an analysis of the 2006 social and political debates surrounding the new national history program.