Created in November 2020 at the instigation of the French Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the Observatory for History Teaching in Europe organised its first annual conference on 2 and 3 December 2021 in Strasbourg. The theme was: “How can the teaching of history help us protect democracy?”
“The long-term objective is to take stock of the state of history teaching in Europe”, explained Alain Lamassoure on the eve of the conference.
“A modest idea”, comments the former MEP, now executive president of the Observatory, but essential when one notes that “in many countries, we have returned to a nationalist history” while in others, “we preferred to abolish the teaching of history”, as was the case in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The murders of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn in the early 2000s were a “shock” that highlighted the importance of this teaching. It was then reimagined, “but through leaflets, TV shows, and courses for immigrant children, not through school”.
“The aim of the Observatory is not to pass judgement or point the finger at any particular country”, says Bridget Martin, a teacher at the International School of Paris associated with the Observatory, but, as the website’s homepage states, “to share good practices and experiences between Council of Europe Member States and to strengthen cooperation at European level”.
The practices of this education will be examined through different questions: who sets the curriculum? What are the contents? How are teachers recruited and trained? What is the status of the textbooks? Are they labelled? Censored? What place does the history course have in the validation of secondary education?
Seventeen Member States are currently involved in the Observatory (including France, Turkey, Serbia, Georgia and the Russian Federation), but Alain Lamassoure believes that others will follow suit after being held back by the pandemic, notably Germany and Italy.
The aim is to give force to the “Council of Europe’s outstanding recommendations”, which advocate a history based on proven facts that does not content itself with its national narrative and listens to what neighbouring countries are saying. And this, “in order to consolidate the reconciliation that we have been able to create in Europe”, concludes Alain Lamassoure.
Link to the Observatory: https://bit.ly/3dlZGrD (Original version in French in Véronique Leblanc)