Scholarly disciplines are historical reservoirs riven with contradictions. Often unaware of their own history, the humanities lead in complications, with English departments outpacing other fields of study. Both writing and English language and literature studies exhibit long-standing omissions and conflicts. This essay explores their similarities…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to discuss mutual understandings of political issues among students and academics. The aim is to suggest a framework that teachers can use to address politics from both the discipline's and the students' perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on semi-structured interviews with twelve…

In 2005, Kitson and McCully introduced the 'risk-taking' continuum, representing the multiple ways in which teachers in post-conflict societies deal with the history of conflict in the classroom. 'Avoiders', at one extreme, refrain from teaching the violent past, while at the other extreme 'risk-takers' analyse multiple perspectives on what…

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a major global historical event of the 20th century that permanently changed the destiny of hundreds of millions of people around the world. It was not a revolution. It was not a transition to democracy. It was not a struggle for decolonization. No one expected a world power like the Soviet Union…

This paper focuses on the development of history teaching in West Germany from the 1970s onwards. When in the early 1970s the relevance of history -- both as an academic discipline and as a school subject -- was challenged, this led to fierce debates as a multitude of new concepts were being developed. One of these was Annette Kuhn's revolutionary…

The aim of this paper is to present and explain the long and bitter contestation between two poles over the orientation, the aims and the content of education as well as the form of the Greek language to be used in the school textbooks. During the last seventy years (1750-1821) of the Ottoman rule of Greece the poles were cultural but were…

In the fall 2005 semester, the author designed a course in the history of America's modern wars hoping to encourage students to criticize and oppose the country's current aggressions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Surveys of student attitude change suggest that the course did promote criticism but did far less to facilitate student activism. The author…

Secondary school history textbooks in South Korea, Japan, and the United States have long struggled to give meaning and significance to the war waged on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953. Comparing commonly-used, contemporary history textbooks from each of these three nations, this analysis suggests that students on both sides of the…

The book is entitled History Wars in the Classroom: Global Perspectives and examines how ten separate countries have experienced debates and disputes over the contested nature of the subject, for example the "Black Armband" and "Whitewash" factions in Australia who adopt opposingly celebratory or denigratory views of Australian…

On March 11-12, 2006 the FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education hosted 44 teachers from 16 states across the country for a weekend of discussion on teaching about India. Sessions included: (1) Why It's Important to Know about India (Ainslie T. Embree); (2) Early Indian History (Richard H. Davis); (3) Modern Indian History (Marc…

It can be a challenge to introduce students to a world region with the cultural diversity and rich history of Latin America. In this article, the author suggests four thematic units that enable teachers to identify both general trends and important differences in the region: (1) race/ethnicity; (2) progress and civilization; (3) conflict and…

The philosophers of the Enlightenment formulated a set of new ideas and visions about access to knowledge and education for all citizens. The main discourse of modernity is linked to liberty, democracy and equality, but modernity is also an ambiguous project, characterized by an ongoing conflict between individual freedom and discipline. Modernity…