This study raises the question of why the French secondary school history curricula introduced in the late 2000s prescribed more extensive coverage of plural histories than did secondary school history curricula for English schools introduced in the same time period. Both countries share similar societal diversity. To explain the variation in…

Strongly influenced by the paradigm of republican universalism, education policy in France favours an approach that largely relativizes, or even denies, the dimension of cultural diversity. The content of the secondary school history curriculum reveals this phenomenon. In the 2007-2008 school year, 185 students in the final 2 years of secondary…

Physics and chemistry programs at the secondary school level in France recommend introducing components of the history of science (HS). Emphasis is placed on a "cultural" dimension, which is poorly defined but essentially refers to elements of epistemological nature. Moreover, the few examples of activities based on HS suggested by the…

The school, France's traditional vehicle for integrating diverse populations into a national culture and fostering civic participation, has encountered difficulties in fulfilling its central mission as demographic shifts have given rise to competing conceptions of religious, cultural, ethnic, political and national identity. For French society the…

On May 4, 2006, French and German cultural ministers announced the publication of "Histoire/Geschichte", the world's first secondary school history textbook produced jointly by two countries. Authored by a team of French and German historians and published simultaneously in both languages, the book's release drew considerable public…

A visitor to a random sampling of Modern World History classes in the United States will find that the subject of "revolution" is a favorite for many students. Reading about and researching individuals and topics such as Tsar Nicholas II, Rasputin, Marie Antoinette and guillotines is never boring. Unfortunately, in too many classrooms,…

At a time when the power of schools and both state and federal education authorities to guide young people's sense of belonging is being challenged by multilingualism, by the claims of supra- and subnational regions and minorities, by memories of national catastrophes and crimes, and by out-of-school educational media, this collection of essays…

This paper describes five studies, based on questionnaires and interviews with pupils in primary and lower secondary schools, in France and in Switzerland, over the past two decades. It explores the ways in which pupils' attitudes to history change during the transition between primary and secondary school, and investigates pupils' views about the…

The article reports the outcomes of a survey of 678 Dutch, English, and French students in multicultural high schools located in three urban areas, with the aim of developing insight into the sort of history they consider worthwhile. The research was undertaken in the context of widespread concern about the effects of recent migration patterns on…

Students gain a better understanding of war and economics when the variables come alive through stories, artifacts, and paintings. In this article, the author describes a short story about the fur trade which can generate lots of student questions about the fur economics, the Eastern Woodland Indians, trade artifacts, and war. The author also…

The middle of the 1990s saw the creation of a French-German-Swiss history textbook supported by the European Commission. Disseminated to school instructors in the Upper Rhine, it received generally positive reviews, but ended up on the dusty shelves of school libraries. This result was due to several factors, which are analysed in this article.…

On July 26-27, 2008, FPRI's Wachman Center hosted 37 teachers from across the country for a weekend of discussion on teaching U.S. Military history. Sessions included: (1) The Revolutionary War and Early American Military History (Kyle Zelner); (2) The Mexican-American War (Paul Springer); (3) The Civil War (Mark Grimsley); (4) The Frontier Years…

The French Revolution can be a difficult subject to teach. Students often struggle to relate to events that happened more than two hundred years ago in France. In this article, the author suggests three key causes for the failure of the revolution that social studies teachers can focus on when teaching this topic. He also provides several stories…

British universities are known among the other Bologna countries not to have adjusted fully to the new common three-tier degree structure. Is it the case that British higher educational concerns are different from Continental concerns? A study of recent developments in two British graduate schools of history shows that a three-tier study structure…

Analyzes the economic and political responses to the Great Depression of the 1930s in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Britain. States that economic policies had little direct effect on the survivability of governments during the 1930s. Concludes that processes of national consensus formation determined the survival or…