Although the history of history education is an under-researched topic worldwide, the international literature about history education contains a clear image of the historical development of the school subject. This image basically consists of a sharp dichotomy between traditional history education, which was largely insensitive to topical affairs and focused on tradition; and modern history education, which placed topical affairs at the centre of attention and critically engaged pupils in the study of history. Despite being very pervasive, this image does not do justice to the complex relationship between past and present in history education. In this article I will attempt to reassess this one-dimensional image by examining the changing relationship between past and present in Dutch history textbooks published between 1945 and 1979. More specifically, the analysis concentrates on the question of how these textbooks dealt with matters of proximity and distance on multiple levels, and how this affected the relationship between past and present in the course of time. (Contains 63 footnotes.)