Nationalism and History Education

Curricula and Textbooks in the United States and France

Rachel Hutchins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317625353
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

History education, by nature, transmits an 'official' version of national identity. National identity is not a fixed entity, and controversy over history teaching is an essential part of the process of redefining and regenerating the nation. France and the United States have in particular experienced demographic and cultural shifts since the 1960s that have resulted in intense debates over national identity. This volume examines how each country's national history is represented in primary schools' social studies textbooks and curricula, and how they handle contemporary issues of ethnicity, diversity, gender, socio-economic inequality, and patriotism. By analyzing each country separately and comparatively, it demonstrates how various groups (including academics, politicians and citizen activists) have influenced education, and how the process of writing and rewriting history perpetuates a nation.

Drawing on empirical studies of the United States and France, this volume provides insight into broader nationalist processes and instructive principles for similar countries in the modern world.

Part One
Faces of the Nation

1
Ethnicity and the Nation

Increasing ethnic diversity and expansion of full citizenship rights to previously excluded ethnic groups has led, in many Western countries, to widespread reassessment of traditional conceptions of national belonging. Demographic and social changes beginning at roughly the same time in France and the United States have provoked similar questions over national identity, immigration policy, civil and civic rights, and education. This chapter demonstrates that, in French and U.S. curricula and textbooks, growing acceptance of ethnic diversity has contributed to reaffirmations of national sentiment and redefinitions of national identity. In both cases, explicit ethnic conceptions of national belonging have been marginalized while cultural nationalism has been strengthened.

In both countries, there are many who have seen demographic and social changes since the 1960s as threatening the established national way of life and who have considered certain ethnic minority populations to be unassimilable (de Laforcade 2006: 219, 226; Ngai 2004: 2, 267; Scott 2007: 60). Others have seen in these demographic changes more productive challenges to traditional visions of national identity. As the historic exclusion of minority groups came to be increasingly viewed by a majority as morally wrong (and legislated accordingly), it led many to question the accuracy of traditional conceptions of national identity and political and social belonging. These competing visions have been heavily publicized as part of the “culture wars” in the U.S. and in debates over national identity in France, which have been remarkably similar to one another in many respects. In both countries, these controversies have involved not just policy initiatives but have also led to changes in history and social studies teaching, because regardless of their position on these issues, participants in these debates agree that education is central to either perpetuating traditions or to changing the status quo in fighting exclusion.

Ultimately, though, our primary concern is the broader context beyond the “culture wars”: these debates, however divisive, remain national. They highlight the salience of the nation as a primary locus of belonging for many people. They show how the nation is redefined—through conflict—in a process that renews attachment to the national polity.

There are a number of differences between the French and U.S. cases that we must bear in mind. Some of these differences are rooted in obvious contrasts between the two countries’ histories. For instance, most disadvantaged minorities in France today are fairly recent immigrants, who came mainly from former French colonies in Africa and Asia, and their descendants. In the U.S., though recent immigration from Latin America and Asia has also contributed to debates over identity politics, these debates have much deeper roots in the history of African Americans’ struggle for inclusion and equality. Conceptually, though scholars in France and the U.S. have influenced one another, historians, politicians, and pedagogues in France are much more likely to embrace colorblind republican assimilationism in response to socioeconomic inequality along ethnic lines, rather than pluralism. This view does not exclude a critical approach to national history. Since the 1990s, these decision-makers have increasingly seen the history of colonization, slavery, immigration, etc., as legitimate objects of study, partly thanks to the work of minority groups who have sought inclusion of their history in the national narrative. In the U.S., historians and educators tend to support varying forms of progressive multiculturalism. However, curricula and textbooks are subject to political approval from citizens and conservative elected bodies. As such, representations of past and present injustice regarding ethnic minorities constitute one of the main sources of conflict between competing education actors.

Principal Findings and Chapter Outline

Recent French and U.S. curricula and textbooks include more people of non-European origin in illustrations and narratives than did their predecessors, while promoting a narrative of progress and interethnic national unity.¹ The result is a sort of conservative, nationalist multiculturalism, which includes minorities and limited depictions of past discrimination, but only to the extent that these do not detract from a positive view of France and the United States today. The contemporary countries are shown as bastions of equality and unity.

French textbooks depict few people of color in national history and society, but more in recent textbooks than in the early 1980s. Since the 1990s, they have incorporated changes in academic historiography and public memory and now dedicate more attention and take a critical approach to injustice regarding non-European people in French history. However, they generally avoid discussing contemporary immigration and inequalities along ethnic lines. U.S. textbooks, on the other hand, render ethnic minorities much more visible in depictions of national history and contemporary society. While these books have absorbed certain, nonnegligible multiculturalist approaches, notably including more Native American and African American history, they exhibit a clear rightward shift between 1997 and 2003. They now relegate discussion of racist discrimination and inequality to the distant past and celebrate diversity and the contemporary status quo, thus avoiding addressing the depth and consequences of racism in American history and society.

Because this is the first chapter of analysis, it begins by providing some deeper background on the conflicts over identity in each country. It then examines changing conceptions of national identity as presented in curriculum guidelines. The bulk of the chapter is then dedicated to quantitative and qualitative comparative analysis of textbooks, showing first the ways in which they have incorporated more diversity and aspects of progressive multiculturalism, followed by a demonstration of the ways in which a more conservative nationalism shapes their presentations of the most controversial issues regarding ethno-racial equality.

Differing Conceptions of Culture and Identity

At the core of contemporary conflicts regarding national identity are different conceptions of the relations between different ethnic groups. Assimilationism, pluralism, different understandings of power, exclusion, and inclusion form the context of multiple political debates, including those over history and social studies education.

In France, most historians—including those writing curricula and textbooks—wish to transmit a sense of historians’ methods to pupils. These methods are more conducive to learning a critical approach to history than were traditional narratives that celebrated the greatness of the nation-state, which were common in history education from the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries (Citron 1987/2008). Despite this epistemological consensus, multiculturalism does not have the same standing among the French academy as it does in the U.S.

After briefly rising in popularity in the 1970s and early 1980s, cultural pluralism under the slogan droit à la différence (the right to be different) fell out of favor by the late 1980s (as discussed in the Introduction). Public discourse has been dominated since then by neo-assimilationist republicanism, as debates have continued to rage over the place of Maghrebi and sub-Saharan African immigrants and their descendants in French society. There is disagreement among different political factions over the best courses of action, but there is agreement that there is a rift in French society. The bulk of public discourse and debates take for granted that French residents and citizens of Maghrebi and sub-Saharan African origin are more likely to be unemployed, undereducated, and housed in the cités, the low-income housing generally on the outskirts of major cities (Viguier 2011). Beyond these facts, interpretations vary. However, what groups on the left, in the center, and on the right have in common is the framing of Islam as a problem and an obstacle to national cohesion (Scott 2007: 69–72; Viguier 2011: 262–267). In the most exclusionist view, these minority populations are too culturally different to assimilate, and the primary obstacle to their assimilation is Islam (de Laforcade 2006: 219, 226; Hargreaves 2007: 4–5). Far-right groups often depict these minorities as committed to fundamentalist Islam, which they show as a threat to French culture and security, seeing it as irreconcilable with republican values.

Most French historians and mainstream politicians adopt a more centrist assimilationist stance, which is officially colorblind, and in which they oppose exclusionary ethnic grounds for national membership. They may blame the far-right for discriminating against ethno-racial minorities and thereby exacerbating tensions. The corollary to this colorblind position is the broadly consensual notion that attachment to the nation should be the primary group allegiance, and the only one with which public education should concern itself (Bozec 2010; Garcia and Leduc 2003: 197, 205–206, 238, 251; Laborde 2001; Lebovics 2004; Legris 2014: 95–110; Martigny 2012: 376; Waldman 2009; for examples of this stance, see Schnapper 1991; Taguieff 1988). There has long been agreement among most historians, policy makers, and advocates on the left and the right in favor of assimilationism (Lewis 2011: 240–241; Thomas 2012: 136–150; Viguier 2011: 262–265).

In response to this consensus, there has recently been a split on the left, with some now advocating the official recognition of ethnic differences in order to face and thereby overcome discrimination. Despite colorblind rhetoric, there is much evidence of ethnic identification in France, as for example people of different national origins have come to unite under the terms beur or “black” (de Laforcade 2006: 226; Lewis 2011: 240). It thus seems likely that the widespread insistence on colorblindness can appear nonsensical or hypocritical to minority populations, and that it has added to their frustration, as they see discrimination against them as rampant and as a major obstacle to their integration (Hargreaves 2007: 10, 187; Lewis 2011: 240). Groups such as the Indigènes de la République have particularly given voice to this view that neo-colonialism and racism are the reasons for inequality, not minorities’ culture or unwillingness to assimilate (Parti des Indigè nes de la République 2005).

Such voices are still largely marginal (Amiraux and Simon 2006), though the tide may be turning. In the 1980s, the history of immigration, followed by that of colonization, began to gain legitimacy in French universities (Citron 1987/2008; Dosse 2007; Harg reaves 2007: 14; Lewis 2011: 238; Noiriel 1988). Shortly thereafter, some exceptions were made to the taboo on collecting data on ethnic groups, as some government-sponsored investigations and reports have examined socioeconomic inequalities and have found evidence of widespread discrimination in the labor market (Hargreaves 2007: 57–58; Tribalat 1995).

These broader debates inform the context of concerns over national identity. However, since the brief rise of pluralism in the early 1980s, education activists and policy makers have not issued calls for recognition of ethnic difference. They have, though, sought greater inclusion for colonial history and the history of slavery and greater visibility of the overseas French territories. These movements have been supported by memorial associations as well as by historians, as we will see in greater detail throughout this chapter.

In the U.S., respect for—and even celebration of—the ethnic diversity of the American people appears now to be a consensual value among all but the most extreme activists. However, in practice this principle means very different things, with very different implications for visions of national identity in educational materials.

For progressive multiculturalists, it is not enough to include multihued faces in textbooks; history teaching must incorporate a multiplicity of viewpoints—teaching that conflict, differing perspectives, and interpretations are inherent parts of the study of history. The more progressive forces among these activists want children to learn about injustice in the past as a means to understanding enduring inequality in the present. They do not want past injustices to be minimized or to be discussed only as part of a narrative of progress, as if discrimination, exploitation, and inequality were things of the past (Banks 1996; Nash 1997/2000). This is not to say that they oppose promoting unity: rather, they believe that unity can only be achieved through understanding, and thereby correcting, civic and socioeconomic divisions.² Progressive historians and pedagogues also generally believe in multiple identities—that is, that one can have a sense of national belonging that is not exclusive of other group allegiances and cultural practices.

Variations on this progressive multiculturalism are prominent among the academy and educational institutions. For instance, both the National Council for the Social Studies as well as the Organization of American Historians have issued statements that reflect this position. In 1991, as conflict surrounding multiculturalism was spreading through the media, the OAH made its position official through a statement published in its magazine and distributed to the press:

The multiple objectives of history education can best be served by curricula that afford students the opportunity in the public schools to study both the history of the larger society and the history of minority groups and non-Western cultures. Whether the people of the United States regard themselves as one nation or many, or as some combination of both, most Americans will probably recognize that they share certain common traditions, values, and experiences arising out of their common humanity and their interactions with one another. These include our political and economic institutions, however imperfect, a mass culture that affects everyone, and a common entitlement to freedom, equality, and dignity. A successful history education should help students understand what binds Americans together while simultaneously promoting respect for America’s pluralism and diversity. We hope it will contribute to realizing a common future of reconciliation and equality across the boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

(OAH 1991)

At the other end of the spectrum among prominent educati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART ONE Faces of the Nation
• PART TWO Symbols of the Nation
• Conclusion
• Index