engleski

The changes of history textbooks in Croatia – Back to ethnicity

The main changes of the history subject course outlines and textbooks were covered: those that took place immediately after the first multiparty elections (1990/91) and in the mid 1990s (1995/996). The article is based on the results of two, independently conducted, empirical research projects - content analyses of the history textbooks for high schools from 1989 and 1991 as well as the textbooks for elementary and high schools from 1997. The findings indicate that the textbook changes were significantly influenced by the post-communist socio-political context focused on the processes of creation a new, nation state of the Croatian people and promotion of the ideology of ethnic nationalism as an ideal basis of the societal transformation. This influence is manifested in apostrophising the national history (even after the last course outline changes, its allotment, compared to the socialist period, increased to 57 posto pages at the expense of the world history) and especially to the history of building of the nation state of the Croatian people. The themes referring to the nation state (its building, loss, relationships toward other states, etc.) were dominant themes of elementary (26 posto ) and high school textbooks (37 posto ). In the second place are themes referring to war These two themes were also the theme framework of covering other national history issues. Being in the same time distrustful toward other nations, first of all toward neighboring countries, they show ethnocentric and xenophobic characteristics. Such an approach contributes more to the creation of the closed ethnic identity of students, than to an identity open to diversity and integrative processes of the European countries.

history textbook changes, history course-outline changes, elementary schools, high schools, nation-state, ethnic nationalsim, ethnic identity, European integration

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