Abstract
International organizations aiming to promote peace and development throughout the world rose from the ashes of World War II. In a world troubled by conflicts and large gaps between rich and poor, UNESCO faced many challenges and used different strategies in its struggle to shape a better world, many of them highlighted in this book.2
This chapter presents results from the research project History Beyond Borders, directed by Daniel Lindmark and financed by the Swedish Research Council. The chapter is mainly based on Thomas Nygren, History in the Service of Mankind: International Guidelines and History Education in Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden, 1927–2002, PhD dissertation Umeå: Umeå University, 2011, containing reprints with permission from Journal of World History, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, and Education Inquiry. For a summary of the project’s findings, see Henrik Åström Elmersjö, “History beyond Borders: Peace Education, History Textbook Revision, and the Internationalization of History Teaching in the Twentieth Century”, Historical Encounters 1:1 (2014): 62–74. Special thanks to Christine Larson and Jan Teeland for valuable linguistic support.
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Notes
Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) and Eric
J. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London: Joseph, 1994).
A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks and Teaching Materials as Aids to International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1949), 10–15; Göran Andolf, Historien på gymnasiet: Undervisning och läroböcker 1820–1965 (PhD dissertation, Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet, 1972), 8–23; Tomas Englund, Curriculum as Political Problem: Changing Educational Conceptions, with Special Reference to Citizenship Education (PhD dissertation, Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1986), 300f; Arie H.J. Wilschut, “History at the Mercy of Politicians and Ideologies: Germany, England and the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 42: 5 (2010): 693–723; Henrik Åström Elmersjö and Daniel Lindmark, “Nationalism, Peace Education and History Textbook Revision in Scandinavia, 1886–1940”, Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society 2 (2010): 63–74.
From the 1930s on, in Scandinavia, the Norden Associations were reviewing history textbooks with the intention of establishing a common ground of history in the Nordic countries, an effort described by UNESCO as “the most outstanding example so far of regional collaboration on textbook revision” according to A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks, 34. The efforts primarily to achieve peace through textbook research have become an academic focus. The role of history teaching and textbooks in conflict and post-conflict societies has been studied in, for example, East Asia, Rwanda, Cyprus, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. See Steffi Richter, ed., Contested Views of a Common Past: Revisions of History in Contemporary East Asia (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2008); Sarah Warshauer Freedman, Harvey M. Weinstein, Karen Murphy and Timothy Logan, “Teaching History after Identity-Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience,” Comparative Education Review 52:4 (2008); Yannis Papadakis, “Narrative, Memory and History Education in Divided Cyprus: A Comparison of Schoolbooks on the ‘History of Cyprus’”, History and Memory 2 (2008); Jean-Damascène Gasanabo, Fostering Peaceful Co-existence through Analysis and Revision of History Curricula and Textbooks in Southeast Europe (Paris: UNESCO, 2006); Keith C. Barton and Alan W. McCully, “History, Identity and the School Curriculum in Northern Ireland: An Empirical Study of Secondary Students’ Ideas and Perspectives”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 37:1 (2005).
“League of Nations, International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation, Subcommittee of Experts for the Instruction of Children and Youth in the Existence and Aims of the League of Nations, 4–6 July 1927”, C.I.C.I./E.J./24.(1), 1927, UN Archives, Geneva; League of Nations Official Journal, 98th and 99th Council Sessions 1937 appendix 1667 (Geneva: League of Nations, 1937); “General Conference, first session, Paris 1946, 1C, 1947, 149–153”; “Records of the General Conference of UNESCO, second session, Mexico, 1947, v. 2: Resolutions, 2C, 16, 20–21”; “Records of the General Conference of UNESCO, third session, Beirut, 1948, v. 2: Resolutions, 3C, 1949, 24”, UNESCO Archives; A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks; Resolution (52) 17. History and Geography Textbooks (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1952); “Report of the Working Group No. 2”, EXP/Cult (53) 33, Box 2747, 1953, Council of Europe Archives, printed in Edouard Bruley and E.H. Dance, A History of Europe (Leyden: A.W. Sythoff, 1960), 71–72.
John I. Goodlad, ed., Curriculum Inquiry (New York: Mc Graw-Hill Book Company, 1979), 22, 348ff.
Eckhardt Fuchs, “The Creation of New International Networks in Education: The League of Nations and Educational Organizations in the 1920s”, Paedagogica Historica 43:2 (2007): 208.
“Final Text of the Resolutions on the Revision of School Text-books, Adopted by the International Committee on Intellectual Co-operation at its XIVth Plenary Session, July 1932”, 189–192, Box 1750, Council of Europe Archives; Thomas Nygren, “International Reformation of Swedish History Education 1927–1961: The Complexity of Implementing International Understanding”, Journal of World History 22:2 (2011): 329–354.
Jan Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation: The League Experience and the Beginnings of UNESCO (Wroclaw: Zaklad Narodowy im. Ossolmskich, 1962), 77f; A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks, 107.
UNESCO’s first director-general, Julian Huxley, pointed out clearly in 1946 how peace through international understanding was central to the work for peace in a far too divided world, separated by ideologies and religions, according to Julian Huxley, UNESCO its Purpose and its Philosophy: Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 1946 (Paris: UNESCO, 1947), 6–7, 13, 61–62. Glenda Sluga has noted a lack of diversity in the organization and its thinking in the early years, but also how UNESCO and Huxley, in spite of the imperialist heritage, did highlight the vision of international understanding. See Glenda Sluga, “UNESCO and the (One) World of Julian Huxley”, Journal of World History 21:3 (2010): 393–418.
Edouard Bruley and E.H. Dance, A History of Europe (Leyden, 1960), 14.
Nygren, “International Reformation of Swedish History Education”; Thomas Nygren, “UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960–2002”, Educational Inquiry 2:1 (2011): 37–60; Thomas Nygren, “The Contemporary Turn: Debate, Curricula and Swedish Students’ History”, Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 4:1 (2012): 40–60.
Poul Duedahl, “Selling Mankind: UNESCO and the Invention of Global History, 1945–76”, Journal of World History 22: 1 (2011): 101–133.
Erland Sundström, ed., Unesco: över alla gränser [UNESCO: Beyond all borders], (Stockholm, 1962).
Heidi Haggrén, “The ‘Nordic Group’ in UNESCO” in Regional Cooperation and International Organisations: The Nordic Model in Transnational Alignment, ed. Norbert Götz and Heidi Haggrén (London: Routledge, 2009): 88–111.
Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf, History Teaching and History Textbook Revision (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1967), 11, 126.
Records of the General Conference 23rd Session Sofia, 8 October–9 November 1985, v. 1: Resolutions (Paris: UNESCO, 1985), 104. See also Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga, “New Histories of the United Nations”, Journal of World History 19: 3 (2005): 266–269.
Karen Mundy, “Educational Multilateralism in a Changing World Order: UNESCO and the Limits of the Possible”, International Journal of Educational Development 19 (1999): 31–48.
I. Bergstedt, Negerfrågan i Förenta Staterna (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1969), 5.
Citations from R. Ovaska, Sydafrika förr och nu (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1971), 14 and M. Holmberg and P. Lööf, Sydafrika (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1987), 11.
M. Petterson, Händelserna på himmelska fridens torg 1989 (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1992)
G. Svensson, Hitlers ungdomsår (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1969), 3.
H.-H. Helldahl, Vietnamkriget (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1998)
O. Brännström, Baltutlämningen (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1985), 6.
M. Ranudd, Finska vinterkriget 1939–1940 (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1987).
M. Olsson, Zigenare (Gävle: Vasaskolan, 1991), 2
In Bengt Schüllerqvist’s previous study of a teacher’s experiences, it was held that “the benefactors of humankind” replaced national heroes: Bengt Schüllerqvist, En lärares bildningsgång: En biografisk studie av ideal, tradition och praxis i svensk läroverksmiljö (Uppsala: Pedagogisk forskning i Uppsala 143, 2002), 155.
See Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944), reprinted in 1962 and 1969.
In higher education, more international contemporary and multicultural university curricula was noted by David John Frank, Suk-Ying Wong, John W. Meyer and Francisco O. Ramirez, “What Counts as History: A Cross-National and Longitudinal Study of University Curricula”, Comparative Education Review 44:1 (2000): 46f. Arie Wilschut has described how the development of history didactics could follow similar and different directions in European countries. See Wilschut, “History at the Mercy of Politicians and Ideologies”.
Katérina Stenou, UNESCO and the Issue of Cultural Diversity: Review and Strategy, 1946–2004 (Paris: UNESCO, 2004), 3f.
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Nygren, T. (2016). UNESCO Teaches History: Implementing International Understanding in Sweden. In: Duedahl, P. (eds) A History of UNESCO. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-58120-4_11
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