WHITE PAPER

WHITE PAPER

Short presentation of the project-frame

History represents an important aspect in civic education of any social group. The historical memory, transmitted through different traditions, actions as the most important reference for the members of a group. Historical memory serves as an element for mutual identification and making difference in relation with other social groups. The region of South-Eastern Europe has a peculiar historical background, usually considered as being exclusively conflictual, dominated by intolerance and misperceptions. This historical background contributes nowadays into shaping the collective identities in the region.

Next to other major similar initiatives, the project entitled “National Histories in South-Eastern Europe and History of a United Europe” was mainly addressed to the students who are studying within the SEE academic environment. The project was designed to promote a direct dialog between undergraduates and postgraduates students and professors, in order to find solutions for the ways of teaching/learning the “national histories” and “Idea of Europa”, in the context of the tremendous political and social changes of the last decade in South-Eastern European countries.

The chosen students of the target group of the project were selected from two points of views:

they are the future disseminators of ideas and trainers for the mass of the pupils who will be the next generation of adults and citizens. For this reason, their educational background represents a permanent object of concern for any social group.
students are the present beneficials of the academic environment. They may act as important mutual actors in the dynamic process of setting up the “curricula” and the orientation of educational tools to more practical activities.

The project concentrated on the methodology of teaching history and the contents of the curricula developed in the process of learning. We focused on three domains: sources and resources; methods and approaches; historical themes and topics. Being a youth/student initiative we preferred to take into consideration the whole spectrum of the educational system, from the different types of pre-academic learning processes towards the university system.

Our whole project and final White Paper had not been possible without the kind support offered by the the Higher Education Scheme Programme of the Open Society Institute. Also, we are deeply grateful to all our brilliant and helpful consultants, especially to Prof. Florain BIEBER, to trainers, parteners and colleagues, to all other sponsors of our youth initiative in South-Eastern Europe.

I. RETHINKING THE EDUCATIONAL MENTALITIES AND CONTENTS

The need for new philosophical fundaments

A change of the educational paradigm and methodological styles in the SEE has to start from an input from academic community. The reconstruction of the scientific discourse on the national history in SEEC, as well as on the SEE/Balkan history as a whole has to start from the need to distinguish between the various stages of this historical and cultural construction.

In order to achieve a deep reform of the general paradigm of teaching history in SEEC, we have to refer to concrete strategies for transforming the other. In the cultural anthropology, Clifford Geertz, for example, already determined a significant hermeneutic turn. Within this type of research, the interpretation of the symbolic systems – according to which people from other cultures perceive and interpret their world – is crucial. The main aim is to investigate what values, meanings and orientations of behavior are available in another culture.

Using the arguments of Yvonne Levan, in order to achieve an instrumental and individualized form of multiculturalism, it is important to take into account the complex environment of national culture and educational, immigration and multicultural policies. Cross-national fundamental research is needed to arrive at a better understanding of the inter-relationship between education, ethnicity, equality and social cohesion.

For most European education systems, the challenge is to engage in a wide-ranging establishment of connections with other cultures and civilizations, which are part of the fabric of contemporary and substantive realities for young people.

Those who plan history curricula face a very complicated task: on the one hand, they need to engage with the identities of majoritarian and minority groups; on the other hand, they need to develop a coherent story of and for the nation. For curriculum designers, the question is what aspect of histories to select and on what principles to make that selection. To develop more universal understandings the underlying historical hypothesis and the implicit theories of writers need to be unpicked.

An epistemological and methodological break could lead to developing more widely acceptable histories which include both written sources and oral understandings of certain groups. According to Jagdish Gundara, liberating the notion of the modern from the Eurocentric or the dominant straitjacket can help with developing notions of modernity being universalized. By themselves, the teachers could not produce a system code for Europe. On the footstep of Prof. Jurgen Habermas, the German researcher, Dieter Lenzen already suggested that the system has to develop itself through the communication of participants.

As a first major conclusion, the whole educational system has to stimulate the students towards a self-development of a heterological thinking and to stress the perspective of plurality as a “necessary consequence of a fragmented perceptions of reality”.

In order to fundament, to promote and to achieve a radical general reform in the way of involving the teaching/learning of history within the SEE national curricula, we propose first of all to consecrate, to support and to consolidate the rights of students to a general emancipation which help them to harmonize them according to an increasingly complex society (cf. the terminology used by Edgar Morin). In this way, they will enjoy when more and more social actors will benefit of a know-how/knowledge and attitudes, in view of their real needs and social requirements.

From this perspective, we should not concentrate so much anymore on the formalistic environment of the various subjects or their organization within complex knowledge. Using the practical results of the “institutional analysis” as a new educational perspective, our radical need concerns the relational ability aimed to be acquired through academic practices able to assume the objective of co-participation and co-operation, much more than the traditional objectives of the curricular learning. In such context, the teacher is to assume the new task as facilitator of knowledge. She/he is to play the innovative role of representing of a social actor who is not looking for the scientific truth, but only the consensual towards a new common institution.

In order to generate this new perspective, the teacher needs a collaborative and inter-active presence of her/his students. Such a teacher enjoys of the unique freedom - specific to the post-modern era - of looking by herself/himself for needed knowledge in view to exercise her/his own educational freedom. She/he is not to implement a deontology on the natural body of pupils/students. Such a deontology proved to be unable to mange a moral relationship with the pupils, unrecognized by for their transformability and potential evolution.

Historical legacies of diversity and of nationalism

Most of scholars already recognised that, in the case of Balkans, and most of SEE various national histories, we have to face real Myths. This fact results in a series of challenges to researchers and academia, but also to the whole educational system.

An essential role in the analysis and the understanding of SEE history is played by Western European and, more recently, US cultural and ideological perceptions/stereotypes. In respect to this understanding and its consequences on the academic system during the two last centuries, there are at least two main stages of this process:

The “(re) discovery” of the SEE realities/cultures which led to most of the current stereotypes, misperceptions or subjective mythologies on SEE and Balkan civilization - as, for example, the most mentioned features like cruelty, the fatidic unclear inclination towards barbarian manners, the rudeness, the instability, the unpredictability of reactions/mentalities (identification of Balkans as a depreciative opposite of “Europe” as the rational pole;
The “invention” of the Balkans and Balkan culture as a further reductionistic approach, used in order to simplify and justify the neglect of these “peripheral” areas of Europe by the West.

Main trends of historiographical research on SEE are deeply influenced by a reduced number of Western ideological prejudices on the civilisational chances of this region. SEE historians themselves paradoxically reacted to these prejudices through a consolidation of various ethnocentric myths within their own descriptions of Balkan histories. Strong, frequently subliminal ideologisation of the whole teaching methods and curricula themselves poisoned the effort towards emancipation (de-construction of previous stereotypes and understanding of various historical myths) of SEE historians.

Following the analytical approach proposed by the American Prof. Maria Todorova in Imagining the Balkans in order to re-design the SEE histories, we first need to submit all previous ways of presenting these cultures/histories to a multicultural and relativist examination. Such process is needed itself for criticizing the still persistent racist – purist perceptions, and reflect the real source of conflict affecting the SEE histories: the natural ethnic (and cultural) complexity within the Nation-State imagined by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In this respect, there are two recommended strategies able to offer the chance to renovate the SEEC educational process referring to the teaching materials and methodologies:

To proceed to an analytical critique, and probably, to a de-construction of the supposed division line between the so-called Mittel Europa, interpreted itself as an identity challenge addressed to historians.
To revisit the nature of the Balkans and the historical myths of the Balkans, in order to make a clear methodological distinction between the two types of cultural constructions (Central Europe and Balkans).

This strategic renovation is a complex process, which should start from SEE historians themselves. Here we will enumerate some important changes to be operated by historians in their attempt to rethink on the interpretation of SEE histories.

To reorient the SEE historical research and interpretations from a strong accent on the separation between local/regional and foreign (Ottoman/Phanariot influences) towards a stress on the various continuities and the life of institutions in SEEC.
To revise the main opposite historical interpretations on the Ottoman heritage: from the point of view of an outsider (accordingly, this heritage could be analysed in an objective way, in various regions where such influence operated) and of an insider (according to this another one, the approach is, in the same time, subjective and retrospective and sees in Balkans a complex unity and inter-action of customs, attitudes and believes; this implies that the Ottoman heritage is considered as the centre of the historical continuity in SEE region).
To deepen the analysis of the significance of the historical continuity vs. secession process within the transforming of the Ottoman heritage in a certain common perception.

In order to understand the features of a common regional identity, historians should concentrate on the influence of common problems and issues faced by the SEEC. An inventory of common problems could help to a more adequate understanding and explanation of the modernisation process in Balkans.
An important place has to be given to the study of the various forms of SEE nationalisms, of their generally “defensive character” and of the role of national elites in relation to the Ottoman influences. The generated contradictions and controversial processes, as for example, the marginalisation of Muslim communities after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, are to be revisited without the previous cultural or ideological prejudices.
Apart form the study of the axis of traditional Balkan cultures - the Western civilization, and Ottoman culture-Western societies, historians should conduct research on the ignored axis Balkan-Ottoman. This would allow the various historiographical studies to liberate themselves from the parochial spirit and the weak awareness concerning the history of neighboring countries/communities.
The historical studies should be theoretically prepared to distinguish between the common Western features/perceptions on Balkans and the national peculiarities, proved by the degree of assuming stereotypes by current SEE scientific and educational approaches.

The Balkans has to deeply transform its (self-) perception as the negative alternative to the civil sated Europe. This implies a long process of reading again documents and historical testimonies, to avoid prejudices in interpreting these sources and looking for establishing criteria for evaluating historical facts.

In this respect, we strongly recommend to scholars, teachers and students to contribute to the drawing-up of a research agenda for cross-country historical research/presentation in historical school books/reading books.

A special focus has to be applied on contemporary challenges to teaching and education in various SEE societies. The first key-aspect is how minorities are portrayed in the educational systems and how this is a reflection of larger social trends. In this respect, we encourage the critique of the stereotyping and ignoring non-dominant groups in the educational systems.

The new position of teachers and the rights of pupils

The coordinators of curricula in the field of national histories in SEEC are confronted to the problem of harmonizing the historical information to be transmitted to new generations envisaged to be part of a more homogenous European population. Another issue of concern is connected to the way of various ethnic or confessional majorities or minorities in the region are able to recompose their clear points of view when they have to meditate on certain historical events. In many cases of this type, these groups encountered the difficulty to be opposed in the past and still face problems of mutual representation each from another.

There is a high expectation that various problematic contexts of this type are to be revealed by the school. Also, we enable the school to contribute to the acceleration of the resolution of inter-ethnic or inter-confessional conflicts as new generations are accumulating a significant different training and educational experience.

Within the school, according to the arguments proposed by Prof. Vito D’Armento during one of our training sessions, the various generations are to find the best conditions for using a social time; its transforming value depends on the equal levels of freedom and participation of whom is instructing and who is teaching. In this respect, we have to observe that the role of the teachers to be stressed in SEE various ethnic communities concern the need to dissolve the reasons of former conflicts, mostly perpetrated through false perceptions on formerly rival groups/nations. It is essential that the teachers feel really free from authoritarian constrictions and able to propose critical readings of the various controversial historical facts. Only through challenging debates it is possible to open a so called black box and re-discuss apparent undisputable topics.

The teacher is to become aware to be part of micro-social environment inhabited by other actors, playing other roles and embracing other points of view. She/he will need to listen only the pupils and their common concern/demand. Her/his intellectual obsession should be the right of her/his students to an educational system in favor of the competencies to be acquired through their own co-participation.

The need for a real inter-cultural approach

An intercultural education based on the ethic of recognition has to show the contingence, the possibilities and the variabilities of a specific moral standpoint. It means that the pluralism of morals may be enrichment in the person’s learning process of morals. According to a study of the German Commission of UNESCO from 1977, the education should try to work out a model of moral learning, which is based on a process to a more common, more reflexive and more differentiated form of interchangeable recognition.

For example, a project implemented in 1986, under the framework of the European Council (“The education and the cultural development of migrants”, directed by Louis Porcher), defines four elements of the intercultural approach:

our societies are becoming more and more multicultural societies;
every culture has its own respectable specificities;
the multiculturalism is potentially a treasure;
it is a need to instate an inter-penetration between all cultures without erasing the specific identity of each of them; to put the multicultural in motion, in order to transform it in an intercultural factor (cf. Council of Europe: Allemann-Ghionda, 1992).

The need to frame history within the peace education

According to Robert Aspeslagh, the core of peace in Europe has to be found in an ongoing process of co-operation and integration.

The peace education is aimed to contribute to the cognitive enrichment, to build practical skills and attitudes of pupils. Using a summary provided by Benyamin Chetkow-Yanoov, the specific learning goals should include:

increasing objective knowledge about the diversity of people, view points, ideologies and the tensions between them;
helping pupils and students to understand the influence of attitudes and feelings on human behavior in situations of enmity and co-operation;
analyzing the concept of peace as both a state of being and an active process;
teaching the dynamics of power, conflict and their patterns of escalation, helping pupils to take part in simulations and other participatory learning situations, in order to master some skills and techniques in conflict resolution;
bringing about constructive and encounter meetings, in order to challenge stereotypes, develop trust-relationship, self-awareness and search for projects of mutual benefit.

Using the proposals of the researcher Eva Blenesi, the main purposes and goals of peace education are to develop a critical, analytic and analogical thinking, and a culture of peace. In this way, the peace education, and especially the intercultural learning, will directly benefit the representatives of the majority and minorities, by promoting openness and tolerance towards different cultures.

The discussion of peace education in Europe has to take into account the European process of integration as its frame of reference and – going beyond “national peace education” – develop “a European peace education”. The global aim is to help the understanding of the democratic reorganization and voluntary integration of Europe as a pedagogical challenge. We recommend to better inform teachers and use the conclusions formulated by the EURED Project (European Education as Peace Education, cf. Rudiger Teutsch and Werner Wintersteiner). The used hypothesis of this European project is that the common features in Europe are not restricted to its common history and the close cultural and political relationships between the European countries. For a half a century, Europe has been the idea and the practice of a voluntary merger, a political, economic and cultural integration. The European peace education should establish a critical reference to the new although still week political unity of Europe. In this respect, there are three key-objectives of such approach:

the articulation of peace-policy interests from the point of view of pedagogy;
the demand for suitable framework conditions throughout Europe;
the use of this European framework for the interest of peace pedagogy.

The reports from the six EU countries affected by EURED deal with three aspects:

the term of peace education in the academic and school discussion and practice (used in official documents and pedagogical literature);
the reality of peace education in schools (examples of good practices, topics and subjects);
peace education teacher training (initial training and in-service training).

In all these countries, a decisive role for the presence of peace education is played by initiatives from outside, especially from the Peace Movement. The interest in peace education is generally increasing in post-war regions and those with violent tensions. Also, the peace education offered in co-operation between school authorities, schools and NGOs, has proven to be a recipe for success. The national level is increasingly being replaced by the European level as field of action.

The measures for promoting European exchanges through specific programs is leading to improved conditions for a peace education that is conceived as a European education, and for peace pedagogical co-operation. New developments, such as the Global Campaign for peace Education of the Hague Appeal for Peace (HAP) or the increased collaboration between peace educators within the framework of the Peace Education Committee (PEC) of the International Peace Research Association justify the hope that the objective of a peace pedagogy could also be achieved.

II. From the methodological reform to a civic perspective

In the framework of the creation of the newly united Europe, and of reforming respective educational curricula, a crucial issue concerning the teaching of national history in SEEC is considered to be the development of useful life-time abilities and concepts.

In order to design any methodological changes in South-Eastern Europe, the new approach of SEE reformers should be based on the Recommendation no. 1238/1996 and no 15/2001 of the Council of Europe, as well as on the Hague Recommendations regarding the Education Rights of National Minorities/1996.

The above mentioned key-concepts are providing by themselves a method aimed to: organise the historic concepts and ideas; produce needed generalisations at the SEE level; identify similarities and differences between various Balkan histories/mentalities/destinies; discovery of certain operational models and potential interdepencies.

According to Robert Stradling, there are two types of relevant concepts:

of first degree, such as general European historical concepts;

of second degree or technical concepts, exclusively adequate for the scientific historical discourse (continuity, change, chronology, causality, comparison and historic sources).

The main problem is how to make a balance between, on the one hand, the dissemination of historic knowledge, the development of skills related to the critical analysis, the interpretation/evaluation of historical sources, and, on the other hand, the cultivation of a feeling of History itself, liberated from ideological manipulations or previous nationalistic distortions/ perceptions. A difficulty is represented by the lack of a clear repertory of information and abilities required for helping the pupils to evaluate the legitimacy of certain historical testimonies or to identify the single perspective of the author of a certain historical document. This fact seems to be the result of the axiological crisis and of the ultra-relativistic perspectives dominating the whole collective imaginary and academic life.

In order to deeply renew the methodological orientations in SEEC, we have to reconsider especially the role and the place of the teacher during the class of history. This situation involves a special attention granted to the active learning, to the learning through exploration, to the use of group learning or independent learning, to the debates involving all pupils or to the access towards a variety of historical sources.

A teacher's task, especially in the former communist countries of SEE, is mainly to encourage pupils to move on from merely reproducing facts and figures to actively practising and using various skills such as discussing, hypothesizing, comparing, summarizing complicated contents, presenting their own contributions and results, viewing topics from various angles, reproducing contents graphically, working in teams (e.g. sharing the workload etc.).

A peculiar attention is to be paid to the introduction and the “analysis” of the visual materials, implying an analytical plan to be elaborated by teachers. This methodological tool is relatively new for SEE teachers. They have to learn basic elements of semiotic interpretation of the visual materials (pictures, drawings, caricatures etc.).

The use of simulation and of the playing roles-game is important in order to offer a clearer interpretation of events and significant topics for the every day life of communities along the history of SEE. Due to previous historical/political conditions, such games could be very sensitive for both teachers and pupils/students. They provide the advantage of improving the historic knowledge and abilities, and could support a more radical change of the educational act. Practically speaking, Stradling recommends these games because they familiarise the pupils/students for:

-a deeper active participation and co-operation with other colleagues for fulfilling a common objective;

-exerting the tolerance spirit in front of certain ideas and other’s points of view;

-developing and using more the communication skills;

-demonstrating their own capacity to use the previous knowledge in order to reconstruct an event or a situation.

The debriefing session is highly recommended. The distribution of roles is very important for the success of the games. In the same time, in order to meet expectations, it is needed to collect enough data for constituting the database for taking decisions, deploying negotiations and start debates. For avoiding potential confusions, especially within a controversial environment as the SEE space used to be, it is suitable to identify a concrete result of the game - to take a decision, to find an agreement, to set up the terms of a treaty etc. A final evaluation of the simulation is fruitful for propose further exercises of this type.

The introduction of the “multi-perspective” approach has to play a crucial role in reforming the whole teaching system in the field of national history in SEE.

Within such approach, three objectives are to be taken into consideration:

-to influence a larger understanding of historical events, considering similarities and peculiarities from the various versions of the involved counterparts;

-to stimulate a deeper understanding of the historical relationships between nations or States or between majority and national minorities within the same State;

-to support a clearer picture of the previous historical dynamic, through an examination of the inter-actions between the involved peoples and groups, as well as of their interdependence.

The above mentioned approach is to increase the complexity of the understanding process of students. Such perspective is to assume that personal identities are progressive constructions, deeply inter-connected to larger national/regional identity constructions.

Another significant orientation consists in the positioning of the “multi-perspective” approach within a clear SEE historical context. For this purpose, we have to study and recommend various methodological techniques:

-the re-invention of the past, starting from the Another perspective, especially for not marginalising ethnic or national minorities’ role within the regional history;

-the opening of links with other SEE schools;

-the analysis of the media and Internet articles;

-to use the common emphatic approach within the history classes.

After long debates and discussions along our one-year project, we especially recommend a concentration on few teaching techniques and orientations, aimed to facilitate the development of the pupils’ skills:

to explain history (and to let the pupils explain history) not only in the traditional “linear” way but supported by historical comparisons (e.g. of different époques or regions/countries);

to contrast the conventional approach of a history of facts (rulers, wars, dates and years) with topics of socio-historical and general relevance. Children and teenagers take an increased interest in a topic if it is relevant to their own life, such as school, parents, friends, games, education etc;

to make abstract concepts (e.g. the 19^th century, Communism) more easily explain by supporting them with descriptive examples: What was everyday life like? What are the similarities and differences to the present? What was the daily routine of children like? Who had the chance to go to school? Which children had to work from a very early age onwards? What did children do in their spare time?;

to raise pupils’ awareness that many aspects of modern life (e.g. democratic elections, travelling, school attendance, the right to have spare time, the distribution of roles among members of a family) have evolved throughout history and should not be taken for granted at all;

to try to connect a historical event, a historical development and historical movement to the present time in order to understand it better or to understand its relevance for us today;

to let the pupils learn in the most possible active way which means: not to tell them “the” history but to help them to find explanations by their own - by using source material, background information, statistical data, knowledge from former lessons;

to teach them skills for a critical interpretation of all kinds of (historical) sources: to discuss historical texts and pictures; to have the pupils hypothesize on how to make sense of the sources; to let them comment and evaluate the subject matter; to compare it to the present and other countries; to find out the (e.g. political) perspective of the source, to hypothesize on the authors intentions, on the context, the aims, etc. and to compare with opposite sources;

to train the pupils to see a historical event from different points of view, in a multiperspective way (e.g. the “discovery” of America in the traditional conquerors' view but also in the view of poor “discovered” native Indian people);

to work interdisciplinarily and integrate literary texts as sources; draw geographical maps and practise skills that are not only relevant in history lessons, but even more so to the pupils’ general education and their future places of work: gathering information independently, reading texts carefully, comparing facts and trends;

to have them work on a selection of sources/texts/topics and talk about the aspects relevant to them in a short presentation in order to train their team work and presentation skills.

As practical examples of introducing and explaining the history facts, using the materials provided by the two books published with the support of Kultur Kontakt Programme, “History and History Teaching in Southeast Europe”: “Childhood in the Past” and “Women and Men in the Past”, we propose:

1. Longitudinal and Cross Sections, Comparisons - e.g. comparison of slavery in classical antiquity, in modern times (like in America in the 16^th century) and in present time; comparison of events like the 1848 revolutions in several countries; a critical view on (attempted) assassinations as a political “instrument” or the step-by-step development of the Human Rights in a longitudinal section of world history.

2. Connection to Present Times - e.g. what the ideas of the French Revolution in 1789 meant for our present time.

3. Personal Approach and Empathy – to involve the pupils personally, to let them identify with historical decision makers but also with historical “simple” people (what would you have done on their places, how would you have felt in their situation?), to let them consider social, moral and political dilemmas and motivations and to consider consequences of choices made in history.

4. Social History – to include also topics of socio-historical and general relevance (e.g. women in a certain époque, children in the past, making bread in the past).

5. Interdisciplinary Methods – e.g. to let them draw historical maps, to include literature sources, to discuss the mentality/mentalities of a certain époque also by its arts products.

6. Maps, Schemes, Diagrams etc. – first to use different “perception ways” (visual, graphic) but also to use maps, schemes and diagrams in an active way: not only presenting them but also helping the pupils to draw their own visualizations.
7. Pictures, Photos and Caricatures and

8. Text Sources – written sources as well as oral history and eyewitness accounts; pictures and cartoons as well as artifacts, as an illustration, as own type of historical source, as exercise to hypothesize on the author's/artist's intention, perspective, background.

9. Literary Texts – as personal – and sometimes for pupils more interesting historical source but also in order to let them find out the difference between history and fiction.

10. Tests and Learning Games – unfortunately there was no time to show concrete examples for active learning games and for the methodology of testing history knowledge and skills.

11. Variety in “Social Forms” of Learning and

12. “Inner Differentiation” – This means to work also in pairs and smaller groups, to let the pupils present some topics, to let them choose the topics of their own interest, to give them different tasks according to their interest and according to their abilities (e.g. drawing a poster for the more “creative” learning types, summarizing statistics for the more “mathematical” types, interpreting literature sources for the more “literary” types, etc.)

13. Technical Means and Illustration Techniques and

14. New Media were show in the whole practical work (e.g. how to present a cartoon by not showing all information at the first view – in order to make it more interesting, more challenging, to make it a kind of “guessing game”).

Designing the teacher training

There is a common responsibility of teachers and experts in developing the curricula, and writing the text-books. The educational process should be innovative, in the sense that pilot schools should be established in order to introduce new approaches; it should benefit from widely published recommendations of good practice, and it also should involve the mass-media; it also implies that school/local centers for learning should be developed, as well the development of a variety of resource materials; teachers should act as examples of good practice, respecting different opinions and the critical attitude. In order to attain these points, the curriculum should be reasonable (in terms of contests), flexible (for more work outside of curriculum), accessible (enabling the increased use of sources), and objective-based. At the same time, all partners in education (students, teachers, parents) should be questioned in relation to the educational materials.

In order to go further in the educational reform in history teaching it will be important to focus on elements aimed at:

Identifying the best ways to teach history at the beginning of the new millennium (to incorporate the new principles of education, such as equality, tolerance, diversity);
Exploring ways to improve the quality of teaching;
Finding a balance between the various aspects of history (e.g. local history, gender studies, folklore), identifying common ground between the various historiographical traditions;
Increasing the autonomy from pre-set models and developing openness towards all possible models;
Increasing the role of the school-based curriculum though optional courses, and increasing sustainability of the process.

However, the main point is to create a trend that might influence all the components:

a change at the level of principles and criteria stated in the legislation (policies);
the revision of objectives and learning activities (curricula);
text-book revision and (at the same time) teacher training revision (educational materials);
project work in pilot-schools (good practice dissemination);
the feed-back.

The new European dimension

The rights of various national and confessional minorities within the redraw of SEE educational systems is the greatest challenge to addressing diversity in the educational system. Such issues no longer pertain solely to the issue of representation in the curriculum and the textbooks, but to the creation of minority – specific classes, multilingualism in education and other topics belonging to minority education. For educators, a focus will be the challenge of accommodating specific education for minorities, on one side and, on the other side, to foster co-operation between various communities/ regions.

The national history as well as the history of the SEE region as a whole should much better integrate and explore the European dimension within the teaching perspective, its specific relevance for SEE history, mainly using:

the inter-connection between various historical issues, common for various European regions, or affecting the SEE region;
the cross-border topics and events;
study-cases attached to the European influence and mutual inter-action of historical events or phenomena;
connections and inter-cultural connections ( see the possibilities offered by the Programme of the Council of Europe "Cultural Itineraries" and an extension of the classes of patrimony);
the new accent provided by the multi-perspective when focusing common, cross-border or European historical facts, events, mentalities etc.;
a new spirit for integrating the history curricula within the social and civic education educational perspective.

An urgency is represented by the need for an analysis for identifying the common issues to be addressed within a new SEE educational perception and way of teaching/understanding the national histories and the whole Balkan history. This attempt will generate to students a capacity to negotiate and to communicate in inter-cultural situations. Such intercultural approach is to be primarily based on personal experiences rather than theory.

Finally, the link from the teaching of history and the education for an active citizenship is quite strong. Under such frame, the recollecting of various materials and local/regionalmemories through the archives’research, the pedagogical use of as much sources and the social stress of the scholar archives are motre and more used and recommended. The community itself has to be stimulated to recondiser and re-evaluate old abandoned maps, cultural artefacts and various images in order to better integrated within the cultural patrimony of the entire community.

This allows a respect for the moral principles, implying that any judgment should be based on evidences and a balance between various points of view rationally argumentated.

Final remarks

A profound process of reflecting on the reform of the teaching and curricula in the field of histories is to be strongly attached to a meditation on past and future and their progressive interaction. In the case of SEE region, all innovative strategies, technical measures and practical efforts are to be imagined and formulated from now.

Through our established information/dissemiantion network, we plan to stimulate a permanent unconventional and permanent dialogue, exchange of experiences and active participation, related to the practices and policies recommended for a deeper change of perceptions in the field of presenting the evolution of facts, events and mentalities in the historical life of our societies.

One of our ways to better connect with our target-groups will be to ensure a free room for your comments, remarks, questions and suggestions, planned to concretely support the establishing of a inter-cultural/inter-disciplinary SEE Network. Such network as ours has to become a pro-active and really viable tool for introducing to the young generation from our region the principles and objectives of the European Idea, and familiarize our colleagues of generation with a fully renewed perspective on our past, memories, but also emerging future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andreetti, Keith and Doull, Karin – History. Ages 5-7/Ages 7-9, Scholastic Ltd.: Warwickshire 2000

Carpentier, Jean, Lebrun, Francois – Istoria Europei, prefata de Rene Remond, trad. de A. Skultety & S. Skultety, Humanitas, Bucuresti, 1997

D’Armento, Vito – The new methodological and deontological position of the teacher (lecture during the Second Training Session, Timisoara, March 2003)

Dimitras, Panayote – Writing and Rewriting History in the Context of Balkan Nationalisms, Southeast European Politics, Vol. 1/No. 1, Oct. 2000

Karge, Heike – Minorities in Southeast European Educational Systems: Perspectives from the Viewpoint of Textbook Research, ECMI Report, No. 22, March 2002

Koppen, Jan Karel/Lunt, Ingrid, Wulf Cristoph (eds.). Collaborating editor: Silvia Hedennig – Education in Europe, Waxmann Munster/New York, Munchen/Berlin, 2003

Koulouri, Christina (ed.) - Teaching the History of Southeastern Europe, Thessaloniki, 2001

Ministerul Educatiei si Cercetarii – Predarea istoriei secolului 20, Selectia, trad. si adaptarea de Mihai Manea, f.a.

Popova, Kristina, Vodenicharov, Petar, Dimitrova, Snezhana. Consultant: Daniela Grabe – Women and Men in the past, South-Western University, Blagoevgrad, 2002

Qvarsell, Birgitta and Wulf, Cristoph (eds.) – Culture and education, Waxmann Munster/New York, Munchen/Berlin, 2003

Risotiovic, Milan and Stoianovic Dubravka (eds.) – Copiii in istorie. Secolele XIX-XX, trad. de Mihai Manea, Asociatia de Istorie Sociala, Belgrad, 2001

Stradling, Robert – Teaching 20th-Century European History, Council of Europe Publishing, 2001

Todorova, Maria - The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans, L. Carl Brown, (ed.) Imperial Legacy. The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: CUP 1996)

Werner Wintersteiner/Vedrana Spajic-Vrkas/Teutsch Rudiger (eds.) – Peace Education in Europe. Visions and experiences, Waxmann Munster/New York, Munchen/Berlin, 2003