Abstract
This book looks at the complicated relationship between political conflict, social memory and history teaching in schools, in a cross-border perspective. The questions and methodological reflection around which this book revolves occur at a particular juncture of the European debate on this issue. The question of teaching history in schools has become a gauge of tension and identitarian unease emerging in advanced societies in a more general manner. In the sphere of social sciences and pedagogy, the challenges of teaching history represents a leitmotif of the 2020s.
While most controversies over curricula are still directed against the state, which is perceived as the main regulating and controlling agent, history teaching is moving away from dominant master narratives in many national communities. In recent decades, other narratives (regional and territorial) have proliferated from national minorities, which in some cases represent the majority of the local population and at times are in open conflict with the national narrative. The common topic of all the essays in this collection—the educational reference to a shared past—is analysed from different perspectives: from the tools used to drive it (textbooks), to the tensions it has raised (debate on reform) and to the original narrative solutions resulting from the issue of recognition of otherness.