This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the socially disputed period of the Cold War is remembered in today’s history classroom. Applying a diverse set of methodological strategies, the authors map the dividing lines in and between memory cultures across the globe, paying special attention to the impact the crisis-driven age of our present has on images of the past. Authors analysing educational media point to ambivalence, vagueness and contradictions in textbook narratives understood to be echoes of societal and academic controversies. Others focus on teachers and the history classroom, showing how unresolved political issues create tensions in history education. They render visible how teachers struggle to handle these challenges by pretending that what they do is ‘just history’. The contributions to this book unveil how teachers, backgrounding the political inherent in all memory practices, often nourish the illusion that the history in which they are engaged is all about addressing the past with a reflexive and disciplined approach.
Author(s): Barbara Christophe, Peter Gautschi, Robert Thorp
Series: Palgrave Studies In Educational Media
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 471
Tags: Teaching And Teacher Education, Cold War, Classroom
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxx
Introduction: The Cold War in the Classroom International Perspectives on Textbooks and Memory Practices (Barbara Christophe)....Pages 1-11
Front Matter ....Pages 13-13
Textbook Memories of the Cold War: Introduction to Part One (Barbara Christophe)....Pages 15-22
Manufacturing Coherence: How American Textbooks Incorporate Diverse Perspectives on the Origins of the Cold War (Eva Fischer)....Pages 23-49
Between Radical Shifts and Persistent Uncertainties: The Cold War in Russian History Textbooks (Alexander Khodnev)....Pages 51-74
The Emergence of a Multipolar World: Decentring the Cold War in Chinese History Textbooks (Lisa Dyson)....Pages 75-105
Americans and Russians as Representatives of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Contemporary Swedish School History Textbooks and their Portrayals of the Central Characters of the Cold War (Anders Persson)....Pages 107-135
Images and Imaginings of the Cold War – with a Focus on the Swiss View (Markus Furrer)....Pages 137-157
Between Non-human and Individual Agents: The Attribution of Agency in Chapters on the Cold War in Flemish History Textbooks (Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse)....Pages 159-181
The Cold War and the Polish Question (Joanna Wojdon)....Pages 183-206
The Cold War in South African History Textbooks (Linda Chisholm, David Fig)....Pages 207-220
Dictatorship and the Cold War in Official Chilean History Textbooks (Teresa Oteíza, Claudia Castro)....Pages 221-247
Front Matter ....Pages 249-249
Teachers’ Memories and the Cold War: Introduction to Part II (Robert Thorp, Barbara Christophe)....Pages 251-257
Ambivalence and the Illusion of Hegemony (Barbara Christophe)....Pages 259-287
1968 in German-speaking Switzerland: Controversies and Interpretations (Nadine Ritzer)....Pages 289-315
Reconciling Opposing Discourses: Narrating and Teaching the Cold War in an East-German Classroom (Eva Fischer)....Pages 317-344
Front Matter ....Pages 345-345
Introduction to Part Three: Memory Practices in the Classroom (Peter Gautschi, Barbara Christophe, Robert Thorp)....Pages 347-359
Selecting, Stretching and Missing the Frame: Making Sense of the Cold War in German and Swiss History Classrooms (Barbara Christophe)....Pages 361-392
Learning from Others: Considerations within History Didactics on Introducing the Cold War in Lessons in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland (Peter Gautschi, Hans Utz)....Pages 393-421
Pedagogical Entanglements and the Cold War: A Comparative Study on Opening History Lessons on the Cold War in Sweden and Switzerland (Robert Thorp)....Pages 423-447
Back Matter ....Pages 449-459
