The Past as a Tool for the Present: The Role of History Education in the Western Balkans since the Second World War

Abstract

This paper examines the socio-political function history education has performed in the Western Balkans since the Second World War, addressing a shortfall in comparative historical research. Specifically, it questions the extent to which the school subject has supported the process of reconciliation and, more recently, democratisation in a region which remains scarred by the conflicts of the twentieth century and characterised by deep ethnic divisions. Following a theoretically-grounded introduction which reveals these two processes to be intrinsically connected within modern educational methodologies, it is argued that the failure of socialist Yugoslavia to use history teaching as a medium through which society could come to terms with its past contributed significantly to its eventual downfall. The focus of analysis then shifts to three tangible products of Yugoslav disintegration, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, where, during the turmoil of the 1990s, history education was manipulated by policy makers to serve strictly nationalistic designs, upholding the old Marxist principle of a single truth and making no attempts to encourage a recognition of multiple perspectives of the past. By combining a qualitative study of secondary reports and articles with the quantitative analysis of a new teacher survey, it is concluded that only in Croatia has there been any significant positive developments in history education, whereby young people are increasingly encouraged to think critically and thus democratically about both their history and present condition.