Abstract
Over the past decade there has been a surge in literature investigating the relationship between education and historical and transitional justice. In particular, revision of history textbooks is often presented as a significant component of both peacebuilding and transitional justice mechanisms. However, academic scholarship has largely neglected situations in conflict-affected yet already established democracies, where such attempts unintendedly destabilise and polarise communities. Existing studies prescribing the use of history education reform as atonement also rarely question assumptions and approaches of peace agendas that may contribute to injustices. This chapter fills in these gaps by building on the case of Cyprus where history textbook revisions as educational atonement and historical justice have failed to materialise. Should history textbooks be used for addressing historical injustices, and if yes, what lessons can we learn from Cyprus regarding when and why history textbook revisions fail?
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Notes
- 1.
There are several explanations as to why textbooks seem to be more difficult to change but also cause more controversies than curricula. For example, the process of textbook authorship, production and revision is a much slower process and usually takes at least a few years where as curricula revisions require less contributions by individual authors and develop faster. Often the creators of one are viewed as curriculum developers (often policymakers) whereas the others are seen as ‘textbook authors’ (often teachers or academics). One is related to educational policy and is usually more abstract and related to objectives whereas the other one includes the actual and specific content of this policy. Finally, school textbooks—referred to by Ingrao (2009, p. 180) as ‘weapons of mass instruction’ are teaching tools used in the classroom, and taken home by students (and usually more easily accessible), thus enhancing their perceived power and influence when compared to a curriculum document.
- 2.
In this chapter, I focus on the educational aspects of the Greek-Cypriot community in the Republic of Cyprus.
- 3.
Here I am referring to high-level political negotiations and not to bottom-up peacebuilding processes for example from bi-communal NGOs that have made some progress in achieving their goals, especially after 2003 and the opening of checkpoints that meant partial lifting of restrictions on movement and more intergroup contact.
- 4.
The vast majority of pupils are also not able to speak the language of the ‘other’ and participating in such language classes often gets politicised (Charalambous 2014).
- 5.
The figures tend to be over-estimated from the Greek-Cypriot authorities, sometimes reaching 160,000. According to a report by Mete Hatay (2007) the number of these ‘settlers’ from Turkey who have received citizenship (and hence the right to vote) is around 42,000 or 24% of the population. This number does not include temporary residents from Turkey, for example, students or immigrant workers. Turkish-Cypriots are entitled to citizenship, voting rights and access to welfare of the Republic of Cyprus, but Turkish settlers are not.
- 6.
Kovras’s point here is that this is a unique case that shows the agency of the families of the disappeared which due to their own mobilisation and determination, were able to break the institutionalised silence of almost 30 years. The wives of the missing persons as well as investigative journalists played an important role in truth recovery. The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) was established in 1981 but only started work 25 years after.
- 7.
A comparative overview of the evolution of the objective of ‘I do not forget’ and the possible causes for this watering down falls outside the scope of this chapter. For a brief overview see Zembylas et al. 2016, pp. 60–64 and Christou 2006. For the school year 2019–2020, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Youth of the Republic of Cyprus (MOECSY henceforth) in a relevant circular (File No. 7.1.05.31) emphasised the importance of the ‘timeless objective’ of ‘I know, I do not forget, I claim’, clarifying that it ‘remains a highest priority’(MOECSY 2019a). In its more specific school guidelines for the year 2019–2020 (C.1.2.) it referred to the ‘fading away’ of historical memory and called for a resurgence and ‘substantial upgrade’ of this objective in all school subjects (MOECSY 2019b).
- 8.
Turkish-Cypriot revisions under the left-wing Republican Turkish Party (CTP) in 2004, towards somewhat less ethnocentric and discriminatory content (Papadakis 2008), were withdrawn in 2009 after the election of a right-wing party (National Unity Party) to power (see Vural 2012). New history textbooks have been introduced in the primary school of the Greek-Cypriot community but these do not cover the conflict period.
- 9.
The Cyprus conflict is mentioned in history curricula in the last grade of primary school (Grade 6), the last class of gymnasium (lower secondary, Grade 3) and the last class of lyceum (higher secondary, Grade 3). History education is first taught as a separate subject in Grade 3 of primary school. The major history curricula reforms made in (2010) include explicit references to critical thinking and multi-perspectivity, the edification of students for being active democratic citizens, history education devoid of stereotypes and prejudices and the cultivation of twenty-first-century skills. The most updated curricula can be found at the website of the MOECSY: http://www.moec.gov.cy/analytika_programmata/programmata_spoudon.html.
- 10.
Although I do not agree that such an issue can ever be de-politicised, my suggestion here is to achieve political neutrality in terms of independence from political parties, especially of those educators in high-level positions.
- 11.
The BTCE was created in December 2015 but had its first ever meeting in February 2016.
- 12.
‘Imagine’ takes place under the auspices of the BTCE and is implemented by the NGOs Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) and the Home for Cooperation (H4C) with the support of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. For further details of the project see here: https://www.ahdr.info/peace-education/58-education-for-a-culture-of-peace-imagine.
- 13.
This quote is taken from a UNDP job vacancy post. The author applied for this post and has since early 2020 been the Greek-Cypriot education specialist for creating educational material. The first draft of this chapter was sent and presented at a symposium on History Education and Historical Justice at Umeå University, Sweden many months before on June 4th 2019 while the author was affiliated with the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Germany. The relevant material used for this part of the chapter is publicly available.
- 14.
Interestingly, ‘rights’ as in, for example, ‘human rights’ are also a variation of the same word.
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I dedicate this chapter to my late father, Gregorios Christodoulou, who passed away at the end of 2020, shortly before the book was published. As I worked on this chapter by his bedside during his very difficult final stages and he encouraged me to finish it, I know he would have loved to read the book in print.
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Christodoulou, E. (2021). Textbook Revisions as Educational Atonement? Possibilities and Challenges of History Education as a Means to Historical Justice. In: Keynes, M., Åström Elmersjö, H., Lindmark, D., Norlin, B. (eds) Historical Justice and History Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70412-4_11
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