De-Saddamification through School Books
The idea of carrying out a revision of school text books internationally was already discussed following the First World War. The League of Nations recognized that enemy images should be taken out of school books.
After the Second World War, UNESCO proceeded with the endeavor. Georg Eckert, a historian from Braunschweig and chairman of Germany’s commission, founded an institute bearing his name to take over the task.
Two hundred thousand school text books in the subject areas of geography, economics, politics and social studies have since been archived at the institute. It is the only institute in the world that studies school materials on an international level. For its unique work, the Georg Eckert Institute received the UNESCO prize for peace education in 1985.
Supporting peace education through school text books
The advice of the institute’s experts is much needed in crisis regions with current political and ethnic conflicts, for example South East Europe, Israel and Palestine, and even in Iraq. Since September 11th and the Afghanistan war in particular, perception of the other in school media has become an important issue for the Islamic world and the West.
"It was recognized that the perception of Islam in education also plays a large role, and the demand was high," for the work of the Georg Eckert Institute, according to its director Wolfgang Höpken.
The institute also engages in organizing international conferences, advising text book publishers and authors, writing expert opinions, supporting research and getting the results published.
As early as the 1980s, the Georg Eckert Institute had already begun to address the representation of Islam. They examined German school books from this perspective and made recommendations on how a more differentiated view and an intercultural dialog could be accomplished.
Writing a common Israeli-Palestinian history
An exemplary project aimed at mutual reconciliation in the Middle East is the realization of an Israeli-Palestinian history book.
Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On and Palestinian professor Sami Adwan drafted a history book for young school children in which Israeli history is reconstructed on the left side and Palestinian on the right. Space in the middle is left blank, a space for the pupils to write their own history.
In August, Israeli, German and Palestinian experts will determine whether the book can be used for instruction, said Wolfgang Höpken. And because Palestinian school text books are prone to anti-Israeli content, the institute will be examining and evaluating new text books from the region.
A newly initiated grant will support Palestinian text book authors through a training program to qualify them for this work.
Indirect influence has an effect
Not only classic school text books but also multi-media instructional material are being examined and new materials created. Together with the German publisher Cornelsen, for example, the institute is developing a CD ROM for instruction on the National Socialist period.
But this kind of direct cooperation is the exception at the institute, according to Höpken. Mostly their work is accomplished indirectly, through conferences or the analysis of results, which are then used by education facilities for orientation and counseling.
"We are not an authority that can make decisions about text books, the Bundesländer won’t delegate this responsibility."
De-Saddamification
When UNESCO became active in a project in Iraq, an expert from the Georg Eckert institute was called up in the summer of 2003 to help evaluate text books, particularly in the natural sciences.
In Iraq, even mathematics text books contain images of Saddam Hussein or a predominantly Baath ideology, says Dr. Georg Stöber, who examined Iraqi books over the period of one month.
UNESCO was, however, not involved in analyzing history and social studies books in Iraq. And the question remains as to the extent to which it has been possible to remove old texts from the classroom and to create new ones to replace them. The means and the capacity for this work are not available, and now, of course, this has become a matter for the new education ministry in Iraq.
Financing threatened
Höpken says that more work needs to be done in Arabic countries, where less has been possible so far. For example, the representation of the Western world in text books in Turkey, Algeria and Indonesia has yet to be investigated.
But there is at least one impending problem: the state of North Rhine Westphalia wants to drop its funding of the project starting in mid-2005. This means that the institute’s second largest financer will disappear, and thus its intercultural project in the Orient is threatened. But not for a lack of ideas.
Petra Tabeling
© Qantara.de 2004
Translation from German: Christina M. White
Website Georg Eckert Institute (English)