Belgian Students and the National Past: Representation and Beliefs Among 12th-Grade Students

• In Event: 16.024 - International Research on Teaching and Learning History: Findings From Belgium, Israel, Sweden, and the United States

Abstract

In a multicultural country such as Belgium, with plural and rival (sub)national identities, whose national past should be taught in schools, and what aspects of that past should be addressed? As the Flemish history curriculum does not prescribe any fixed content about the national past, this issue becomes even more pertinent. Moreover, young people not only get acquainted with the national past at school, but also in society at large, via movies, museums, monuments, etc. The question then arises, for the Flemish case, what are students’ reference knowledge, basic narratives, and beliefs about the national past at the end of compulsory history education? And are connections to be found between their narratives and (sub)national identification?

This research examined those questions through material gathered from 107 students who had just completed the 12th grade. They were asked to write an essay on national history as they know and see it, and to complete a questionnaire probing their beliefs concerning the importance of national history. Analysis began from a grounded theory approach, with descriptive coding of mentioned entities (e.g. individuals or corporate bodies), places, dates, events, and developments. Preliminary results show that the essays mostly tell a (masculine) political and warlike history, and that Belgian kings are omnipresent (even though they play little role in the curriculum). The socio-economic, communitarian, and ideological lines of fracture that characterize Belgian society since its independence in 1830 are absent in many essays, although they are part of the de facto narrative of Belgian history taught in schools.

This research confirms that students are not passive recipients of knowledge, but actively construct knowledge based on what they already know (from outside school) and on input available in their environment. This of course implies major consequences for the teaching of national history in schools.

Authors

• Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, University of Leuven

• Kaat Wils, University of Leuven

• Fien Depaepe, University of Leuven

• Lieven Verschaffel, University of Leuven