HISTORY: Textbooks

From Rome, Professor Giuseppe Sacco writes:

"May I suggest that, in your analysis of history textbooks you make a distinction between countries in which history textbooks are under the supervision of some Ministry of Truth, and countries in which this does not apply? There are countries, such as Italy, where a very large choice of textbooks is offered by private publishers, with no control whatsoever by any political or administrative authority, so that each instructor (please note, not each school) chooses one for his students at the beginning of the year.

Of course, the political biases that exist in official textbooks also exist in Italian history privately published textbooks. There are "progressive" and "conservative" approaches, "Catholic" and "secular" authors, and publishers. textbooks that stress social issues, regional history, or ideological aspects, and this inevitably influences the students one way or the other. But each year the professor - not to mention the author and the publisher - has to take an individual responsibility for the "historical truth" he decides to present to his pupils, and expose himself to criticism by parents and colleagues in the school council.

Moreover, in the same school there will be different versions of the past circulating among students, and this inevitably leads to exchange of ideas and debate. In the same family, two brothers will have access to different, and possibly complementary information about the past. Add to this that all history, from the Egyptian to the present day, is studied twice, at different levels of detail, once at primary school (from age 6 to 11) and then again at secondary school (from age 13 to 18), and this increases the probability of receiving information coming from different viewpoints."

Ronald Hilton - 8/13/00