Snjezana Koren: How (not) to deal with a troubled past: debating history education in Croatia since 1990

The lecture deals with 25 years of unsuccessful attempts to carry out a comprehensive reform of education in Croatia. It examines ideological confrontations over the content and aims of education, as well as political efforts to re-define contemporary Croatian identity through curricula of the so-called “national subjects”, especially history teaching. It focuses on the main issues arisen from the last proposal of the comprehensive curricular reform, as well as the latest debates over the proposal of the history curriculum. It also shows how attempts to change the paradigm of history teaching – from a school subject that transfers “one truth” and “proper interpretations” of the past to a subject that perceives history as a critical engagement with the past – reflect views of Croatian historians about the public role of history.

Lecture by Snjezana Koren, Univeristy of Zagreb

Schubertstr. 51 / HS 31.11