Report from Romania

Impressions from Bucharest

In the sunny days of 12^th to 15^th of July 2002, it took place in the city of Timisoara (Romania) the European Seminar within the project National Histories in South-Eastern Europe and History of a United Europe. Timisoara, with its large gardens, old houses and lots of monuments, proved to be an excellent place for sharing knowledge and debating on the role of historical consciousness in the Balkans. Only the warm weather obstinated not to be a friendly comrade.

The first meeting took place in the Faculty of History of the Western University of Timisoara, represented by Dr. Sorin Ciutacu, Senior Lecturer within this University. The host institution is a modern academic center, well endowed in comparison with other Romanian universities. In fact, not only the proper buildings seemed to welcome us but also its inner gardens, which hosted the Workshops from the third day. The complex is partially isolated from the rest of the city by the River Bega, which crosses Timisoara from the West to the East. The diversity of the attending audience rended possible to stir the discussions, to make us observe the mutual misperceptions and the different ways to proceed on constructing the discourses about the past.

From my point of view, the aims of this introductory Seminar succeeded to offer a set of lectures on peculiar problems of teaching/learning National History, to develop an open dialogue between the participants about the main lacks of the same process through workshops and to establish their own inventory of problems and methodological solutions.

From the starting-point, we decided that the major focus of the lectures should be on the peculiar cases as an invitation for participants to discuss their own perspective and to promote dialogue on similar other cases. For these reasons, and in order to arouse the discussions on a larger palette of situations, we elaborated an Outline of the Project. The idea of this Outline was (and still it is) to offer a panopticum of main issues which confront the process of teaching/learning history in SEEC. The Outline is based on the latest approaches issued by the European educational policies on History.

The Seminar was structured around three lectures offered by Mr. Bogdan Popa, Researcher for the Romanian-German Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies in Bucharest, Ms. Adriana Gheorghe, Junior Researcher at the Institute of National History "Nicolae Iorga" in Bucharest and Mrs. Lynn R. Dole, Training Consultant of the Institute for Training and Development (Amherst, MA, USA). These lectures were accompanied by three Workshops and a General Debate for establishing an inventory of the problems and methodological solutions.

Mr. Popa questioned if the information from textbooks and from Internet constitute alternative discourses in the process of teaching history. He proposed as methodological approach in analysing a website at least three steps: who are the target group? who are the creators? and what are the reasons for what the website have bee created? Mr. Popa underlined this way the main difference between textbooks and Internet as sources of historical knowledge: the Internet is for everybody but the textbooks are only for peculiar target-groups. As a matter of example, for his analysis he brought into discussion the case of the official site of the Romanian Government where a link to "The History of Romanians" conducts the "surfers" to an ethnocentric discourse elaborated by the creators of the site. This kind of contain has the role to conserve stereotypes and misperceptions about the past. The debate was very passioned: the topic stirred a lot of questions from the participants who agreed on the great impact of Internet in the processes of communication.

Mrs. Gheorghe started a direct dialog with participants provoking them in defining the concepts usually used to discuss the features of different groups: "cultural", "ethnicity" etc. and the types of relationships between and within these groups: "cross-cultural", "inter-cultural" etc. After this brainstorming, the discussion focused on the situation of teaching history in Austria and France. The questions and comments of the participants underlined the presence of minorities of all sorts (based on criteria of sex, religion, ethnicity, social origins, health) in the process of teaching. As an example, the case of Roma people in Romania was presented, stressing the fact that it is almost ignored within the current curricula in the field of Romanian history.

Mrs. Dole animated the participants to a skilful game: we were divided in different teams (multinationaly composed) in order to elaborate the topics and methodology for a common textbook for the history of the Balkans. The purpose of this game was to encourage the exchange of ideas between the participants, and the shared experience made them recognise once again the importance of the confrontation of ideas and the need of developing a knowledge of a common culture/identity of SEE.

The living experience through practical workshops

The workshops were designed to challenge the participants to debate on specific problems and misperceptions within the process of teaching/learning national histories in their own countries. The methodology applied in organising the workshops was to compose them with members from all the South-Eastern European countries as much as possible, to enhance their own experience and to debate it with the other members of the teams and to establish a list of similarities and differences of their experiences/ knowledge.

The chosen topics for the three made workshops were: Defending Europe, Continuity and Conspiracy. These topics have been chosen from a large palette of modern mythologies of political thinking because of their presence in every country from the Balkans. The aims of using them was to search and to revisit the peculiarities of them in the historical memory of every South-East European country represented in the Seminar.

Defending Europe. The participants concluded that their official historical discourses usually claim the most important place/role in a process of defending Europe against the so-called barbarians: Mongols, Ottomans etc and the self sacrifice in "preserving the Western civilisation", a self sacrifice which should be internationally recognised. In conclusion, the peoples from the Balkans were historically educated to victimise themselves and to enhance their role beyond reality and to irritate the neighbours by this attitude.

Continuity. If "defending Europe" is only a part of the national identities of every people in the Balkans, the idea of continuity is considered as being the most important component the national historical memories. The idea of continuity has such a big importance because it was used to legitimise the Nation-States from the Balkans created in the Nineteenth Century: Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia. The participates discussed about the claimed ancestors, the territories where they supposedly have lived and the features of the ancestors. These features are usually considered as being the cause for the surviving/assuring the continuity, the linkage between the ancestors: the language, the social organisation, the folk traditions, the Christianity, and most of all, the braveness - all the ancestors were great fighters. As it may be observed, the participants in this workshop invoked almost the same pattern in explaining the "continuity".
Conspiracy. The idea of conspiracy perturbed along history the peoples' mind. This idea is usually issued by people with an "organic" perspective on reality (the social interactions are considered as being based on blood linkages); the Nation is also considered as being an organic body which is usually pure but sometimes it is infected by strangers from inside or/and outside. Some of the common historical discourses issued within the countries from South-Eastern Europe appeal to references like: secret dealings of the Great Powers in taking decisions concerning the future of Balkanic countries; the political intercession of one or more Great Powers in favour of a minor group living in the country; the material support offered from "outside" to a group living "inside" etc.

On my view, the workshops were optimal methods to give the occasion for the participants to express their opinion about the peculiarities of the historical memory transmitted through the educational systems in their countries. They have debated on these peculiarities and have observed the "superposition" between some of the elements of their national memories as a cause for their mutual divergences.

Towards an inventory of common problems and methodological solutions.

An important moment in the evolution of Seminar was that of discussing and establishing an inventory of problems and methodological solutions concerning the process of teaching/learning History in South-East European Countries.

After passioned discussions about a large area of major and minor problems (the lack of empathy in teaching process and in the contents of the information; the overwhelming narrative discourse used for decades until recent changes in a part of the Balkanic countries; the prevalence of the political history in comparison to the social and cultural ones etc) the participants in Seminar came to an understanding about a series of solutions that may be successfully applied by the further history teachers:

1. Local history

In the Outline of the of Project, local history was taken into account as an important instructive method of teaching/learning history. During the debate, the participants underlined its importance and remarked that the whole process of teaching/learning history should start with local history: the history of native places of the pupils should be presented from a historical point of view before any other representation of the past, including the "national" one. The local realms of memory are the first practical ways for understanding the elements of a shared memory: why people have chosen to erect a statue, to give a name to a street; why they have chosen a peculiar architectural style etc.

In fact, the idea of local history should be implemented by considering that the history of Bucharest/Belgrade/Sofia and so on, is local history in relation with their national histories and the same relation is present between the history of Romania/Serbia/Bulgaria... and the European History/History of Europe. In other words, "Romania"/"Serbia"/"Bulgaria..." are mental maps constructed as human traditions in the last two hundred years and not "sacred" realities. Beyond these images with names are a complex local trans-co-operation which should be strengthened in the future.

2. Contextualisation and proportion of the subjects

Contextualisation, as it was formulated by the participants, is deeply inter-linked with the proportion of the subjects. The modalities of organising the information (the contents of a text, the way it is presented and taught) was considered as being another key-factor in the process of teaching/learning history in the SEEC.

The elements which are nowadays considered as composing an "unitary" national history are many times de-contextualised from their inner value and re-organised from a national point of view. In the same time, the national discourse about the past tends to privilege events and biographies suitable with their point of view. These events and biographies, once received distortioned, change the pupils’ minds. A re-organised approach should take every element at its real value and put it in its real context and should re-construct a shared memory of the Balkans by giving the right place to the values of tolerance, co-operation and understanding next to the well known national ideas of "beating", "defeating", "attacking", "defending".

The methodological solution designed by the participants is that of the "dissolution" of national histories in a more general approach to the whole area of the Balkans by strengthening the problems of cross-cultural interactions; the religious, economic and social "networks" and showing that the cleavages based on religion and social origins were (and still are) more powerful/important than the cleavages based on national and ethnic origins.

As an application of this idea, it should be abandoned the practice of distinct textbooks for national histories and general/universal history: the History of a State should be integrated in the local context; it should be presented not as an unique, intangible one, but in relation with its neighbours and as a player in a larger scale scene.

3. Ways for implementing the new methodological approaches

The local history and the contextualisation and re-organisation of the information’s proportion were the most most important methodological approaches designed by the participants, as regarding to the process of teaching/learning History in the Balkans. These two major topics are deeply recommended to be put in practice by the present history teachers and the present history students - the further history teachers.

A question still remains: how should be proceed to make these methodological approaches become a part of the everyday process of teaching/learning? It is out of any question that the implementation of any change in teaching process is highly dependent on the educational background of the present and further history teachers.

The participants agreed that the discussed change should start with the Faculties of History and the related institutions. Also, that this idea is a problem of a long period of time which already started, it is in development and it will take more indefinite time. The context of this situation is the fragmentary features of the academic environment. As a consequence, because there is no direct possibility to influence the decision-makers of the whole spectrum of Faculties of History, the participants discussed about a series of concrete means to develop alternatives for implementing the methodological approaches already issued:

a) the exchange of students/teachers between and within the South-Eastern European countries. Regional co-operation is the best way to mutually understand each other problems . Travelling and debating are important methods to discover and analyse the differences and the similitude of the South-East European countries. These methods may be put into practice by organising thematic projects, conferences, trainings which involve youth students and post-graduates from associations in history studies in SEEC.

b) the implication into the local initiatives sustained by NGOs and designed to develop communicational skills and critical approaches to the involved individuals. For example, the Eustory Network, funded by Körber Stiftung - Hamburg, Germany, aims to develop the high school pupils’ interest on local historical research. Through the Balkan countries, the Eustory Network is already present in Romania and Bulgaria. By this initiative, a pupil has the occasion to implicate himself/herself in finding information which is not available in textbooks and in any other history book. By analogy, the pupils have the occasion to understand how is history written. The history students/teachers should involve more in sustaining and disseminating this kind of initiatives in order to develop their own abilities and those of the pupils.

By establishing an inventory of problems and methodological solutions the participants expressed their own points of view concerning the process of teaching/learning History in South-Eastern European countries. They considered that best solutions for the problems of the above mentioned process are the local history and the contextualisation and the proportions of the subjects. A way for implementing these solutions is to consider the exchange of students/teachers between and within the Balkan countries and a more involvement of them in the local initiatives, designed to develop critical approaches.

At the end of the Seminar, the participants expressed their opinion on the development of the Seminar; the lectures, the workshops, the established inventory of the problems and methodological solutions concerning the process of teaching history in their educational systems. They expressed the hope that their ideas will be disseminated by the organisers and will gain other adherents in order to organise further debates on thematic problems already issued in the Outline of the Project.

In my view, the Seminar was an important step forward for future working evolution of the proposals formulated on this occasion. It established a first contact between groups of students in History from South-Eastern European countries; it provoked them to an open debate in the spirit of tolerance and mutual understanding; it encouraged them to discuss their problems as students/teachers in History and to promote their own visions about the solutions for resolving these problems.

Silviu Hariton

M.A. Candidate in History