Editorial |
CONSOLIDATING THE KNOWLEDGE
Distinguished Readers and Friends of the Historical Sciences, We are pleased to present you the Second Issue of the Newsletter of the Project: “National Histories in South-Eastern Europe and History of a United Europe”. From our previous issue disseminated last autumn, our project succeeded to deepen its objectives and better harmonise regional student efforts aimed to motivate and support real changes concerning the whole teaching process of National History, in view of our common prospects to accede to European and Euro-Atlantic major organisations, to be finally integrated within the same large family of our continent. In this respect, our current issue provides an overview on our recently deployed Training Session in Lugoj town, situated at 60 km from Timisoara and about 120 km from Belgrade. On that occasion, during the training period, we had the wonderful opportunity to exchange views and to be confronted with new exciting scientific arguments and methods, to be used as a refreshing source of inspiration for our individual and common further work within the ongoing project. One of the main coordinators, the MA student Silviu Hariton is trying to offer you a concrete impression about the atmosphere and the quality of presentations and workshops. Your potential questions and comments on the issues examined and debated there are, as usually, very welcomed. Also, we have the privilege to host an updated and stimulating theoretical perspective, generally provided to participants by the Austrian expert from the University of Graz, Daniela Grabe. Her expose focused the variety of methods in history teaching, adapted to the transition conditions in our geo-political region. As a co-author of the books disseminated to all participants, kindly sponsored by Kultur Kontakt, thanks to the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs. Grabe underlined the main difficulties encountered by historians and teachers in order to reformulate the teaching materials and books from the point of view of the relevant topics for the newly emerging Europe. However, her point of view on the prospects of National Histories in our countries was balanced and rather scheptical, taking into account the current prejudices, cultural differences and highly bureaucracy in most of participating countries. The intervention of Prof. Carol Capita from the University of Bucharest was an opportunity for the participants to question themselves concerning the limits of objectivity in teaching history, but in the same time to learn about the attempt of the Council of Europe to formulate the basic elements for an educational reform in SEE. The issue of minorities was presented in the case of Romania, specific references being given concerning the legislation and the present curricula in teaching History and Traditions of Minorities. As a study-case, we included the written version of the intervention provided by Assistant Professor Nikola Zezov from Skopje University in Macedonia. As you could see, he concentrated on the ideological and political influences on the history curricula in former Yugoslavia, and later on, in the newly independent Republic of Macedona. Of course, we assumed that his point of view could open new debates and arise controversies and polemics between the various historians in Balkans. A special section is devoted to a short introduction to our proposal for a Follow-up SEE Project, adopted by the Joint South-Eastern European Task-Force Group and already advanced to few major international and European donor organisations. As you could notice, considering the previous observations and evaluated results of our current project, we decided to research and elaborate new teaching essential instruments, in order to familiarise high-school pupils regarding the National and Religious Minorities and their specific problems in the South-Eastern European region from the end of the First World War to the emergence of the new independent states in former Yugoslavia. The public impact and the variety of social aspects of our second event, organised in Lugoj, are shortly reflected through the translations of articles from the local media, able to give you also an impression about the other human achievements provided by our project. Thank you in advance for your interest on our initiative and feel free to contact the editorial board to the e-mail address: eurolink@fx.ro The Editorial Board |