Project for the Improvement of History Textbooks in the Balkans

After a long period of waiting, in May 2001, the Economic and Social History Foundation of Turkey (History Foundation for short) has eventually launched the "Project for the Improvement of History Textbooks in the Balkans", which is being supported by UNESCO, the Matra Kap Programme of the Dutch Government and the Turkey Representation of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The planning meeting of the project took place in 16-17 June in Istanbul.

The main objective of the project at hand is to bring together academics and history teachers from 6 Balkan countries (namely, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Turkey) to review primary and -especially- secondary level history textbooks currently in use, and to propose alternative ways of reflecting the political, social and cultural history of these countries. This textbook review will be limited to the sections on the 19th and 20th century Balkan history. The project entails a series of activities which will culminate in a final report.

An important feature of this project is its Web site which will aim at rendering the findings of these projects and various types of reference materials accessible to history teachers and writers of history textbooks. Over the course of the project, a "digital archive for Balkan history education in primary and secondary schools" will be gradually established on the Web site. It will be consisting of selected readings, relevant audio-visual material (pictures with subtitles, short films, etc.), as well as information about the location of materials.

While implementing the project, efforts will be made for building as much as possible upon the findings of the parallel projects, instead of merely repeating them. Furthermore, the project will seek to improve the level of communication among the existing initiatives. This can be accomplished through obtaining the consent of these initiatives for incorporating the accessible information provided by them or linking their existing Web sites together. In the long run, such a network will also be useful in terms of exchanging material.

The Web site of the project and the e-mail groups will be the communication medium among the partner teams. In the mean time, selected readings on Balkan history will be put on the Web so as to bring together different accounts of the same historical event. As the project proceeds, this "digital archive for Balkan history education in primary and secondary schools" will be extended through documents, relevant audio-visual material (pictures with subtitles, short films etc.), as well as information about the location of materials as such. These materials can be in any Balkan language, in English, in French or in German. On the other hand, a descriptive abstract of each of these items and their catalogue will be presented in English. Moreover, after getting the necessary permission, the Web site will give links to the Web pages of the similar projects in this field, or will incorporate all the accessible information provided by them. At the end of the project, the final report will be transferred to the Web site and the Web site will be opened to public use. In Istanbul, a webmaster will assume the establishment and general coordination of the Web site as well as the transfer of the audio-visual material; while web moderators in each partner country will transfer the other types of material.

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