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and its internal and external others in essentialist or reductive terms within this grand
narrative. (2005, pp. 427-428)
Regarding what perspective of national history and the resulting nation identity, provided to
students through History curriculum, this summary from Billig is also relevant:
Different factions, whether classes, religions, regions, genders or ethnicities, always
struggle for the power to speak for the whole, defining the history of other subsections
accordingly. ‘The voice of the nation’ is a fiction; it tends to overlook the
factional struggles and the deaths of unsuccessful nations, which make such a fiction
possible. Thus, national histories are continually being re-written, and the re-writing
reflects current balances of hegemony. As Walter Benjamin argued, history is always
the tale of victors, celebrating their triumphs: ‘Whoever has emerged victorious
participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step
over those who are lying prostate’ (1970, p. 258).” (1995, p. 71)
The outcome of a study of textbooks by Carlson found that in legitimating knowledge related
to a nation’s history (in this case the United States’ and its relationship with the now-former
USSR),
…issues tend to be treated merely as technical matters, and the only debate normally
recognized is over the most effective means of achieving an unquestioned national
foreign policy. This also implies a focus on a detailed, surface-level description of
historical events rather than a more comprehensive treatment which explores their
interconnections, social implications and underlying assumptions…If mistakes are
recognized, they are generally construed as strategic in nature” (1989, p. 48)
Whether this is evident, and if so to what degree, in textbooks selected for this study is a topic
for discussion in the final stage analysis of the textbooks, particularly in cases where the same
discourses emerge across multiple historical time periods.
Contextualised within the current environment of history/culture wars across various nations,
Osborne in his study of Canadian national history taught in Canadian schools, writes, “issues
of identity, heritage and citizenship, all rooted in competing conceptions of the past, have
become the stuff of politics” (2003, p. 585). This is a point made in earlier studies too, with
Carlson pointing out in response to social studies textbooks, “evidence of some legitimation
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