›Transition‹ and the Politics of History Education in Southeast Europe

"From Ownership to Intervention – or Vice Versa? Textbook Revision in Bosnia and Herzegovina (S. 251-252)

Of all the countries which emerged from the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BaH hereafter) was affected most directly by violent conflict. It is here that the war lasted longest, and claimed the highest number of victims, both in absolute terms and in proportion to the local population. The heritage of this war has left an indelible mark on the reconstruction process in general and in the education sector in particular, such that this country and its education system are still, about fifteen years after the end of war, in the middle of a process of rebuilding and renovation.

It is for this reason that international organisations play a far more important and more enduring role here than in most other countries which emerged from the former Yugoslavia, a situation which is comparable only with Kosovo, yet whose social structure is characterised by more distinct majority and minority groups and therefore, since attaining independence, is likely to achieve stable, though not necessarily fair, structures more quickly than in BaH. The Dayton Peace Agreement has certainly given BaH a degree of political structure, but it is not yet possible to predict whether it will prove to be economically and politically stable enough to survive over time without the intervention of the international community (IC hereafter).

Peace has brought about a society characterised neither by common bonds nor by awareness of shared responsibilities, but a system in which people adhere to notions of distinct ethnic national interests. There is no notion of a common history, and even less a recognised way of remembering, describing and interpreting the recent war. The following study addresses the material destruction of the educational infrastructure, the breakdown of the federally organised educational institutions of the former Yugoslavia (then bound together by a single state ideology) into ethnically defined segments, which became the main pillars of the postwar system and shaped the ethnically defined education policy as well as the politics of memory.

1. The war has given rise to new curricula and textbooks, and sparked off the division of the education system into institutions which are marked by ethnic interests, a situation which has been entrenched and prolonged by the Dayton Peace Agreement. The first part of this essay will therefore address the relationship between war and the peace treaty, as well as its consequences for the education system in time of peace."