Representations of war: A cross-national comparative analysis of the Vietnam War in high school history standards

ABSTRACT

Using a difficult history framework, we analyzed the high school history standard sets for the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and the Vietnamese national history standards. We conducted a cross-comparative content analysis to answer the question: How do Vietnamese and U.S. high school history standards represent the Vietnam War and each other? Our analysis revealed that Vietnam includes the United States more often and in a broader historical context than the United States includes Vietnam; that standards reify the notion that the Vietnam War was pivotal in each nation’s unique cultural and political trajectories, yet the two countries rationalized their engagement in the war for different ideological reasons; and that there are substantial and surprisingly similar omissions of difficult history.

KEYWORDS:

• Content analysis
• cross-national study
• difficult history
• standards
• United States history
• Vietnam War
• Vietnamese history

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We solicited translation services from a Vietnamese translator with extensive experience translating documents from Vietnamese to English. This translator works at an English-speaking embassy in Vietnam.

Additional information

Funding

Jonathan Lee Lancaster is an alum of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program (Fulbright DA), a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX. The views and information presented are the author’s own and do not represent the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright Program, or IREX.