History Textbooks, Narratives, and Democracy: A Response to Majid Al‐Haj

Abstract

This response to Al‐Haj's article, “National Ethos, Multicultural Education, and the New History Textbooks in Israel” argues for three theses: (1) history textbooks and the public and academic debates about their objectivity, truth, and bias fulfill a semantic function for the adults of the society; (2) contradictory ethnic narratives cannot be mutually legitimated, but instead, the educational challenge in areas where there are intractable conflicts is to invite students to participate in a process of continual creation of open‐ended narratives for their own ethnic groups; and (3) ethno‐national democracies can educate in an enlightened way if they invite the students to confront the deep dilemmas that their societies face.