The Nation, Europe, and Migration: A comparison of geography, history, and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany, and England

Abstract

National curricula are being challenged and transformed by the impact of migration and European integration. This paper examines how cultural diversity and Europe are intertwined in geography, history, and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany, and England. This question is explored using quantitative and qualitative methods through a case study of curriculum content and discourses of 5 years compulsory schooling in all three countries. One might expect Germany and Greece, which have historically embraced a more monocultural vision, as having largely similar approaches. Yet, the cross-national analysis illustrates that the relationships between European and multicultural values are put together in rather different ways depending on the school subject. Whilst history is ethnocentric in all three countries, Greek geography and citizenship curricula veer between ethnocentrism and Europeanism. In contrast, in England, notions of multicultural Britishness are reinforced in geography and citizenship education. German curricula privilege national and European topics, but attempts have been made to address diversity, particularly in geography. Curriculum analyses have hitherto largely focused on either national and European dimensions or multicultural and global dimensions. This study provides new insights into how these dimensions intersect and their combined effect on migration and citizenship education in European societies.

Keywords:

• curriculum
• Europe
• migration
• history
• geography
• citizenship education

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented to the American Educational Research Association Conference (Curriculum Studies Division) in New York, March 2008. I am grateful to Anna Triandafyllidou and on drafts of this article as well as two anonymous reviewers of this Journal who provided valuable feedback. The research was supported mainly by the European Commission through a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship (FP6).

Notes

1. The EU currently has 27 member states, each of which has had to meet strict political and economic standards in order to gain entry. Membership of the less influential Council of Europe is determined solely on the basis of political concerns, and, as a result, the institution has a larger and more diverse set of 47 members.

2. The OMC rests on soft law mechanisms such as guidelines and indicators, benchmarking and sharing of best practice. This means that there are no official sanctions for laggards. The method’s effectiveness relies on a form of peer pressure and naming and shaming, as no member states wants to be seen as the worst in a given policy area.

3. The ‘subsidiarity principle’ means that European Union (EU) decisions must be taken as closely as possible to the citizen. In other words, the Union does not take action (except on matters for which it alone is responsible) unless EU action is more effective than action taken at national, regional, or local government level.

4. In the case of History, there is an extensive literature (see for instance Grever and Stuurman 2007, Symcox and Wilschut 2009, Nakou and Barca 2010, as well as the special issue edited by Seixas in Journal of Curriculum Studies 2009) about the relation of the nation and the history curriculum in different parts of the world. However, the focus of this article is to examine how the nation, Europe, and migration intersect in curricula.

5. There is one textbook for each subject at each grade level, and the books are distributed free of charge. This highly centralized system of textbook production reproduces the official curriculum, and textbooks thus become reliable documents of the political and ideological choices of whatever political party happens to be in power.

6. The processes of European integration in Greece, which began with the launching of the application for full membership in 1975, profoundly challenged Greek identity. By necessitating changes in Greece’s laws the reconstruction of Europe severely strained the self-perceived homogeneity and insularity (see Pollis 1992).

7. The Commission for Racial Equality is a non-departmental public body which tackles racial discrimination and promote racial equality. It was replaced in 2007 by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The 1999 MacPherson report into the death of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 outlines proposals to tackle institutional racism.