The UNESCO Shared Histories curriculum: Paradoxes and possibilities

• In Event: Collective memory in the Mekong: schooling, history, and politics in an era of regionalization

Proposal

This presentation provides a critical exploration of the groundbreaking UNESCO Shared Histories project, in which an international team coordinated by UNESCO Bangkok is attempting to construct history lessons that could be used in all ASEAN countries to reduce narrowly nationalistic understandings of the past. I examine the pilot phase of this project, in which seven ASEAN nations sought to customize and implement these lessons in local schools. Using a post-structuralist narrative inquiry approach, I analyze interviews with UNESCO staff and employees of the Cambodian Ministry of Education conducted in 2017 and 2018. I organize this analysis around the four aims of the Shared Histories project (to foster understanding and ownership of the shared histories of Southeast Asia; to foster awareness and appreciation of intercultural dialogue and relationships in the past, in order to cultivate an intercultural perspective today; to cultivate a sense of regional identity and appreciation of cultural diversity; and to foster a historical mindset and cultivate historical inquiry skill), highlighting their paradoxical and contested nature. As one of the consultant curriculum developers for the Shared Histories project, I also contribute auto-ethnographic reflections. While the stories I present are necessarily incomplete and in-progress, I find that despite efforts to cultivate regionalism, nation-based understandings of history persist.

Author

• Rosalie Metro, University of Missouri-Columbia