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In this essay, Shoshana Steinberg and Dan Bar-On present the work of a team of Israeli and Palestinian teachers who developed a history textbook that includes both groups' narratives of the same events side by side. These teachers then tested the effects of its use in both Israeli and Palestinian classrooms; for the first time, students on each side of the conflict were exposed to the other side's understanding of key historical events. The authors present the challenges that the team faced in developing the textbook and that teachers encountered in the classroom as well as the understanding and collaboration this project fostered. They argue that the process of creating the dual-narratives text, as well as the text itself, allows teachers to play a productive role in violent political conflicts.
This project of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME)1 focuses on teachers and schools as critical forces for changing deeply entrenched and polarized attitudes on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Together Israeli and Palestinian teachers developed a textbook that presents each group's understanding of the events of this conflict; fifteen- and sixteen-year-old students on each side not only learned what shapes their own collective's understanding of historical events but were also required to confront the historical perspectives and contexts that shape the other community's understanding of reality. The aim was to break down stereotypes and build more nuanced understandings among the next generation of citizens in each of the two states in the region: Israel and the future Palestinian state. Although the project has been discussed in previous articles (Adwan & Bar-On, 2007; Naveh, 2007), here we present the rationale for and process of developing the texts, and we focus on the teachers' experiences in implementing the two narratives.
Teaching History in Collectives Involved in Violent Conflicts
Textbooks are one formal representation of a society's ideology and its ethos. They impart the values, goals, and myths that the society wants to instill in each new generation (Apple, 1979; Bourdieu, 1973). Children growing up during times of war and conflict often know only the narrative of their own people. Their history textbooks present only their side of the story, which is considered to be the right one. History textbooks have for...