Will “Globalization” Transform History Education?: Shifts and Continuity as Seen in Responses in Germany

 As so-called globalization chips away at nation states, history education, which has taken shape and developed hand in hand with them, is pressed to make a choice as to whether it should transform itself proactively in response to this trend or take a stand against it by hanging on to conventional national history education. Such awareness is not found exclusively in Japan but can indeed be regarded as common to today’s world. This paper intends to validate the relevance of this awareness with a focus on history education in Germany and, in conjunction, examine the implications of this awareness for history education in Japan.<br> One of the disciplines that could presumably offer material for history education that is suitable to today’s world is global history. This approach, one that reflects an endeavor to portray, as an alternative to national history, how the global world has formed, was introduced into the 1996 National Standards for world history education in the U.S. and has gained a certain level of widespread recognition in school education there as well. In Germany, by contrast, the courses of study of its respective states continue recount views centered around the conventional German and European history. This likely reflects the circumstances at German schools that, unlike their U.S. counterparts, do not separate national history and world history.<br> A more in-depth look leads to the revelation of different aspects, however. Analysis of the treatment of various immigrants (a leading issue for research in global history) in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia used the example of the 1948 and subsequent courses of study for use in Hauptschule history classes in that state, bringing to light that while the courses of study up until the 1950s made references to the Germanic Migrations in the 4th to 5th centuries and the migrations from the areas along the Rhine River to Eastern Europe in the 12th to 14th centuries, as well as the German immigrants who settled in America in the 17th to 20th centuries, from 1989 onward these events were no longer mentioned and, from 1974 on, their places were taken by an account of the Muslim immigrants who migrated to Germany in the postwar period.<br> Thus, history education in Germany has tried to adapt to the changing world by introducing elements of global history in part while maintaining the framework of national history. History education is charged with the task of fostering the “capacity for democracy” in citizens, and it is therefore not acceptable to make a haphazard transition in its focus of discussion from nation states to global markets.<br> The implications of this point become much clearer when it is approached in the context of history education in Japan. While world history teachings at high school in Japan has actively taken in global history, the curriculum of other domains of history, most notably Japanese history, is shying away from changing the existing state of affairs, a chasm that is making it difficult to foster a capacity for democracy that is commensurate with the new world environment. The example of Germany appeals for the need to give thought to a realistic approach in history education, taking the perspective that globalization and nation states have evolved in close interconnection in the context of modern history, rather than viewing them in a confrontational light.