Teaching the history of colonization and decolonization in France: A shared history or to each their own?

Strongly influenced by the paradigm of republican universalism,education policy in france favours an approach that largely relativizes,or even denies,the dimension of cultural diversity. the content of the secondary school history curriculum reveals this phenomenon. in the 2007-2008 school year,185 students in the final 2 years of secondary school in amiens completed questionnaires about the importance their schools place on the history of colonization and decolonization. the analysis showed how the respondents' relationship to this historical topic was linked to the degree of their own experience of migration. although today's classes are pluralistic,schools' failure to take into account the diversity of the population-a legacy of history-diminishes students' ability to think in terms of otherness and,as a result,to imagine a common history shared by the various populations living in france. © 2012 unesco ibe.