¿Una lucha contra los molinos? El Instituto Georg Eckert y los manuales escolares

Abstract

This article retraces the manifold activities carried out over the last 2 5 years by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig/ Germany, a unique institution in Europe and maybe in the world. This Institute has been undergoing deep changes in the course of time: it started its activities in the fifties with the bilateral revision of school textbooks, with the aim of detecting and removing inaccuracies, stereotypes and images of enemy others, and moved later on to research to be seen as a complex, theoretical-methodological set of analyses, empirical studies and recommendations for school practice. By achieving these goals, it has thus been committed to the wider field of education for conflict resolution and the promotion of peace. History school textbooks are both a mirror reflecting the Zeitgeist, i. e. the views and attitudes shared by wide parts of society, and national "autobiographies".