Silencing the past, retrotopia, and teaching history.
Silencing the past, retrotopia, and teaching history.

Summary/Abstract: The essay analyzes contemporary controversies connected with teaching history in Europe, with particular focus on Poland. It discusses contexts that condition the relation between academic, every day and school narratives about history, as it is taught in today’s schools. These contexts are both political and ideological (historical policy), as well as—in a deeper sense—are an expression of national mythologies. The main thesis is the following: an analysis of teaching programs in schools tells us much more about the present than the past, and the main mechanism used to build a vision of national history is the notion of silencing the past. In our times, which Zygmunt Bauman has called the retrotopia, history becomes a bastion for nationalism and new tribalism.

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