Teaching History after Identity‐Based Conflicts: The Rwanda Experience

Abstract

[Hutu extremist] organizers of the [Rwandan] genocide, who had themselves grown up with . . . distortions of history, skillfully exploited misconceptions about who the Tutsi were, where they had come from, and what they had done in the past. From these elements, they fueled the fear and hatred that made genocide imaginable. (Des Forges 1999, 31) A country’s history is often a central concern after violent, identity-based conflicts, regardless of where they occur. Why does history take on such significance? As expressed in Alison Des Forges’s explanation of Rwanda in the epigraph, all sides tend to blame cross-group hatred and ensuing conflicts, at least in part, on past injustice. Citizens of countries that have experienced such devastation can often see how political leaders distorted and then exploited national history to incite violence. As countries seek social repair, many believe that a new and more truthful history must be transmitted to the next generation through revised history curricula in schools. In such disparate places as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Germany, Guatemala, Japan, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda, the reteaching of history has been expected to lay the foundation for social reconstruction, a better future, and a lasting peace (Cole and Barsalou 2006; Hodgkin 2006; Cole 2007a, 2007b). In response to the educational challenges countries face after violent conflict, we explored the links between larger political processes and decisions about teaching history. We focus on secondary schools in Rwanda, where we have been working on educational issues since 2001, and ask the questions: How can material for a history curriculum be developed to avoid propaganda? What tensions surface when teachers negotiate an increasingly repressive