The Reform of History Textbooks and Its Future Trends

Abstract

In the 1990s, amid the surging tides of reform in China, the editorial board of history in the People's Education Publishing House released a set of history textbooks for junior high school nine-year mandatory education (hereafter, the new textbook). This set of textbooks has now been in use for a few years. It has been evaluated positively by teachers, students, and experts, and has also been officially approved by the State Education Commission. Since the early 1950s, the People's Education Publishing House has compiled many sets of textbooks on various school subjects for our country's primary and secondary schools. We have gained a great deal of experience, but we have also learned quite a few lessons. The new textbook is a bold and creative innovation created on the basis of previous textbooks. As the chief editor of the new textbook, I want to talk about our experiments and explorations, hoping thereby to exchange views with our colleagues both at home and abroad.