Ways of History Education

Abstract

Today, history education in Austria presents itself as a quite diverse academic landscape, even if it still needs to catch up with other historical sub-disciplines. Nevertheless, it would be problematic to construct a narrative that leads history didactics from the dark past into the light, as it were, and thus traces the euphoria of progress of a bourgeois achievement society. In fact, the teaching of history - and with it the question of what significance history has for society - has been an important component of educational and scientific discourses since the Enlightenment. From today's perspective, some of these seem antiquated and hardly correspond to our conception of modern teaching. However, it would probably be ahistorical to make an assessment based solely on the present, especially since social conditions and thus also the modern bourgeois-democratic society are changing. A critical view is nevertheless permitted and necessary, especially when history and history teaching have been instrumentalised to legitimise authoritarian and fascist systems.