At this year’s network meeting in Málaga, hosted by the Spanish foundation Real Maestranza de Caballería de Ronda (RMR), the focus was on dealing with the legacy of the Franco dictatorship. The conference programme was developed together with Körber-Stiftung.
What was so special about the way Spain managed the transition to a democratic constitution after Franco’s death in 1975? „La Transición”, the years leading up to the stable restoration of democracy in Spain at the beginning of the 1980s, was the topic of the annual meeting of representatives of EUSTORY competitions from more than 20 countries.

In contrast to Portugal, for example, where the authoritarian regime under Salazar was overcome in a revolution in 1974, the years of transition in Spain were supported by a broad social consensus that organised a peaceful, largely orderly transfer, and was accompanied by an amnesty for the crimes of the civil war as well as by a great continuity of personnel, for example, among the political elites. “The system has changed with the people,” is how one of the Spanish competition organisers described the phenomenon to his international colleagues.

Esta segunda-feira, o jornal Público anunciou a criação de uma nova disciplina, de caráter opcional para os alunos do 12º cuja disciplina de História não faz parte do currículo. Batizada com o nome de História, Culturas e Democracia (HCD), funcionará como uma oferta de escola e destinar-se-á aos alunos de Ciências e Tecnologias, Ciências Socioeconómicas e Artes Visuais, ficando apenas de fora os alunos de Línguas Humanidades que continuarão a ter a disciplina de História A, como obrigatória ao longo do Ensino Secundário.

Na Reforma de 2003, os alunos de Humanidades foram inesperadamente considerados “demasiado jovens para abordar a violência que representava a Segunda Guerra Mundial e o Holocausto”. “Cansados estavam eles”, dizia-se. “O que queriam era vida e não morte”. Eis o que ouvi.

Together with a small team, you have developed the newly introduced discipline “História, Culturas e Democracia” (History, Cultures and Democracy) to be taught by history teachers in Portugal. Why was it needed?

In our country, students at the medium level could finish the subject of history after 9th grade at the age of 14/15. They could not continue studying issues related to civic or history education unless they selected Social Sciences. For 20 years, APH and others wanted to change that.

There was a momentum of trying to launch a new discipline that could bridge this gap and make an additional offer for this group after João Costa became Secretary of State of Education four years ago. At APH, we knew Costa from the joint development of a new history curriculum for Portugal in the years 2016-2018 and perceived him as a person who really thinks “out of the box”. Early this year, I proposed the idea to him of developing something new, and he was interested.

Em teoria, o programa da nova disciplina, ainda que com imperfeições e pontos discutíveis, pode ser o primeiro passo de um processo fundamental na revalorização social do ensino da História: a insistência no questionamento e no método como a operação mais segura para formar melhores cidadãos, analiticamente mais capazes, e protegidos das ‘ideologias’ que os vários campos políticos se acusam mutuamente de querer inserir nas escolas.