The Future of Education

EHISTO (European history crossroads as pathways to intercultural and media education) deals with the mediation of history in popular (science) media and the question of social and political responsibility of journalists and other mediators of history, especially teachers, in the field of commercial presentation of history. On the one hand the project responds to the increasing significance of a commercialised mediation of history within the public historical culture and reflects the fact that these representations, which not always meet the EU standards for history education, can have a lasting impact on the young generation’s understanding of history. Using the example of popular history magazines, on the other hand the project developed, besides the necessary basic research, didactically reflected materials for a new type of history education focusing on a transnational European understanding of national history education. By working with the history magazines, the project addresses itself to popular interpretations of history from the participating countries and reflects their similarities and differences in European cultures of remembrance. Therefore, this approach not only trains media-critical competences but furthermore enables a multi-perspective and comparative access to European and national history. With the two exemplary “European History Crossroads” “Columbus and the `Discovery’ of the `New World’” and the “`outbreak’ of the World War One” the European team designed different online learning objects. These learning objects offer tasks with a media-critical focus and different ones with a national or transnational emphasis.