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French History Textbooks As A Tool For Teaching Civilization, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

The recent controversy in France over the new history textbooks based on the reforms promulgated under René Haby in the middle 1970s can serve as a reminder of the many uses such textbooks can have in our civilization classes. In the past ten years the Haby programs have become the symbol for what many observers in France take to be a serious weakening of the teaching of history since the late 1960s. At the primary level, history was joined to geography and the sciences as an activité d'éveil; no longer was it the privileged instrument for fostering national identity as …