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Established at the request of the Council of Europe for post-integration history education in Europe, the European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO) hosts a conference with workshops each year. This year’s conference was held between the 21 and 26 of April in Marseille, France. Under the theme “Mediterranean Dialogues: Teaching History Beyond Our Horizons,” the conference sought to figure out how to teach Mediterranean history from not only a European perspective, but as a history shared with countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East. The theme made me realize that I too had been biased by blindly regarding Mediterranean history as European history despite having been a proponent of teaching various perspectives so that children may develop unbiased views of history.

On April 23, I attended presentations given at the auditorium of Mucem, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations. Mostafa Hassani-Idrissi from Morocco introduced a book published as part of a project since 2013 that has been exploring a Mediterranean history France shares with the Arab world. He explained that publishing the book was a struggle against prejudices and misunderstandings about one another, which indicated that the project has had its share of challenges so far. Because of disparaging views on periodization, history since the middle ages has been separated into northern Mediterranean history and southern Mediterranean history and described in parallel rows. And to make up for the separation, the authors performed as many case studies as possible to be able to suggest commonalities between the two histories. These efforts were made to portray two different cultures as a single Mediterranean culture. I was personally disappointed from being unable to study the book in detail because it has only been published in French and Arabic and is currently being translated into Italian. I hope the book can later be translated into English or Korean so that Korean history teachers may consult it.

Subsequent presentations continued to feature joint projects for research or history textbooks. Professor Eyal Naveh of Tel Aviv University based his presentation on the sub-theme “Learning Each Other’s Narrative” to talk about the process of publishing the Israeli-Palestinian joint history textbook. It was interesting to hear that the textbook authors tried to overcome various difficulties by changing the method of narrating history. This brought up a discussion about the difficulties the difference in teaching history caused for Germany and France while the two countries were authoring a joint history textbook to overcome their historical rivalry and reestablish their past together. What proved to be particularly different was the approach each side took on making “educational judgements.” For students to develop a proper sense of history, German teachers believe it is important for them to make an educational judgement to set a certain educational objective under which they can guide students in arriving at a conclusion through discussion. French teachers, on the other hand, consider it dangerous for teachers to make any educational judgement and think it should be left to the students to criticize and make their own judgements about history or historical material. It occurred to me that the difference in didactics could have been caused by a difference in the two countries’ respective historical experiences.

Meanwhile, under the title “How to Teach History to Students with Diverse Identities in the EuroMed Region of Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey,” Loizos Loukaidis presented about joint efforts made by teachers in Cyprus. The presentation by Professor Joan Brodsky-Schur from the United States showed an eager attempt to overcome current issues in American education involving Mediterranean history by designing and implementing a curriculum titled “The Past We Share in the Mediterranean.” The attempt seemed to carry many implications for Korean history education that has been trying through the 2015 revision of Korea’s national curriculum to adopt diverse educational methods so as to shift from efficient transmission of knowledge to the development of perspectives or core capabilities in understanding history.

Through his presentation, Bruno Boyer appealed the need for Middle Eastern countries to teach their students about the Holocaust, the genocide Nazi Germany committed against European Jews. Turkey is a Middle Eastern country that has been one of the most cooperative and active in offering Holocaust education whereas it has remained silent about the genocide it committed against Armenians. Yet, the presenter said it was important to continue providing Holocaust education because it will eventually force Turkey to stop being in denial and silent about the genocide it committed.

The most memorable presentation was about Europe’s refugee crisis. “Refugees are currently not seen in a positive light in Europe, even though they are people who have been driven into a predicament against their own will and risked their lives to leave home. A child who escaped from Libya said death would be better than being handed over to the Libyan coast guard. Crossing the Mediterranean to migrate to Europe has always been a dangerous business throughout history. However, it should be helpful in overturning the currently negative impression of refugees if students could be taught about the history and life refugees left behind and the issues they faced that forced them to risk relocating to another country. I would like to ask all history teachers to make an effort.” This final statement of the presentation left me thinking about how I should view and teach refugee and migrant issues as a Korean history teacher in a multi-cultural age.

During the session arranged by the Northeast Asian History Foundation on April 24, three current Korean high school history teachers participated as presenters. Bang Dae-gwang, a teacher at Korea University High School, covered the Korean textbooks’ narrative and direction of publication as he gave as an example a translated version of a college entrance exam problem about East Asian historical reconciliation. Kwon Oh-cheong who teaches at Gajeul High School introduced an example of a history-related extracurricular activity, which was a peace camp the Asia Peace and History Education Network hosted for students from Korea, China, and Japan. My presentation introduced a debate class based on the Beutelsbach consensus as an example of history education being provided in Korean high schools. The Beutelsbach consensus is an educational guideline created in 1976 by education experts with different political views that becomes employed whenever a class covers sensitive, controversial topics. The type of class introduced through the presentation is being attempted by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education so that students may access a broader range of historical perspectives. Besides the presentations, European teachers who attended the session all expressed considerable interest in the English version of the Korea-China-Japan joint history textbook “A History to Open the Future” by asking where they could find a copy of the book.

During the annual conference, there was also time for Korean teachers to personally meet EUROCLIO members. They were able to sit down with primary history education expert Marjan Groot-Reuvekamp, Anne Tabak teaching at the International School in The Hague, and Japanese history teacher Kazuya Asakawa to discuss in-depth about history education in Korea, Japan, and Europe. The EUROCLIO members were curious about how cutting-edge equipment is being used in history classes in an IT power like Korea, while I sought insights as to how sensitive, controversial topics are being dealt with in history classes in Europe. It seemed that everyone at the discussion table was in pursuit of some sort of educational ideal.

Through this year’s EUROCLIO conference, I could tell that European history education has been making an effort to describe and teach a common history of Europe that goes beyond two particular countries producing a joint history textbook. I also learned that a change in descriptive or didactic methods can be used to overcome differences and allow history education to help students view history from diverse perspectives. Although I attended the conference under a tight schedule of five days, fatigue went unnoticed thanks to the joy of being able to talk about matters that can only be discussed with colleagues who share the same passion. Simply demonstrating what each country teaches and how turned out to be a great opportunity to learn more about history education. Although my trip to Europe has been much too brief, I can at least look forward to meeting the teachers who will soon be visiting Korea as EUROCLIO members in the coming July.