Imagining the Nation throughout School History Master Narratives

Questions regarding how people construct historical narratives in current societies have taken center stage in recent public and academic discussions, particularly since the seminal work on nations as “imagined communities”.1 The master narrative has been developed as a unit of analysis in current social scientific and historical thought. Heller describes master narratives as general interpretation patterns.2 Their function is making sense of the past, present and future of a cultural community. The importance of this topic is reflected in many current political debates that are characterized by their increased “historisation”.3 Billig refers to how politicians invoke events of national history in order to meet their political agendas.4 Analyses of school history contents, from the perspective of the history discipline5 or from the history education point of view,6 reveal their close resemblance to “official narratives” that aim at historically legitimizing the present and future political agenda. In relation to master narratives and associated historical representations intense debates are taking place about the kind of historical contents that should be taught. What history should be transmitted in schools and through Museums, TV series and other formal and informal educational devices, is under discussion.7 These debates starting in the mid 1990s are still carried on in many countries. The salience and significance of this issue is revealed in the