La asignatura pendiente. La memoria histórica democrática en los libros de texto escolares
Javier Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier.
Madrid: Plaza y Valdés. 2020.
Reviwed by David González, project manager at the EUROM
Although the book in front of us saw the light of day in 2020, it is the outcome of many years of research in education and historical memory. Its author, also linked to the Forum for the Memory of León, previously published a number of studies, of a more academic nature, on which he has continued to work until the release of the current publication (Díez Gutiérrez, 2011, 2012, 2017), whose media coverage has been notable in fields related to historical memory in Spain.
Thus, despite being a publication of a commercial nature, its narrative content is the product of years of research carried out by the author and his academic colleagues. To be more specific, the study that inspired this publication was made possible thanks to the participation of 610 teachers, who have given their opinion on the different analytical issues raised. A study led by a three-member team, including the book’s author, who devoted three years to gleaning the contents of textbooks used in Spanish secondary schools related to historical issues such as the Second Spanish Republic, the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime.
Finding that curricular matters fell under the remit of autonomous communities, the study has taken into account the set of laws in each autonomous community across Spain as well as all the leading publishers, including Oxford, McGraw Hill, Santillana, Vicens Vives, ECIR, Anaya, Laberinto, Bruño, Edelvives, SM and Akal. In total, 21 textbooks have been examined, corresponding to 12 in the second year of the Spanish Baccalaureate and 9 in the fourth year of ESO (Educación Secundaria Obligatoria, compulsory secondary education), the two years which, within the compulsory subject of the History of Spain, cover the Second Spanish Republic, the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime.
This book presents and analyses the findings obtained from the aforementioned study using a highly explicit metaphorical element as the title of the work. The “asignatura pendiente”, that classic concept in the Spanish language that refers to a failed course that students must therefore resit, applies in this case to the numerous deficiencies identified in the textbooks used in Spain’s secondary schools in terms of democratic memory.
The painstaking analysis of the sample’s contents has allowed the group of researchers to draw several meaningful conclusions as to how the Second Spanish Republic, the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime are covered in textbooks in compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education in Spain. Broadly speaking, glaring gaps are noted in terms of specific content. By way of example, repression during the Franco dictatorship and resistance movements within the Franco regime, a widely neglected topic, which was not included in any publisher’s books until more recent times. The specific role of repression levied against women, as well as the leading role of the Catholic Church therein, are also a clear example of the omissions detected. In addition, the author identifies a set of five taboo topics given limited or no scope. The first of them concerns the issue of confiscating property and the origin of the great fortunes of Ibex 35. A topic that, despite having been the subject of some research in recent years (Maestre, 2019), has not received the same social and media interest as other equivalent cases at European level, where there has been a process of reparation in which the companies that benefitted from slave labour have been held accountable for their past. A second taboo refers to the legitimising role of the Church within the regime’s repressive apparatus. Something that, unlike the previous case, does represent a widely researched and well-known fact, but remains outside the contents of history books in Spain’s secondary schools. The third issue that presents a clear omission relates to the identification of the persons in charge of the repression, whose trajectory in many cases continued after the dictatorship. The fourth taboo concerns civil society that was complicit in the repression on the winning side. A hot topic, without a doubt, since it refers to the recognition of a full-blown atmosphere of terror, where threats went beyond the official agencies of repression, spanning the full breadth of the social spectra of everyday life. And finally, the issue of reparations for victims is completely overlooked, a particularly serious issue if the period of dictatorship is to be broached from an educational perspective linked to democratic memory. A series of systematic oversights in terms of topics that show discrepancies in how they are covered when it comes to a chronological presentation of history. As a result, the Spanish Civil War, which lasted just three years, has more prominence than the Franco dictatorship, which went on for almost four decades.
A chronological matter that is relevant to the point of influencing not only the textbooks but also the official curricula of compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education, in which continuity is established between the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War, instead of doing so between the Spanish Civil War and Dictatorship. Although it is more practical to combine the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War thematically, this entails the establishment of a clear causal relationship between the two of them and, therefore, the implicit recognition of one of the arguments defended by neo-Francoist revisionism that the Republic’s political action was the cause of the War. Putting forward a thematic link between the War and the Dictatorship, despite implying a greater pedagogical challenge to group the subject areas, would convey a vision in accordance with historical reality, in which there is an evident cause-and-effect relationship between the War and the Dictatorship.
The planning, execution and consolidation of studies such as those put forward in this case are of paramount importance in an educational context such as that of Spain in relation to its recent history. Educating in history and memory, and doing so under the umbrella of a reliable discourse, based on empirical data, is essential to counter those discourses protected by official memory in Spain that emerged from the transition. A narrative that has its cornerstone in the equidistance between sides, and that, as the author has shown through the study presented in this book, has a major educational voice in the vast majority of publishers in charge of the history books used in Spain’s secondary schools.
“La asignatura pendiente. La memoria histórica democrática en los libros de texto escolares” [The Failed Subject. Democratic Historical Memory in School Textbooks] also highlights that the publishers responsible for publishing the textbooks for compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education are controlled by large media groups, some of which are directly linked to the Catholic Church. Each and every one of them has a strong editorial policy and, therefore, ideological stance, which serves their corporate interests. This is well known by Díez Gutiérrez, who, in addition to researching the relationship between education and historical memory, has developed a broad line of research in recent years on the impact of neoliberalism on the education system (Díez Gutiérrez, 2018, 2019, 2020).
Given the poor state in which democratic memory is found in the textbooks of Spanish secondary schools, numerous initiatives have emerged in recent years from the teaching staff themselves to deal with this shortcoming. The establishment of working groups, the development of research projects and of complementary materials, such as the teaching units developed by the author’s colleagues (Díez Gutiérrez; Rodríguez González, 2018), are some of the many proposals being put forward outside official curricula. The teaching staff’s entrepreneurial capacity in matters of democratic memory that, despite being a positive note, is still the confirmation of that huge mistake to which this book refers, and that does not occur in just textbooks, but also in the very structure of the curricular content of compulsory and post-compulsory secondary education. To this end, the latest autonomous communities in Spain to enact memory laws have stipulated how democratic memory is to be covered in official curricula. Thus, with varying degrees of impact and involvement, the memory laws of Andalusia (Law 2/2017), the Valencian Community (Law 14/2017), Aragon (Law 14/2018), Extremadura (Law 1/2019) and Asturias (Law 1/2019), as well as the draft of the new democratic memory law at state level (Presidency of the Government of Spain, 2020) raise the need to develop the approach to covering the history of 20th-century Spain from the perspective of democratic memory.
Taking action from the official arena is fundamental, since, given the power to reverse hegemonies associated with education, galvanising a new curriculum, and the consequent adaptation of the textbook syllabus to this curriculum, may be a key factor in the construction of a more civic and tolerant society. And this is so because, as Díez Gutiérrez himself puts it, educating in democratic memory does not, under any circumstances, imply indoctrination, but rather puts forward universally agreed pedagogical goals based on the transmission of values linked to the respect for human rights. In losing this perspective, education becomes meaningless, impartial and harmful.
References
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (2011). Análisis de los textos escolares de historia: Estudio de caso sobre la posguerra civil española [Analysis of History Textbooks: Case Study on the Post-Spanish Civil War]. Revista Historia de la Educación Latinoamericana. 16: 87-118.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (Dir.) (2012). La memoria histórica en los libros escolares [Historical Memory in School Books]. León: Forum for the Memory of León – Ministry of the Presidency.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (2017). La memoria democrática en la escuela [Democratic Memory at School]. Anuario de Hespérides. Investigaciones científicas e innovaciones didácticas. 25/26: 65-82.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (2018). Neoliberalismo Educativo. La construcción educativa del sujeto neoliberal [Educational Neoliberalism. The Educational Construction of the Neoliberal Subject]. Barcelona: Octaedro.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier; Rodríguez González, Javier (2018). Unidades didácticas para la recuperación de la memoria histórica [Teaching Units for the Recovery of Historical Memory]. León: Forum for the Memory of León – Ministry of the Presidency.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (2019). La revuelta educativa neocon [The Neocon Educational Revolt]. Gijón: Trea.
- Díez Gutiérrez and Enrique Javier (2020). La educación en venta [Education For Sale]. Barcelona: Octaedro.
- Law 2/2017, of 28 March, on Historical and Democratic Memory in Andalusia.
- Law 14/2018, of 8 November, on Democratic Memory in Aragon.
- Law 1/2019, of 21 January, on History and Democratic Memory in Extremadura.
- Law 1/2019, of 1 March, for the Recovery of Democratic Memory in the Principality of Asturias.
- Law 14/2017, of 10 November, of the Generalitat Government of Catalonia, on Democratic Memory and Coexistence in the Valencian Community.
- Maestre, Antonio (2019). Franquismo S.A. Madrid: Akal.
- Presidency of the Government (15/09/2020). Draft bill of the Democratic Memory Law.