The Construction of European Identity in Fourth Grade History Handbooks

The fourth grade represents the first year of study of the discipline History for students in pre-university education. Before being a matter of civics, the European identity is a historically grounded construct; therefore, we naturally wondered whether the issue that we have not only an ethnic or national identity, but also a European one is, even incipiently, raised when teaching history. Our analysis started from the definition of the concept of European identity, to the general perception of Romanians regarding Europe according to Eurobarometer data, to reach the analysis of the school syllabus in the History discipline and then to the textbooks constructed starting from this syllabus. The conclusion we reached following our approach was that, as the school syllabus supports the formation of the national identity first and on a secondary place, the sketching of elements of European identity (through the elements related to the history of the national minorities in Romania, the location on the map of Europe of the events in the history of Romanians, discussing in different topics subjects such as the European Union or presenting some important personalities for the history of Europe), the three existing textbooks, available and at the decision of the teachers have an accordingly approach, that we consider to be correct. The European identity cannot be built before the national identity, historically speaking, and for the age category to which we refer (9-10 years), in the condition of one course hour per week, the simultaneous construction of the two types of identity (in other words teaching the history of Romanians and universal history at the same time) is difficult to achieve. Therefore, we believe that the choice for national history and identity before the European one is properly substantiated. The national and European identities cannot be constructed from the simple enumeration of historical names or data. The well-built explanation, accompanied by carefully chosen examples is essential in teaching history to this age category and, of course, in the solid construction of one's own identity (national and European).