The history canon project as politics of identity: Renationalizing history education in Denmark

Abstract

In 2009, the Danish nation state implemented a history canon, Historie 09 , as an obligatory part of the history national curriculum in primary and lower secondary schools. The history canon was part of a high-profile 'cultural battle' that the Danish liberal–conservative political and intellectual elite initiated during the first decade of the twenty-first century – a conflict that also included several other curricular canons. The Danish history curriculum was meant to satisfy three aims: (1) to bolster students with historical cultural ballast as they are prepared to be a part of the globalized economy and community; (2) to revitalize a chronologically structured master narrative about the historical and cultural origins of the Danish nation; and (3) to incorporate history teaching into an ongoing political struggle against some of the possible consequences of increasing cultural and religious diversity in Denmark – and, accordingly, to further a re-traditionalized vision of Denmark as a culturally homogeneous society, presumably existing as distinct from the membership of a heterogeneous European Union. This paper analyses the background of the history canon project in terms of educational policy, how it was realized in the revised history curriculum of 2009, which is still in force, and finally how representatives of the political elite who framed the history canon interpret the history curriculum. I will conclude by briefly discussing how history teachers have responded to the history canon project.