School & nation

At a time when the power of schools and both state and federal education authorities to guide young people’s sense of belonging is being challenged by multilingualism, by the claims of supra- and subnational regions and minorities, by memories of national catastrophes and crimes, and by out-of-school educational media, this collection of essays provides an apposite exploration of the ways in which shared narratives continue to be transmitted and learnt. Its authors, whose work emerged from a series of conferences organised by the French National Institute for Pedagogical Research in Lyon, Barcelona and Paris in 2010, demonstrate not only ways in which multiple disciplines (including history, literature, social and language studies) address young people’s sense of attachment, but also how challenges to educational policy are reflected in school textbooks and curricula in Algeria, Bulgaria, Catalonia, France, Galicia, Germany, Quebec, Senegal and the USA. These studies about the role of education in relation to largely tenacious but shifting national identities should appeal to specialists of education, nationalism studies, history and political science.