In this article, Freedman et al. respond to the educational challenges countries face after violent conflict by exploring the links between larger political processes and decisions about teaching history. After a decade-long hiatus of history teaching in Rwanda, the authors provide a case study of an intervention project on teaching history in the secondary schools in the country. Although focused on Rwanda, they suggest that some of their findings may relate to other societies which have also faced violent conflict in the more recent past, such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the Balkans.

The research highlighted two tensions between teaching history and the ongoing political process: (1) emphasizing an understanding of historical evidence and thinking in conjunction with the government’s political goal of using history to promote a unified Rwandan identity; and (2) using history to shape a new national identity while simultaneously acknowledging the realities of continuing ethnic identities. Freedman et al. argue that these two sets of tensions influence, and will continue to influence curricular change.

The authors found that educators inhibit disagreements for fear of their erupting into large conflicts. However, Freedman et al. argue that “suppressing open debate might actually lay the foundation for further societal violence” (665). In so doing, they suggest that the method of teaching is as important as the content in order to create opportunities for productive disagreement in the classroom.