If not over a New Government, Can Lebanon be unified over a Modern History Book? Sections of the Controversial History textbook censored.
As controversy over history lessons was ignited, last month about a Modern History Book. Beirut’s International College (IC), one of Lebanon’s most renowned private schools agreed to plaster opaque stickers over pages of a middle school textbook that has irked the Hezbollah.
MP Mohammed Fneish, a Hezbollah party member and the minister of labor in the outgoing cabinet, took issue with a US textbook called Modern World History that is taught at IC as a part of the middle school curriculum last month, according to Associated Press, and called for the ministry of education to remove the book from the school.
"AL-Manar" television recently broadcasted an episode about the book and showed the part that contains some information stating that Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are terrorist organizations.
The head of private education for the ministry of education, Imad al-Ashkar, said that the ministry of education responded by calling an urgent meeting with the school’s president, John Johnson, who arrived with members of the International College staff and a copy of the controversial book in hand.
Although the pages with which Al-Manar, and subsequently Fneish, took issue were not removed, as has been reported, Johnson did agree to have the section covered with stickers. “The part [of the book] talking about what I told you is hidden totally… so no one can read anything under it. If you try to remove the sticker to read the text, it would take apart the page,” said Ashkar.
The International College administration, and the secretary to the school’s Vice President of Alumni Affairs and Public Relations, has refused to comment further on the subject, noting that queries on this subject should instead be redirected to the ministry of education.
“The book has been used in IC from 2003, but maybe Hezbollah’s party could not take all the attacks anymore. Hezbollah is considered buy more than half the Lebanese as an organization that helps protect Lebanon from its sole enemy The Zionist State.
According to Hezbollah’s officials and to Lebanese politicians, as well as lot of Arabs’ countries Hezbollah brought victory to Lebanon in 2000 and 2006 by defeating the “unbeatable” Army of Israel. Furthermore, and despite the United States’ opinion, Hezbollah maintains the fact that it has never been involved in any terrorism act and works only to protect his homeland and to help Palestinians.
Consequently, Hezbollah refused categorically to be described and taught in Lebanon’s school as a Terrorist Organization, especially at a very critical time in Lebanon’s history. Political Analysts across the country described the move as a below-the-belt attack on Education Minister Bahia Hariri.
Controversy over history lessons is certainly not a new phenomenon in Lebanon. Due to sectarian divisions and continual disagreements between political factions over the tumultuous series of events that have characterized Lebanon’s more recent history, the country’s modern history is not taught as a part of the national curriculum and it is equally overlooked in private schools,which tend to follow other international curricula, despite the fact that government-approved textbooks with varying spins on Lebanon’s past exist for use in private schools.
Lebanese educated persons as well as the international press have noted that the country’s modern history is seldom taught in classrooms.BBC reported in October, that many such academic institutions avoid teaching the subject altogether so as to deter sectarian and political tension.In place of learning the country’s history together in a classroom, school children are more than likely to learn about Lebanese history from their parents, a practice that reinforces the individual narratives of each of the divided country’s communities and in turn serves to further perpetuate sectarian divisions.
“It’s a real problem,” Ohaness Goktchian, professor of political science at the American University in Beirut, told BBC. “We are raising another generation of children who identify themselves with their communities and not their nation… history is what unities people. Without history we can’t have unity.”
The question remains, will a unified historical narrative that goes past the beginning of the civil war can ever see the light? Unfortunately, I think it will be easier for the Lebanese to form a National Unity Government than to have a much-needed unified historical narrative in the near future.
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P.S. Associated Press and BBC also reported that the section that refers to Hezbollah as a terrorist organization was covered since 2003.Some copies were circulating without the covered section, which was brought to light. The books were brought to the meeting which was attended by Hariri and shown to the panel that ALL were covered since 2003 hence no problem with IC.
Similarly, some books taught in Saudi Arabia that included the word Jihad and other similar jihadist phrases were removed upon the US demands. Books that questioned the existence of the holocaust were confiscated and their authors jailed in the West, Angela Davis a UCLA professor was fired for her communist remarks. No one forgot the Mac Arthurian period in the USA.
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Lebanon is no better than any other countries that "protect" its children from "subversive" ideas.
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