Extraordinary shifts have occurred in political discourse and social practices, both online and offline, with implications for the historical knowledge deemed worthy of teaching to pupils. Rising authoritarianism globally, now empowered by Generative AI and social media personalities, has revealed the growing desire and ability to reframe histories, reintroduce the boundaries of national belonging and redefine identities. Reinvigorated nationalism rife with dis/misinformation, conspiracy theories, and suspicion about the internal and external ‘other’ is (re)shaping understandings of the past, who ‘we’ are as nations/states and ‘our’ place in the world. Attempts to rewrite history accordingly in schoolbooks seem more concentrated than before; a reflection of this growing appeal to claim a singular historical truth.

This is by no means restricted to well-known authoritarian regimes where the state is the sole author of textbooks. One can recognise these tendencies in liberal democracies as some now seek to directly influence textbook content and pedagogic practices by controlling public funds and opportunities. Others hope to change the school curriculum to glorify the colonial past and mythicize it as a symbol of national pride. In a recent example, a member of Reform UK, emphasized how "[…] the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad […and that ] these things [were] not taught and embedded into British people in the way that they are in many other countries. Go to China, go to Russia, […]” he noted.  

Differences notwithstanding, similarities are no longer negligible between the two contexts. The desire to appropriate and control narratives of the past, is gradually – but surely - turning into a conviction even in well-known democracies. It is acquiring the political will and means to construct a particular version of history, exacerbating nationalist sentiments to benefit political gains.

Battles over school knowledge are not new. Through the use and abuse of history, textbook wars and historical controversies have been salient in authoritarian and democratic countries. The under/mis recognition of minority histories, the silencing of the undesired pasts, the denial or misrepresentation of identities and the construction of historical-political myths in schoolbooks, have long attracted keen observers, from scholars, journalists, memory activists and human rights workers to families and pupils. Hong Kong’s Scholarism movement in 2015 was one such example, where students protested the imposed curriculum change by the Chinese Communist Party. Between 1965 and 1997 the historian Saburo Ienaga, filed three lawsuits against the Japanese government’s treatment of wartime activities which, he argued, denied state atrocities. Protests continued later by other historians in the 2000s. The violent Kanawha County Textbook War in the United States of the early 1970s erupted as a conservative reaction to the selection of multi-ethically informed schoolbooks. Many situate the growing opposition to Critical Race Theory and its application in the writing of history textbooks today, in the rightists’ successful experience from 1974 to 1975.  

The Reform UK’s account of the colonial past emerged as a reaction to growing post-colonial critique of the British empire. In schoolbooks, this meant breaking silences and addressing difficult questions about Britain’s colonial history. Whether and to what extent it succeeded in actual change in curriculum content is controversial. But it nonetheless caused anxieties amongst those who look at this history of colonialism favorably. In a recent article, historian Naill Ferguson, for instance, appraised the post-colonial critique as ‘one-sided’ and ‘problematic’ referring to the BBC’s three episodes series Empire.  

Even in a theocracy such as Iran’s, criticisms of the official history as constructed in textbooks continues. They have even grown as Islamism and symbols of ancient Persia are merged at schools and beyond appealing to rising nationalism. Once regarded as blasphemous, such icons as Persian kings, have been employed in the service of Islamist ideology, in textbooks and elsewhere. Emblematic of decadence and moral and spiritual corruption, schoolbooks were purged of signs pertaining to Iranian monarchies in the revolutionary 1980s. The Achaemenid’s Darius the Great (550-486 BC) was depicted looking contemptuously at his subjects as they were chained. Today, both Darius and Cyrus the Great are praised. Parallels are even drawn between the latter and the Supreme Leader. 

Contrary to the common perception, the Iranian hardliners – differences in their Islamism withstanding – have used their monopoly of school textbook authorship rather creatively. They have adjusted their versions of history to befit their arising needs and vulnerabilities. Challenged by women movements demanding recognition and freedoms, the relative silence over their role in Iran’s history has broken. In the revised textbooks since the late 2000s, they are included and acknowledged for their ‘special role’ in the past and today, all in the context of an Islamised historiography that ideologically and highly selectively appropriates their participation.

Such examples are not rare in Iran. Changes in schoolbooks happen regularly . The hardliners have proved agile in tweaking their narratives of the past. But never have they loosened their grip on them. They only tightened it. Acutely aware of their waning legitimacy, they craft accounts that appeal to the youth, while also building a millenarian master narrative of Iran in which pupils – boys and girls - are to act as selfless warriors.

The Islamic Republic is not alone in its efforts to appropriate histories and change its own version of the past. Nor is it the first to do so. They proved highly successful in other authoritarian contexts, such as China after the student-led Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Turkey after the attempted coup of 2016 and Russia following the war with Ukraine. Birds of a feather, they seem to have learned from each other the ‘best practices’ in historical writing for the reinvention of their political legitimacy, starting with the reclaiming of school knowledge. History textbooks continue to be their prime target, a pliable tool in the state’s machinery of hegemonic narrative production and the (re)construction of political power and legitimacy.

The battle over historical knowledge is far from settled in authoritarian regimes, despite victory claims by the respective political elites. In the face of risks, opposition continues in various shapes and forms. In Iran, videos of pupils tearing up their textbooks went viral during the 2022 uprisings known as Women, Life, Freedom movement sparked by the killing of Mahsa/Jina Amini in the custody of morality police. Soon ‘schoolgirl’ became the codeword for unruly politics, synonymous with ‘problem’, in Sara Ahmed’s conception of the ‘Willful Subject’ who, by the virtue of volition, persists in being disobedient, stubborn and obstinate. Their rebellion did not go unpunished. They were violently suppressed. But student dissent continues. It has spread and deepened as evidenced in the ongoing anti-regime uprisings in Iran.

Not too long ago, the authoritarian control of a singular historical truth was rare and restricted to certain regimes. The growing tendencies to do so in liberal contexts are cause for concern. The desire to revise and impose historical narratives (in education) is here with renewed vigor with the Generative AI and algorithms fabricating nationalist sentiments with biases and dis/misinformation. This promises defining implications for the way history is written and taught to pupils.  How schoolbooks will change to reflect the ‘correct history’ may be uncertain as national and international politics play out. But they are set to transform, shaped by new interpretations enforced on the past.