A Common History for Nationalism and Role of Public Education

How can we unite people with different races, languages and values to create a unified and harmonious nation? 

Imagine bringing in people from different nations to live together in one place and say that from now on you all are a part of this new country. Chaos is what comes to my mind from this situation. However, this is exactly what happened many centuries ago when people try to create a nation. So, how could they do it? 

One possible answer is "Nationalism." They created a strong centralized administration to create a common history for all people in the country to share. Similarly, when you have a high school reunion, what bring people together is their common experience in high school that they want to share with others. By inventing a common history, the government basically makes us feel like we have a reunion all the time.

Champ De Mars from the top of the Eiffel tower.

However in order to create a successful common history, you will need to legitimate some structure to control and monitor the process, and this structure is called 'Public Education.' To contrast from what most people believe, public education is more than just a social service that the state provides to our children and prepare them for the future, but also involves with a political motive–to teach the next generation the common history or mythology for their ancestors–for maintaining it nationalism. This is why the state often has a full control of the public education in most countries.

Let come back to the idea of a common history. One example of creating a common history is French mythology. The story of Gauls as French origin only started after the French Revolution when the people no longer wanted to associate themselves with Franks which was what the nobility associated with. Another example is the history of my home country, Thailand. The Thai history that is taught in school is mostly about how the monarch united and created the country, and how they fought against external enemies in many eras, including the war with Burma and the colonization from the West. This common history is what united Thai people together and what we are proud of to be Thai.

Nevertheless, the current method of common history started to fail in the era of globalization when immigrants move to anywhere. These immigrants or their second generation will not be able to relate their cultural backgrounds with the history they are taught at school, which solely focus on the majority in that particular country. This creates a main challenge for many developed societies to find a new common history to unite different groups of people together. Or the question becomes 'Is it possible to create such a history?'

We already saw an example of this attempt to unite people from different regions into a bigger community: the European Union (EU). People in the European union rarely consider themselves Europeans instead identifying themselves with their nationality such as French and German. The nationalism from each country is far greater than the attempt to unite all European countries because the European Union have not created a common history that they can share for the whole region, and people often criticize this unified relationship solely for the economics purpose.

A different kind of story is told in the US. Instead of finding a common history, which would be an impossible task to do because of the history of immigrants in the country, the US chose to associate themselves with a 'melting pot' that is not necessary related with any specific race or origin. It also added a common value that Americans hold on as 'the American Dream.' This could be one possible solution to solve this current globalization problem. But, it is still a difficult task to succeed. First, they need a really strong administration to create this type of story, but no one wants this type of government anymore.

Statue of Liberty: one of the story is told in the US

Lastly, there is also a question of historians and archeologists whether they are purely scientific or as a political tool for  government to create a common history to promote nationalism in a name of science. But because of the funding that they get from the state, it will be difficult to draw a clear line between these two purposes.

Because of the need for nationalism to unify the country, the government provides public education to general population so that everyone can share a common history for the country. However, this method of a common history might not work anymore due to the fast-growing society in the era of globalization. Immigrants will change how we view a nation and how we unify a country. The United State offers some insight on how to create such a new type of story/mythology. And finally, there is a question about historians and archeologists as a tool to build a nation.