Political competition of collective memories at school: the Holocaust case

The school is an agent of socialisation in which coexists a plurality of collective memories. The curriculum ensures the transmission of official memory. However, alternative collective memories might also be discussed by students and teachers. This leads to a competition of memories. More specifically, this observation may be made regarding the transmission of the Holocaust in Belgium. This emotional historical fact, classically taught according to the official curriculum, is nevertheless sometimes questioned. This is for example the case for non-Belgian students, who consider other possible memories and want to discuss about these. In order to analyze this possible competition between collective memories, we explored the speeches of young from multiple national origins in relation to the topic of the Holocaust. Two focus groups, differing on the basis of the national origin of the participants, were conducted with young students aged form sixteen to eighteen. The discourse analysis aimed at showing (1) if there is a competition between different collective memories, and (2) to what extent political arguments are mobilized by the students.