Learning from the Past: How History Education Shapes Support for Extreme Ideology

Luca Braghieri and Sarah Eichmeyer

No 19575, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Can teaching the history of authoritarian regimes built on extreme ideology lastingly reduce support for those ideologies? We leverage a natural experiment in Germany where the senior high school history curriculum exogenously alternated covering, across cohorts, the communist German Democratic Republic and fascist Nazi Germany. Data collected a decade post-graduation reveals that studying the GDR rather than the Nazi regime increases knowledge about the GDR and reduces support for extreme left-wing ideology. The treatment does not increase support for extreme right-wing ideology on average, but does so in more right-leaning regions, highlighting substitutabilities of the production function of extreme ideology.

Keywords: Education; Political ideology; History; Schooling curricula (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I28 P00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-10
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