NEW PAINTING OLD BUILDING: Content Analysis of Indonesian High School History Textbooks for the Curriculum 2013

Abstract

This research examines content of high school history textbooks from targeted achievements in the curriculum 2013 perspective. The research question posed is why various curricular goals have failed to be realized? To answer it, the history curriculum 2013 and textbooks for high school were used as the subject of study. The analysis was carried out using the hermeneutic approach and the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) method. The results showed that the failure of the implementation of the history curriculum 2013 was mainly due to the incoherence between curricular goals and material contained in the textbooks. The curricular goals set are to reduce the use of violence, build a strong character, and increase nationalism of students. On the other hand, the narrative in the textbook is still dominated by the use of violence, especially when discussing the independence revolution. On the contrary, civil leaders who struggle to use negotiations are even negated as cowards, the losers who fail to defend Indonesia's sovereignty. The goal of improving student nationalism also failed to be realized, because the narrative built on the textbook negated the Indonesian people only as objects of influence of India, Arab and Western (Dutch) nations. The negative perspectives toward the existence of Indonesian society in the past caused students lose their pride as member of Indonesia as a nation in nowadays.