One indirect approach would be to spend some time on the history of a country to which most students did not have much emotional attachment. Students could learn the value of the critical use of sources and of historians’ interpretations in that context. Then they could come back to the study of their own country’s history and apply their new-found skills.

The idea that there should be any state-prescribed list of history textbooks horrifies me. But I have lived all my life in England, a country that has not been at civil war for 350 years nor invaded and conquered for nearly 1,000 years. Such advantages make it much less likely here than in some other countries that the content of history lessons will inflame passions. And any guilt about the British Empire that might be inculcated is synthetic and weak, so hardly worth opposing with demonstrations on the streets.

For me, the key thing is acknowledging where one comes from; equally acknowledging the context of a reading/source/website.

(I’d like to think that the majority of teachers are not driven by fanaticism…)

I am not sure though about the ‘approval of the sources’ by an academic committee. Do you mean approving what Web content to use at school? Or have I misinterpreted you? Given the dynamic and ever growing nature of the Web, that would be an almost impossible task and, from my point of view, an undesirable one, because it would replicate the weaknesses of the existing centralised process of the country’s ‘national education’ (as it was called till recently).

Instead, I’d be for giving teachers the freedom and flexibility to use web content and developing pupils/students’ skills of critically evaluating it.