At a time when the power of schools and both state and federal education authorities to guide young people's sense of belonging is being challenged by multilingualism, by the claims of supra- and subnational regions and minorities, by memories of national catastrophes and crimes, and by out-of-school educational media, this collection of essays provides an apposite exploration of the ways in which shared narratives continue to be transmitted and learnt. Its authors, whose work emerged from a series of conferences organised by the French National Institute for Pedagogical Research in Lyon, Barcelona and Paris in 2010, demonstrate not only ways in which multiple disciplines (including history, literature, social and language studies) address young people's sense of attachment, but also how challenges to educational policy are reflected in school textbooks and curricula in Algeria, Bulgaria, Catalonia, France, Galicia, Germany, Quebec, Senegal and the USA. These studies about the role of education in relation to largely tenacious but shifting national identities should appeal to specialists of education, nationalism studies, history and political science. Contents include: (1) Introduction (Peter Carrier); (2) The Empire in French History Teaching. From a Promise to a Burden (Françoise Lantheaume); (3) School and Nation in Senegal from 1960 to the Present Day. A History of Misunderstanding (Amadou Fall); (4) Teaching History and the Future of the Nation. The Case of Quebec (Jocelyn Létourneau); (5) The Social Sciences Curriculum of Catalonia and the Construction of a Regional Identity (Montserrat Oller i Freixa); (6) The Integration and Segregation of African American History. Self-esteem and Recognition in History Education (Elizabeth Hanauer); (7) History Teaching in Galicia (Ramón López Facal); (8) The Use of Literature in the Formation of French National Identity in School Teaching during the Twentieth Century (Anne-Marie Chartier); (9) Caught between Two Empires. History School Textbooks in Bulgaria in the Twentieth Century (Liliana Deyanova); (10) National Languages, Regional Variations and Immigration. The Challenge of Teaching French in Quebec (Diane Vincent); (11) Naming and Misnaming the Nation. Ambivalence and National Belonging in German Textbook Representations of the Holocaust (Peter Carrier); and (12) The National History of Algeria as Reflected in Textbooks at a Time of Political and Educational Reform (Lydia Aït Saadi Bouras).