Full story
BBC website

The idea of a standardized history book for schools is pretty worrying to my mind, let alone that this seems to be sponsored by the Governments of France and Germany; it's like putting all your historical eggs into one basket.
Having the same historical anaylsis taught everywhere will institutionalise it and runs the risk of filling children with "politically" watered down history.

Also WTF is up with 20 professors writing 1 chapter, I bet there were some arguments and compromises!!!

It only covers the post WW2 period. I don't think that you could get the French and the German historians to agree exactly on what happened in the 6 years prior to this period...

Since every country seems to teach its own view of history, which seems to often be somewhat at odds with other countries' accounts of history one could argue that it is difficult to ascertain what the truth is.

Of course, everyone assumes that "their" version of history, as it was taught to them in their own schools is the correct one, but can such a claim really be made in all honesty?

Perhaps a common view may be watered down, but it is an interesting question - would a watered down version be closer to the "truth", or should we stick to differing views?

Of course another issue is the selective teaching of history. An American recently told me that she was angry that they totally skipped Vietnam in their history curriculum. In many years time what will US (or British for that matter) kids learn in their history lessons about the Iraq war? Perhaps it will just be completely skipped.

I had to learn about Vietnam. I think that the primary problem there could be that history lessons typically end around 1960 -- at least they did back in the 1990s.

Actually, American history, or the American history that I was taught, was very "confrontational" to say the least. It tackled the darker side of the past. The same applies to English literature. We were always reading about slavery, Japanese internment, xenophobia and the myriad of other terrible things that the US government has done in its day.

Agreed.
Thats the point though, history is more than just dates and facts it's the analysis that makes it useful. If one book is introduced then only 1 point of view can be presented, which will become the truth / fact.
A teacher selecting one book over another to teach her class only affects those children, a Government selecting the book affects everyone.

FT article on the book can be found here
The above article makes the book sound like an effort to bring Euroland closer together, in the same way Americans are indoctrinated in patriotism.

Thats not necessarily a bad thing. I rather hope that the Falklands war doesn't get taught in schools in the UK at the moment. Sure its great history and important, but in the grander scale of things (and the limited amount of school time) there are many more important topics to be covered.
Hopefully the Gulf war will fall into the same category.