In high school history curriculum guidelines, there are opportunities to cultivate students’ ability to examine historical issues, to analyze value problems, and to develop historical thinking to be found; yet, how does the textbook write or present historical issues of values, how does the textbook deal with ethical issues and thus cultivating students’ historical thinking wherein, these remain the ideals of this wave of curriculum reform, and the challenge we are currently facing in the country. This research takes an educational criticism approach, with the chapter “Memory of the Second World War” from the German-Franco Joint History Textbook for High Schools as an example, using description, interpretation four lessons, to help the reader build up a comprehensive and general understanding. This research then attempts to evaluate and thematize the design of teaching materials using historical thinking guideline with an ethical dimension, including exploring the changing of the memory of events from a chronological point of view, utilizing public memory to engage reader and bridge the distance between history and memory, and discussing ethical and moral issues through question design, in hopes to contribute to future work of textbook editors and history teachers.?
