European traditional national minorities in Slovenian geography textbooks compared with textbooks from other European countries

Slovenia is a very small country with 2 million inhabitants, in a wider Europe. Accordingly, the Slovene school geography syllabus reflects a certain favorable disposition towards the treatment of European national minorities. This study, using the method of content analysis, compares the treatment of "traditional" or "old" minorities in selected Slovenian textbooks with content relating to the geography of Europe from 24 countries. There are considerable differences among the textbooks from the western and eastern parts of Europe. The latter give greater attention to traditional national minorities and use a different approach to content and instruction. The study shows that traditional national minorities are presented in more depth in Slovene textbooks than in textbooks from other European countries.