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Contemporary teaching focuses on the students' active role in the acquisition of knowledge. Specifically, it concentrates on the cognitive aspect of knowledge and neglects the role of emotions, whose role and significance in the learning process should be recognized as extremely viable not only for the learning process but also for the students’ personal development and their interaction with peers. In this paper, the authors perceive empathy as the acceptance, understanding, and appreciation of others' emotions, opinions, and social position while highlighting its significance in the students’ learning process and their interaction with peers. Since textbooks are the primary medium via which the transfer of knowledge occurs, in the second part of the paper, we analysed high school history textbooks' content. The results show that questions and tasks as textbook tools are not neglected in history textbooks. Moreover, the textbooks contain a considerable number of questions and tasks aimed at encouraging students' active role in the process of teaching and learning, which is evident from the way they are formulated. The results also suggest that high school history textbooks overemphasize the cognitive aspect of the learning process while simultaneously inadequately put students in a position which would also allow them to be more emotionally engaged with the historical events. The authors of the research conclude that there is not enough emphasis in high school history textbooks on encouraging students to understand and acquire a complete historical picture, which is why the article highlights guidelines for encouraging empathy in history teaching.