polski

Abstract

In this text, I discuss the creation of collective awareness in school education. I examine the problem from two perspectives – sociological (the mechanisms of shaping collective memory and the rules of functioning of such memory) and educational (the directive of the current educational policy, especially the reading lists composed by the education ministry). I am mostly interested in the issue of what the drivers are of certain educational documents (especially in curricula) – and the fact that those drivers aim to shape the concept of collective identification according to what is „right” according to current political interests. On the one hand, this is to create either an idealistic image of its own group (which is purposefully being contrasted wit the negatively painted image of the „other”) or create a myth of the past. On the other hand, the aim is to marginalise or even erase from educational discourse any narration that is considered different. Closely connected to this problem is the teachers’ dillemma about the models of community and community relations being popularised in schools (i.e. keeping up the brand of patriotism inherited from the time of occupation or the attempts to verify it in the context of modern sociaty and culture), which I also discuss in my text.