Emotions and Construction of National Identities in Historical Education

Abstract

In this study, the authors analyzed the relationship between emotions and the construction of identities, particularly national identity. We reviewed the current debate on the role of emotions and feelings in people’s actions and in the configuration of their worldviews and practical actions. The world is witnessing a revival of ideologies that seemed to have been definitively banished from human thought and political action in the 20th century; however, it is being proved not only that they have survived and grown, but that they are also widely disseminated through networks and have come to shape the thinking of the many people who use them when deciding the future of their societies and how they want them to be governed. The growth of populism is based on emotions and on the most extremely nationalistic discourses. We analyzed, first of all, the influence of emotions on the perception of social reality and on the construction of historical and social knowledge. Next, we focused on the implications that emotions have had on the teaching of history and on the results of an international exploratory selection of particularly relevant research. Finally, as a conclusion, we suggest some ideas for the search of a balance that considers the weight of reason and emotion in the teaching and learning of history.

1. Introduction

We are witnessing, rather perplexedly, the birth of a world seeing progress in globalization and technology, but regressing, or advancing much more slowly, in the world of ideas and human behavior. From the didactics of history, we are seeking a balance between reason and emotion that will allow children and young people to be formed as free persons, capable of situating themselves in their world and in history and of feeling that they are the protagonists of its construction and of the construction of its future.

The Catalan historian Josep Fontana [1], when speaking of collective identity, argued that it is difficult to identify it with a “national identity” because the latter hides a double consideration: That of “nation” as a community, as a shared culture, and that of “nation-state.” For Fontana, “Of all the aberrations that we have attributed to modernity, making it responsible for most of the contemporary evils, from the dictatorships of one sign or another to the systematic massacres, there is one that has produced and continues producing today millions of deaths, many more even than the wars of religion, and that seems to have overlooked us: I am referring to the invention and consolidation of the nation-state, this monstrous alliance between a phenomenon of mainly cultural dimensions and the political machinery of the state, which is thus attempting to legitimize it, providing it with an ethnic substratum that wants to make it ‘natural’ and necessary, putting aside the old and healthy doctrine that held that the basis on which the state was to be sustained was none other than the social contract” (pp. 11–12).

The same author warned about how the teaching of history in schools reproduced these aberrations in an interesting way. Thus, in 2003 [2], he stated, “Public use begins with education, from which we receive the contents of a codified historical vision, the result of a prolonged work of cultural colonization from the power that has decided what is ‘our’ past, because it needs to ensure with that we share ‘its’ definition of the identity of the group of which we are a part, and that to achieve this it has no problem in controlling and censoring texts and programs” (p. 17). For this reason, he still believed that the fundamental thing in the teaching of history is, following Pierre Vilar, to teach people to think historically [3].

Today, we know some of the results that these aberrations may have had in the minds of students who have studied history in any nation in the world. However, there is little research on the role that feelings and emotions have had, and still have, in the formation of the national identity of citizenship. However, there are numerous discourses about the role that the teaching of history should have in the formation of national identity, as well as the abundant analyses of the curricular content or the school texts on this purpose.

In the teaching of history, we are witnessing a re-nationalization of school history education that is generating an increase in the discourses of politicians on what history should teach, but that does not take into account either what history researches or what is known about the problems of its teaching and learning. The need to reform the school curriculum to make it more appropriate in terms of the current reality is an educational concern in many countries. This debate should be calm and provide answers to the problems presented by the knowledge and information society and a globalized world. It is a debate in which different nationalist options that hide their nationalism are confronted. It is a confrontation between identical logics that use the same strategies and obtain similar results: History is reduced to believing, without more, that which makes them unique and different from the rest of human beings, and, consequently, to divide the world into a “we” and “others,” in which the former bring together all of the virtues and the latter all of the evils. However, what role do emotions play in this?

In this context, the thesis of this essay raises, on the one hand, the effective and relational impact of social emotions and feelings on the construction of knowledge about past and national identities. On the other hand, this thesis considers, from the perspective of historical education, the need to value the affective dimension in the narration of the explanatory axes of human behavior.

2. Emotions, Historical–Social Knowledge, and Social Perceptions

According to the proposed thesis, this first section reviews the potential influence of emotions in the construction of historical–social knowledge and, consequently, in the social perceptions of reality from the international scientific literature.

Damasio [4] identified the border between emotion and feeling in the space, whether subjective or social, in which they are experienced. While the feeling starts from the mental experience and is deprived of emotion, the emotion represents its manifestation, usually external, observable, and, therefore, measurable [5]. In fact, “It could be argued that it is the expression of the emotion (even if only before oneself) that constitutes it as such” [6] (p. 12). As forms of thought and knowledge, emotions would be the most recognizable expressions for historical interpretation and explanation, particularly those typified by Damasio [4] as social emotions (identity/sympathy, shame, guilt, indifference/disdain, indignation, gratitude, admiration, pride, and commitment). The expression of social emotions arises in relation to an external behavior, individual, or collective. It is a positioning that refers to others in certain contexts and can be recognized as true learning. Emotions, essential components of social life, have a decisive influence on the construction of historical knowledge. They must be understood, therefore, as social and cultural practices, since, in effect, “We cannot access the emotions of others; we can only study the experiences that have originated them and the expressions that have generated them” [6] (p. 12).

Social behavior or the logics that govern relationships with others are, therefore, particularly influenced by emotions and feelings [7]. Emotions “shape the landscape of our mental and social life” [8] (p. 21), are understood as social constructions and as an object of cultural study, and constitute a valid category of socio-historical analysis [9]. Cognitivists, sociologists, and anthropologists support the changing social and cultural nature of the forms of expression of emotions and feelings. This allows them “to be used to visualize the historical and social meaning of internal or subjective life” [9] (p. 189). From this perspective, the ethno-historian Scheer argued the concept of “emotional practice,” based on the theory of embodied cognition in which “the body is not a static, timeless, universal base that produces ahistorical emotional excitement, but is socially situated, adapted, formed, plastic and therefore historical” [10] (pp. 25–26). This body–mind linkage implies recognizing the association between emotions, body practices, and social practices [11,12].

According to Rosenwein [13], the study of emotions and their fluctuations in time [14] should consider the historical record as an indication of their presence or absence. Indeed, “Understanding emotions as practices also means taking into account the practical uses of emotions in social situations, as the sociologists of emotions have advocated from the beginning. If there is no relational reason to communicate or promulgate or protect against an emotion, then it must be considered absent” (p. 219).

The value of emotions in the construction of historical knowledge, typical of postmodernity, renounces to the reason–emotion split, characteristic of modern rationality [4], to explain social behavior. From the paradigm of new cultural history, the history of men and women and of societies incorporates human behaviors and practices observable over time, driven by universal, intercultural, and predictive emotions in history [15]. In this line, we agree with Escolano [16] in affirming that “spaces, times, texts and writings are constituted (…) as emotional stimuli that induce a determined affective sociability” (p. 117). Emotions and feelings have a direct influence on the perception of social reality and its projection into the future, on communication, on personal decision-making, on creativity, or on the system of values [17]. Anger, one of the most recognizable universal primary emotions in public social behavior, as love or hate permeates human history, shapes the social narrative [15] and, of course, is very present in the teaching and learning of history.

The performative nature of emotions, directed at an audience or receiver, “Facilitates the construction of ‘emotional communities’ [a concept coined by Max Weber in 1922] based on common values and desires (…). In this sense, emotions fulfil a social and socializing function” [6] (p. 13), “They unite the feeling of community of individuals and human groups, and are expressed in recognizable gestures” [18] (p. 357). The capacity of emotions to cohere social communities drives their constitution as emotional communities, including those gathered from negative emotions such as hatred, regardless of the context (physical or textual) in which they develop. According to Plamper [10], “Emotional communities are often social communities in face-to-face contact, but they can also be ‘textual communities’ in which people are connected through the media without having direct or physical relationships” (p. 23). An excellent example of this has been highlighted by Latapi [19] in analyzing the relationship between theater and history based on analysis of the impact on citizenship of three plays about the events that occurred in Querétaro in the 19th century, culminating in the trial and execution of Emperor Maximilian.

The incorporation of emotional experience and the relationship between emotions and social change [11] becomes a valid category of analysis for understanding, interpreting, and explaining history [20]. Some historians raised doubts at the time as to the appropriateness of historicizing affections, emotions, drives, and passions [21], or about the temporary nature of emotions among those who defend its stability throughout history and those who advocate for its change. Today, this debate has been overcome as, between the two positions, third one advocate changes in its “management” [22]:

“There are academics who consider that emotions have remained relatively constant throughout history: What changes is not the emotions themselves, but the way they are represented in literature and art. (…) On the other hand, close to post-modern trends are those who postulate that emotions are socially and culturally constructed and practiced, and therefore subject to profound changes over time” (p. 321).

The authors of this essay agree with Plamper in considering the possibility that emotion “is another ‘useful category of historical analysis’ (Joan Scott) as are gender, race and class” [10] (p. 27). There seems to be no doubt that emotions play an essential role in history and its teaching, assuming that “these same passions and affections modify our understanding of history” [23] (p. 2). The same is true of resentment, as highlighted by Ferro [24], whose origins are to be found in feelings such as incomprehension, ingratitude, injustice, or impotence. For this author, “The existence of resentment shows (…) to what extent the cut between the past and the present is artificial, which consequently live in each other, making the past more present than the present itself” (p. 15).

Today, the media, including the teaching of history and social knowledge, are presented as key spaces in the generation and expression of emotions, regardless of its structural characteristics (textual, visual, audiovisual, black/white or color, and still or moving images) [10]. However, the “state of knowledge about emotions in the teaching of History, at a global level, is yet to be done” [25] (p. 113).

3. Emotions, National Identities, and Historical Education

This section focuses on the second of the purposes of the thesis presented. According to its approach, it analyzes the constructive influence of emotions on social knowledge and, in particular, on national identities. Likewise, the emotional implications in historical education are reviewed in light of an exploratory selection of especially relevant international research.

3.1. Emotions in the Construction of National Identities

The nation, as an imagined community of sovereign and limited character [26], constitutes a social construct. One of these hegemonic instruments of nation building is schools [27], representing a key space where the common values of the nation are shared [28] and where the idea of the imagined nation is reproduced. The nation imagined in a school is a nation that is not only limited and sovereign, but also emotionally cohesive. Through the national curriculum, a social imaginary is reproduced in which the nation is explained as a united community [29,30] and in which all people who are part of it—regardless of their social class, ethnic or religious group, gender, etc.—are grouped under the same flag.

The technical curricular concept of history that is taught, which controls social times, continues to be the majority in practically all countries. From this perspective, the traditional teaching of history “has been, and continues to be, the axis that articulates the history programs of all those countries where it is taught. Its purpose is the development of the students’ national identity, the construction of an awareness of belonging to a nation, to a homeland” [31] (p. 4). However, the aim of this technical–traditional approach is no longer so much the creation or consolidation of the nation, but its survival in increasingly global and diverse social and cultural contexts. For Korostelina [32], who follows Seixas [33], the main function of this conception of school history education is to develop group identity, to facilitate social cohesion, and to build a convincing moral framework. “People with similar social positions and common histories develop comparable social identities and define common allies and enemies” (p. 3). Furthermore, this conception of history “creates a narrative that explains the conflict favorably for the group, justifying its position; it also denigrates the external group and establishes its responsibility for internal suffering, legitimizing aggressive collective action in response” (p. 3).

Geographical, political, economic, social, cultural, and historical knowledge of the country itself is presented as an incentive for the formation of citizenships of belonging based on certain emotional values and collective feelings of group identification [34,35,36]. The construction of these national identities could be explained from what Reddy [37] conceptualized as “emotional regime,” which is a “set of normative emotions and official, practical and emotional rituals that express and are inculcated in us; a necessary foundation of any stable political regime” (p. 129).

Including the affective dimension in the explanation of social behavior in the construction of historical knowledge and, consequently, in the forms of citizenship implies recognizing feelings as a specific form of thought, both to nourish the nation’s discursive patterns and to explain the expressions of its “enemies,” positioned, paradoxically, in the realm of emotions and irrationality:

The large corporate media, politicians and other individuals and institutions interested in maintaining the status quo often describe social justice activists as being driven by emotion (…) and protest activities as irrational and childish, rather than as a legitimate way of expressing social demands [38] (p. 19).

The emotional component in the construction of national identities and patriotism translates into “a form of love that considers the nation as something of its own (…), [revealing] the contradictory nature of patriotic sentiment, which looks outward in the name of the common good, and inward to distinguish between worthy and unworthy citizens” [39] (p. 320). This interconnection between love and hate it crystallized in the concept of nation, which, like any interpersonal relationship, “is imagined, yearned for, discussed, betrayed, fought over, and negotiated on the basis of imaginary scripts that give meaning to both social closeness and distance” [40] (p. 7).

3.2. The Emotional Construction of National Identities from Historical Education

There is no doubt that emotions have been and are linked to the intentions or purposes of the teaching of history, that is, they are directly related to the political functions of history [25]. One of the most recent and significant examples of the political uses of emotions can be found in the teaching materials published on the occasion of the celebration of the bicentenary of Latin American independence. These materials have been reinforcing “a national identity that systematically forgets about the original peoples” [31] (p. 5), in which there are underlying emotions and feelings associated with the nation.

In two recent investigations developed by GREDICS (Grup de Recerca en Didàctica de les Ciències Socials—Autonomous University of Barcelona), a research group to which one of the authors of this article belongs, the influence of nationalism and emotions on the historical learning of Catalan students in primary and secondary education has been verified. The first is part of an international investigation into the stories constructed by students [41,42,43]. The influence of, among other factors, political events of a nationalist nature and the emotions based on the stories constructed by the students could be seen. In the conclusions, one of the directors of the international research [44] stated that, “Instead of not being educated about their country’s past, the students know things; and what they know comes, above all, from the political facts and the actions of the politicians (women are largely marginalized) who fight for the nation or defend it” (p. 209). He added that it is a knowledge that is structured around knowledge and is emblematic of the national experience, and is made up of what he calls mythistoires (p. 209), events and characters emblematic of the “national story” of each country. This situation is found both among students whose status corresponds to their nation, such as France and Germany, and in those where there is no correspondence, such as Québec—though did not participate in this research, it did in a previous study from which it drew both theoretically and methodologically—as well as certain French territories, such as Corsica, La Réunion, Switzerland and its cantons, or Catalonia.

In one of the conclusions of the Catalan research in the advance of the year 2013 [41], it was stated “(…) primary school students have quite a few difficulties in constructing a historical narrative. For primary school pupils, Catalonia is a territory that has been invaded and occupied at different times. It is a vision of external agents that disrupt the lives of the inhabitants who are forced to react to them. Only positive aspects are considered that these “invaders” left behind (architectural works, culture, language…). The symbols and emblematic characters of the History of Catalonia (flag, hymn, etc.) are the aspects on which their narrative and memory are based” (p. 542). In the final report [43], it was highlighted that a majority of young Catalans interpreted the history of Catalonia as a permanent conflict between two irreducible rivals—Catalonia, which is considered a victim, and Spain, which is considered an oppressive country.

The second investigation is a clear example of this situation. The research focused on the analysis and assessment of the stories constructed by secondary school students about the events of 11 September 1714 in Barcelona, at the end of the War of Succession to the Spanish Crown [31,45]. The results of the research ratified the strong weight of national history and emotions in education, much greater than that of historical thought and historical rationality. For most secondary school students, Catalonia acts as a single person, has a will of its own, is abandoned, loses the war, “We tell the story of a homogenous Catalonia in which there are no different points of view, different interpretations, different ways of thinking and acting. (…) We seem to explain that those who did not support the majority opinion lose ‘their Catalanness’, cease to be Catalan or cease to be part of ‘Catalonia’ [45] (p. 65).

Indeed, emotions seem to play a more important role in the remembrance of past events and problems than historical reasoning itself. This is true not only in primary and secondary education, but also in university education. The research by Pagès, Martínez-Valcárcel, and Cachari [46] into the memories of university students on Spanish history for access to university showed that, six months after passing this test, they hardly remembered anything about the Spanish 19th century, but they did speak about events and characters of this century in emotional terms from the standpoint of pride, guilt, admiration, gratitude, contempt, indignation, indifference, shame, commitment, etc.

In previous research carried out by Pagès [47], with a group of university students from different careers on the history and construction of their identity, it was found that some of them were not clear about the concept of identity. Others, in contrast, did relate identity with learned history, but were critical of the way it had been taught to them.

The main concern of many students in this group was the subjective nature of historical knowledge, the lack of objectivity, and the political selection that is made of school historical knowledge. For this reason, they requested the search for a balance between objectivity and subjectivity, demanded the presence of all points of view, and asked teachers not to criticize others or to show history from their point of view, but to respect others and to try to present history in the most objective way possible or to bet on a heterogeneous and plural history.

The concern about the lack of objectivity relates directly to the creation of stereotypes and fallacies about others. They believed that presenting a single point of view leads to the creation of stereotypes and to a negative presentation of others. For one of them, “When a society or community is fully convinced about an issue, in this case how bad others are, consciously or not, reproduction mechanisms are activated to transmit these ideas or prejudices. The ethnocentric tendency to focus on historical facts encourages hatred and confrontation in the future.” This view was shared, in other words, by the other students. For one of them, “The teaching of history is key to ensuring that stereotypes, fallacies, etc. do not occur in a society, or at least not in such a marked way.” For another, stereotypes are combated by being “critical and reflective” and having “an opinion of their own.”

As has been shown, the history taught is key in the construction of the social imaginary about the nation narrated. The narrative learning of history generates, in fact, stories with which it is intended to build senses of belonging and dichotomous and exclusive identities in terms of “friendship”/”us” and “enmity”/”them,” and in which “nationalist states will demand the love of their citizens” [48] (p. 58). The narrative construction of these identities of belonging has already been demonstrated in recent research [31,49,50,51,52], showing how the characters included in the students’ stories can be classified as “friends” and “enemies,” which helps students to identify themselves or their communities. When students feel that they belong to the “narrated community,” “this anchorage seems to be powerful and probably transcends the school learning of history” [31] (p. 14), reaching the terrain of collective memory [49,53]. In this case, in understanding the learning of history as a process of negotiation, the role played by the leading characters has a decisive influence [31,54,55].

The aim of this traditional teaching is to build an idea of national unity [56], to strengthen the loyalty to the nation [57], and to promote certain cultural and national values [29]. To this end, a pantheon of heroes and enemies of the nation is created; speeches, monuments, and days are commemorated [56,58]; some of the events that are identified as the essence of national unity are memorized [59]. The aim is for the members of the nation to identify with the characteristics, events, and characters of the “shared” national past, to distinguish themselves from those who are not “national,” to consolidate their national identity [60], and, in short, to form a national unity from the promotion of feelings of belonging and emotional–territorial affiliation through love of and loyalty to the nation [56,61,62]. In fact, through the teaching of history, a common past can be narrated that allows for the construction of meanings and the imagination of the nation as an unalterable and eternal community, and in which its members share a past, a present, and a future [23,56,63,64].

In the formation of national citizenships, the affective component therefore assumes essential homogenizing functions of the collective experience, which limit the multiple ascription of personal and social identities, with the aim of imposing the dominant national culture on minority or peripheral social groups in their context [29]. However, according to Barton [65], the teaching of this traditional, romantic–patriotic history does not seem to contribute to the “national assimilation” of minority social and cultural realities [66]. Likewise, research in History Didactics questions this patriotic-based approach and dominant values. In fact, as Sant, Pagès, Santisteban, and Boixader [31] showed, “Depending on the communities to which they belong and their identities, students seem to negotiate rather than assimilate the national stories that they will build and make more or less their own” (p. 4). In this line, for Epstein and Shiller [67], there are limits on what children will learn from school historical accounts if these conflict with the historical accounts learned at home. In this process of negotiation, it seems logical to think that the emotional variable operates as an instrument of anchoring and permanence of identity communities, founded, as we pointed out above, on common values and desires.

4. Conclusions and Implications

The authors of this essay agree with Fontana [1] in affirming the permanence of the “patriotic pedagogy of commemorations, monuments and names assigned to citizen spaces” (p. 11)—spaces, emotionally based, of collective memory at the service of nationalist ideologies and the homogenizing ethnic component [68]. The assumption of countries as tangible and homogeneous realities and not as constructs that allow us to situate ourselves, to know where we come from, and to live and organize ourselves collectively drives the absence of otherness, of the multidimensional nature of identities and of the relationships between the “I,” the “we,” and the “they” [69] (p. 185), thereby promoting the consolidation of memories anchored in the past [70,71].

Zembylas and Kambani [72], following Harkin [73], Ahmed [74], and Svasek [75], stated that emotions are one of the essential components of historical consciousness and ethno-historical practices. Emotions are understood as responses rooted in culture, ideology, and power relations and therefore are powerful forces that can be used to secure or challenge political and social reality, or to influence history teachers’ own thinking [72].

As Harkin [73] explained, extreme negative emotions caused by traumatic events largely determine collective historical narratives and memories [76]. These emotions have consequences on the definition of personal and social identities and can create serious obstacles to achieving peace and reconciliation and, therefore, a teaching of history capable of balancing thought and feeling. In this sense, the connections between emotion, social memory, identity, and historical narrative constitute an important strategic space in the perpetuation of the domain of nation states. In this sense, the political and emotional value of collective memories as representations of the past remains in the social and ideological practices of commemorations or national monuments.

It is necessary to begin an in-depth review of the contributions of national histories to school history education, incorporating emotions as a category of historical and social analysis. In this sense, territorial and/or national analyses should allow the introduction of social and cultural diversities in order to find, in the past, references to build multiple, fluid, and summative identities. Applied to the teaching and learning of history, this means telling other stories, analyzing other geographical realities, promoting different notions of citizenship [27], and contemplating affective and emotional dimensions in the explanation of social knowledge.

It is increasingly common to approach the history and social science curriculum with the aim of educating students for democratic citizenship with the capacity to decide on their identities and on their future as persons and members of a family and a community, as well as to learn to participate democratically [77,78,79]. From this curricular approach, focused on the teaching and learning of social thought (critical and creative), of historical awareness, and of radically democratic values [27], it is necessary to promote alternative school narratives that consider reason, emotion, and empathy in their construction [80,81], in order not to avoid social problems, to recognize the socio-affective component in its multidimensionality, and to value its role in the plural construction of social identities. These narratives should start, in the first instance, from the identification and recognition of the mediating action of emotions, of the bias and partiality of social stories [82], with the aim of seeking balances between “own” and “other” identities that coexist in the same time and space—as one of the authors of this work stated more than two decades ago.

“Men and women do not have roots but feelings -heart- and ideas -brain- and we can, like the wind, break with thought and action the frontiers, the barriers, that in the past other men and women created. And this is in order to aspire to be citizens of the world, citizens of an increasingly smaller planet in which, perhaps, the future will not be rosy either, but in which values, ideas and concepts—increasingly universal and less territorial—will most probably be useful instruments for facing problems and knowing how to seek solutions with imagination and creativity” [83] (pp. 531–532).

School history education, therefore, should allow students of the 21st century to understand what is happening, to position themselves and to intervene in the construction of another world that is more just, more egalitarian, based on the diversity of peoples and citizenship. Consequently, national structures, as a construction, can be rethought, because they are changing and dynamic realities that are shaped by the people who form them [84].

Plurality, complexity, and freedom explain the need to seek social cohesion and to preserve the plural memories of all the protagonists of the past and of all the evidence that allows students to better understand what the men and women who have preceded us were like, how they lived, how they thought, and how they felt, who were the protagonists of the construction of our present and laid the foundations on which we design the future [30,85]. The teaching of history should therefore promote inclusive narratives, alternative ways of belonging to a limited and exclusive “we” [57], capable of incorporating and countering reason in the management and change of feelings and emotions, especially when these are “negative, perverse or inconvenient” [7] (p. 32).

The teaching of history should promote, as Korostelina [32] stated, a culture of peace, which, without renouncing the construction of identities, including national ones, will seek a balance between reason and emotion. That is, a cultural and social history in which nothing and no one is missing; in which men and women of any age, ethnic group, social, religious, or cultural group would assume their leading role and would be able to think about their past in order to jointly lay the foundations of a common and peaceful future.

On the contrary, the current times do not seem to favor this option. Neither within countries nor at the international level are there proposals for the teaching of history designed for global citizenship. Beyond the proposals due to the goodwill of international bodies such as the Council of Europe, for example, or of non-governmental organizations concerned about the consequences of history teaching in the maintenance of certain conflicts and many stereotypes, or of certain groups of historians or teachers, the educational landscape is still clearly dominated by national histories and Eurocentrism. As a result, historical thinking is still subordinated to feelings and emotions.

Today it would be desirable that the teaching of history be based on respect for pluralism and cultural diversity as positive values of human history. Among its priority objectives are the following:

(1)

To eliminate the hatred and resentment of some countries, cultures, and minorities against one another;

(2)

To eliminate prejudices and stereotypes within any community;

(3)

To create positive attitudes toward cultural realities other than one’s own, to foster an awareness of global citizenship, based on equality and diversity, human dignity, and cultural and ideological pluralism;

(4)

To consolidate democracy and social justice, especially social democracy, i.e., a way of life and culture based on equality and diversity;

(5)

To inspire young people with the idea of building a multicultural future based on respect for human rights and solidarity between people and individuals.

Perhaps this is more in the hands of teachers, their beliefs, their motivations, and their hopes than in the hands of those politicians on whom, in theory, the teaching and learning of the history of the citizens of their countries depends.