Emotions and Construction of National Identities in Historical Education

Delfín Ortega-Sánchez,Joan Pagès Blanch,Carlos Pérez-González

doi:10.3390/educsci10110322

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.

Highlights

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
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]
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]

Summary

Introduction

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. 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. Essential components of social life, have a decisive influence on the construction of historical knowledge They must be understood, 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] 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]. The emotional implications in historical education are reviewed in light of an exploratory selection of especially relevant international research

Emotions in the Construction of National Identities

The Emotional Construction of National Identities from Historical Education

Conclusions and Implications