Nacionalismos y Europeísmos en los Libros de Texto: Identificación e Identidad Nacional

Abstract

The evolution of the History contents in Spanish textbooks for secondary school is analyzed. The focus is on the contents having as a goal to promote the identification of students with a given notion of citizenship, which after the 70’s includes being part of Europe. Two dimensions are analyzed: the concept of nation and the notion of Europe. About the first, the focus is on the presence, in most cases not explicit, of essentialist and romantic ideas about nations. These ideas coexist with others aimed to the construction of a new European identity, identity that it is assumed to be “shared”. The notion of Europe currently promoted through education in Spain is discussed. The identification with Europe is historicist, with affective and symbolic elements, which contrasts with an identification that could be more rational, grounded in a political project of a shared future. In the frame of the new educational contexts, in a society increasingly mixed and pluricultural, we discuss the conflict between; on the one hand, the need of promoting civic coexistence based on values shared among all European citizens and on the other the right to adopt different cultural identities.

Keywords

• textbooks
• identity
• nationalism
• europeism