Professor Marianna Papastephanou,University of Cyprus, Department of Education.
Abstract
The well-deserved, broad endorsement of democratic citizenship as an educational aim effected a quick popularization and dissemination of this aim within educational sciences. A side-effect is that educating for democracy often becomes a modish slogan that secures for the user the self-image of the progressive educator. This obscures deeper theoretical challenges, dilemmas and difficulties. Democratic citizenship requires identifications with a collectivity (nation-state) whose viability depends on the citizen’s patriotic allegiance. Since patriotism is ambiguous, perhaps pernicious, is democratic education appropriate to multicultural, postmodern schools? The lecture explores possibilities of reformulating patriotism as an ideal compatible with democratic and cosmopolitan education.