According to the detailed curricula, the school must cultivate genuine patriotic sentiment. By examining the school textbooks and the perceptions of educators, the authors of this book find that the school describes the Greek nation through the interpretative tools and contradictions of 19th-century nationalist discourse.
Antiquity is used as a super-historical model, resulting in a demonstration of the unworthiness of Greek society and its culture. The nation is described as a trans-temporal and static entity, which undermines the concept of evolution and cultivates, in contrast to the values of our time, ethnocentrism and xenophobia.
The most important conclusion from the research included in this book is that the national identity cultivated by the educational institution today is fragile and contradictory, without siblings and undervalued, threatened from all sides and in a process of decay.
This book is recommended for everyone, especially educators, as a subject of dialogue around the changes needed in the educational system, aiming for the cultivation of national self-awareness in the new generations to lead to a national identity resilient enough not to fear its alteration or decline from the cooperation of peoples and the interaction of cultures, and tolerant enough not to defensively uphold it by rejecting differences, diversities, and the "others".
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
