Democratic Values and Patriotism. The Educational Challenge

The author of the article argues that educational narratives about democracy and patriotism cannot be simplistic. A more developed reflection on democracy is needed to settle its importance for the education question—can democratic ideas and the concept of patriotism go together? A discussion of various definitions of democracy and patriotism, and the characteristics of the chosen approaches is included in the article to show the complexity of the issues. The great challenge for civic education is to show connections and gaps between democracy and patriotism. Patriotism and democracy are complex issues with many variants, among them some threatening ones, and they should be discussed deeply. Otherwise, education will create unreflective, narrow-minded people, who may be desired by autocratic politicians in order to manipulate them, but not by contemporary human beings and civil societies.