Abstrakt: | The paper is devoted to effects of ethno-regional differentiation in Upper Silesia from the particular
perspective of elements of historical memory and knowledge about Silesian identity amongst
secondary school children. In this region we have a public debate about the idea of Silesian nationality
and local political aims of creating it by leaders aspiring to the acknowledgement of Silesian
dialect as regional language, and reconstructing the memory about the Silesian autonomy,
and Prussian, German, Czech components of local traditions in regional industrial culture.
The main research question of this study is what is the importance of school and family
transmission of historical knowledge for constructing regional identity, as declared by pupils
from different educational levels and types of secondary schools. Analysis of the data from regional
representative samples (on 3,986 students from 140 schools) lets the author to present data
about the educational effects of institutional practice and their ideological, patriotic attitude to
the historical memory of the young generation. The article also presents the characteristics of the
regional identity in self-declarations of the pupils, and family differences by socio-demographic
characteristics of surveyed students. Theoretical base for the author’s analysis is habitus as source
of the morals and a subjective sense of being a young Silesian and possibility to fully adhere
to the rules of symbolic violence in school system described by the theory of Pierre Bourdieu.
Today’s memory of a young person is constantly updated, driven mainly by the focus on mass
media, peer groups, the experience of emotions and sensations condensed into a shorter time,
and oriented to current and future attractions. |