Literature as Identity Educational Strategy in the Globalization Age

Ioana Nicolae

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 51 (2012) 257 - 262

ARTSEDU 2012

Literature as identity educational strategy in the globalization age

Ioana Nicolae a *

a "Dunarea de Jos " University Galati,Galati 800008, Romania

Abstract

After 1989, the educational policies entailed by the curricula of the ex-communist countries have been fundamentally reorganized to focus the drastic change enhanced by the deep educational reform, from the institutional structure up to the curricular desiderates. Inevitably, these specific reformatory laws have changed the identity perspective on the educational process itself, even if these - sometimes over belaboured - turns in focus have not always echoed positive values. This study points out the transformation carried out by the Romanian educational system after 1989, with a special focus on the principles and policies applied to the identity-oriented education and its future consequences. Within the Romanian cultural space, the causes of these changes have two main motifs. On the one hand, there is the globalisation phenomenon denoting an integration process, including that of the educational systems also. In Romania, even if the political national reactions to these integrative acts should have been highly institutionalised, the official attitude tends to get excessively cosmopolite, distorting the main two key-elements of the identity-focused education process: the Romanian history and literature. On the other hand, the perspective on the national literature in the Post-War period displayed the general opinion according to which it is nothing but the product of the political commandment serving the communist nationalism overruling in the last two decades of the totalitarian regime. Out of the juncture of these two factors, the educational status of the Romanian literature dramatically changes as it constantly loses both its aesthetic values of forming human personalities and its role played in maintaining the identity desiderates, absolutely necessary when coping with the "global village" reality

1. Introduction - Changes of perspective on the identity educational component in post-communism

After 1989, the educational policies of the ex-communist countries were fundamentally reformulated in keeping with the profound reform of the educational system, from the institutional architecture to the curricular

support. Inevitably, these reforms also had an effect on the identity component of the educational process, in all its aspects, and the equation of these modifications, in great part excessive, does not always display positive values.

It is our belief that a better understanding of the phenomena generated by the new status of national cultures included in the network of globalizing mechanisms cannot be provided by the endless discussion, re-discussion and by the diligent and enthusiastic inventory of globalistic theories, often too abstract and with a well-dissimulated political-doctrinarian substratum. By the contrary, this understanding can come from the knowledge of the concrete background of causalities and effects of each national cultural space drawn into the mechanism of globalization. Therefore, by means of this paper, we propose an analysis of these transformations which occurred in the Romanian educational system after 1989, of the principles, the policies adopted on identity education and their consequences they have or may have in the future.

* E-mail address: andreigrigor@yahoo.com

In Romania, the determinations which generated these modifications have two main sources. On the one hand, the perspective on national literature created in the post-war period was marked by the prejudice that, almost in its entirety, it was the result of a political command and it served communist nationalism, manifesting itself with greater intensity in the last two decades of this regime. On the other hand, the process of globalization inherently demands integration, including that of the educational systems. Although the national political answers to these globalistic demands should have been predominantly institutional, in Romania they took, to a certain extent, the shape of an excessive cosmopolitanism, affecting and distorting the two most important curricular components of the identity educational vector: Romanian history and literature. The encounter of these two factors led to a dramatic change in the status of Romanian literature in school, both in what concerns the annihilation of its resources in the field of aesthetic education, as well as in view of creating and maintaining an identity consciousness that we believe to be as yet indispensable to the "planetary village."

After the fall of communism on the 22nd of December 1989, a part of the intellectual elite initiated and maintained a strong current of opinion in the Romanian cultural space, concerned with contesting national cultural and artistic values. An explanation for this attitude may be the justified aversion towards the nationalist exaggerations of the last ten-fifteen years of Nicolae Ceau§escu's dictatorship, when a great number of the most important Romanian cultural landmarks were exploited by propaganda in support of the autochthonous communist regime. Hence, the main targets of this negation campaign were the literature and the art created in the period between the end of the Second World War and the year 1989. Thus, Romanian intellectual settings were pervaded by the fallacy according to which every creation of the communist years was either without value, or the result of a political command or it must be eliminated if the author - writer, visual artist, musician - made even a minimal moral compromise with the political power. The aesthetic evaluation criterion of the artistic work was replaced in these position-takings by the moral-political criterion which had a tendency to seize any reference to the creative act and to alter its specificity.

2. Internal determinations

The didactic existence of Romanian literature after 1989 is marked by several phenomena which we consider serious and which were generated, to a great extent, by this negating tendency. One of them consists in replacing one politico-ideological action (communism) with another, which, although opposite (anti-communism), runs the risk of producing effects similar to the ones specific to the years before 1989. The (political) biography of the writer, evaluated under the sign of a presupposed "collaboration" with the communist regime (or with the political authorities immediately after December 1989), becomes, in certain cases, a selection criterion that leads to the exclusion from school syllabi and textbooks of important writers, who brought remarkable aesthetic contributions to Romanian post-war literature (D. R. Popescu, Fanu§ Neagu, Eugen Barbu etc.). On the other hand, according to the belief, which we consider to be fundamentally flawed, that everything approved by the communist regime is necessarily bad, and everything persecuted is automatically good, some textbooks published after December 1989 register the presence of some authors who are debatable to say the least, for instance the one of the poet Radu Gyr (Doina Ru§ti, Limba §i literatura romana, Manual pentru clasa a XII-a, Editura Paralela 45) or they contain hilariously paradoxical instances, as is the criticism brought to communism by means of a text penned after 1989 by Nina Cassian (in the lesson "Case Study: Literature as subservient to communist ideology." A Writers' Congress). We should mention that Radu Gyr is the author of the text "Sacred legionary youth," which became the unofficial anthem of the movement (The Legionary Movement was an organization founded in interwar Romania, on the 24th of June, 1927, as a terrorist paramilitary legion of Nationalist-Fascist orientation, modelled on the Nazi organizations SA and SS, marked by religious mysticism and anti-Semitism), while Nina Cassian was one of the poets who were the most "subservient to communist ideology" in the fifties, i.e. in the years of maximum terror under the Soviet-inspired regime. Without providing other examples, it is quite obvious that this confusion of criteria extended to the educational system led to a confusion of values, political value frequently substituting the artistic, while the objective of shaping the young generations in the spirit of the artistic taste and of an authentic axiological scale remained, under such circumstances, quite remote.

In the agitation of the passions generated by these changes, there are, fortunately, voices in the Romanian intellectual world of the last twenty years who express a balanced attitude, guided for the purpose of revealing the actual system of causalities and of the attempt to modify it so as to obtain positive effects. The phenomenon

witnesses such balanced and competent considerations, both in the field of literature, as well as in that of pedagogy, the latter having a more straight connection to the actual educational environment. From the former category we quote one of the numerous assertions resulting from the observation of this problematics in a study conducted by two literary critics - the academician Eugen Simion and Andrei Grigor: "[...] I do not think it is only the decompression phenomenon quoted by the analysts.; there is also a moral crisis of the society which, in the intellectual settings, has taken aggressive and abnormal forms. A moral crisis which has become a crisis of values." (Eugen Simion, Andrei Grigor, 2004). Among the studies dedicated to the modifications suffered by the Romanian educational system, we consider relevant the perspectives formulated by a representative of the young generation of researchers, a generation which is more receptive to change, while, at the same time, displaying lucidity and lack of bias, as shown by the selected example: "the general social context of the 21st century Romania is contradictory, institutions and people try to answer new demands, continuously searching for resources and means to act appropriate for the current transformations. The pronounced competition between the old and the new gives specificity due to the new conditions of the dynamic change which requires from the Romanian school and its people the capacity to work with completely opposite forces: to incorporate both centralizing and decentralizing forces; to look unremittingly for change, while continuity is also called for; to have a perspective, while not being blinded by it; to value the agents of personal change as a means for changing the system." (Alecu, S.M. 2007)

To a certain extent, such confusions can be explained by the eternal confrontation between the old and the new, in a period typical for the passage from one socio-political system to another, marked by interferences, contradictions and paradoxes. In other words, within reason and within the boundaries of what is known about such ages of regime change, as recorded by history on other occasions as well, irrespective of the political direction of the change (including the previous Romanian case, after the complete institution of the communist regime, starting with the year 1948), this internal reaction against the literature and art created under communism can be justified.

However, the problem resides in the fact that this reaction is not directed only against the above mentioned chapter from Romanian history of art and literature. It is also directed against values from all periods of creation, especially those that are symbols of the national creative spirit. Among them, the most important is the poet Mihai Eminescu, whose symbolic value for Romanian culture is equivalent to that of Shakespeare, Goethe, Hugo or Camoes for their respective cultural spaces. (Mihai Eminescu, Romanian romantic poet (1850-1859), with a decisive contribution to the development and refinement of poetic language, entering Romanian cultural consciousness as national poet.)

It is important to mention that the aesthetic value of Eminescu's poetic creation is only rarely and insubstantially brought into discussion. The negation campaign led by some members of Romanian intellectual community, self-appointed "the cultural elite," are directed first and foremost at the mythical status acquired by the poet in Romanian cultural and identity consciousness, as well as at the educational system which promoted and consolidated this status. It may prove useful to add that such contesting attitudes have a tendency to remove from the school circuit and, thus, from the collective cultural consciousness other representatives of Romanian literature who constitute the very backbone of the national creative spirit and of the Romanian cultural identity.

In these cases, the aversion towards communism does not function as sufficient and, to a certain extent, acceptable explanation. Certainly, the tendency to challenge the cultural values created in the national space manifested itself during other periods of Romanian intellectual history. However, with few and rather insignificant exceptions, it was supported by specific aesthetic arguments and it aimed to provide a new structure for the artistic cannon, in which the existing values were given different positions, without questioning whether they were representative for Romanian creative spirit. Therefore, the explanations for this phenomenon should be sought in a broader context.

3. Globalistic determinations

3.1. Between two variants of educational globalism

The globalizing phenomena that have displayed an increasing intensity in the past twenty years represent another determining vector for the issue under analysis. As a result of these phenomena, aiming to integrate national communities in the global society (the knowledge society with the perspective of a consciousness society), the states engaged in the globalizing mechanism abandon their political, economic, financial sovereignty in favour of the global society, as well as their educational sovereignty. Doubtlessly, this process is, to a great extent, a natural one, resulting from the explosion of information technology, from the expansion of economic markets etc. however, this

process is politically manipulated and propagandistically exploited in continuation of the cold war between the politico-social systems: capitalism vs. socialism, west vs. east. Among the stakes of the theories on "world institutionalism" is the one to prove the superiority of the Western educational system seen as bearer of universal and eternal cultural values. This idea is easily identified in the studies of the Stanford University institutionalist school, which denies or diminishes the role of national entities in the elaboration of educational policies in accordance with local particularities of a cultural, economic, social nature. In their opinion, the most feasible path towards developing educational systems is the one resulting from the dissemination of the Western cultural values, derived from ideal and universal models. (John W. Meyer, 1992).

Although there are theoretical perspectives which are contrary or at least complementary (Roger Dale, 2000) and which are, in our opinion more judicious and more realistic, many of the European states - and not only - built their educational strategies and reconfigure their national curricula on the guidelines of the "world institutionalism theory. " It is true that there are critical voices as well. The system, however, prevails and the losses suffered in the moulding of the young generations, as a result of implementing such strategies, are great and they promise to be hard to counteract.

The educational policies adopted in Romania represent, in their essence, excessive and rigid materializations of the postulates formulated by the Stanford school. As a consequence of these policies, the areas of study that suffer most are the ones having an aesthetic-cultural identity value, since they are either eliminated from secondary school curriculum, or they undergo a malformation of their specific functions.

The former category contains artistic subjects: music, visual arts. Secondary school graduates (except those graduating from vocational schools) remain only with the elementary and limited abilities acquired in primary school. They will have no knowledge about Romanian and world art history, about the aesthetic values which have become important marks of the spirit, about the function of art in building an authentic personality. The general cultural development of the human personality, as well as the education in the spirit of aesthetic taste and artistic sensibilities is almost non-existent. In the absence of authentic aesthetic values, validated by humanity's cultural history, while neglected in the current school study, the young generations shaped according to these "strategies" run the risk of being perpetual victims in the expansion ofpseudo-artistic values which are promoted with increased success by the mass-media and the Internet.

3.2. Aversion towards historicity or fear of cultural identity?

In what concerns literature, the status of this subject seems to be at an advantage, as it keeps its "physical" place in the structure of the curriculum until the end of pre-university education. The losses can be noted in the "spiritual" status of this subject. The fundamental and almost exclusive principle according to which the school syllabus is organized is the "communicative-functional" one. In other words, literature serves only as a pretext and practice field for the development of communication skills on different topics and for different areas in the social life of the individual. The paradox is that the curricula almost completely ignores from the list of competences those concerned with the knowledge of national literature's authentic values, with the identification of the national spirit among the world's other spiritualities, and with the evolution of this spirituality's constitutive elements. The principle according to which literature is studied by placing texts in time frame and observing the connection with the context, by emphasizing the factors that led to progress, to stagnation or even to regress from one period to another and explaining them by means in light of the contextual phenomena - in a word, the principle of historicity in the development of literature is completely abandoned by the new curricula fashioned in the spirit of "globalism." The historical perspective is dimmed and, with it, the understanding of Romanian literature's specific development in contexts with specific influences and representations.

In the leading political environments, both planetary and national, there seems to be an aversion, if not a fear of history and historicity. In any case, the tendency to avoid organizing the curriculum of the respective subject around this principle is quite obvious. It can be observed in the educational system of several countries, whether European and members of the European Union (Portugal, for instance, starting with the curricular modifications of 1995), or from outside this community (Canada). If the observation is correct, we try to detect the possible explanations for this tendency.

The most frequent argument invoked by the political authorities in charge of the educational system in support of the curricular modifications analysed thus far, regards the necessity of adjusting the educational process to the main coordinates of the individual's modern living. On the one hand, it is said that school syllabi are overloaded, they contain too much information which is supposed to be more often than not useless, and that it is necessary to reduce the quantity so as to provide the pupil with more spare time. In some cases, this justification can be accepted; in essence, however, it presupposes a certain precariousness, as well as several major risks for the development of the young people. One may consider how much "redundant" information there is in mathematics, physics, biology or religion (the latter tends to become a compulsory subject in Romanian pre-university education; the tendency is, naturally, at least debatable). It may prove interesting to notice that these subjects have registered the smallest amount of losses in the process of reducing the "excess of information."

The most affected were the subjects that presuppose a historical approach to the matter for their proper understanding: history itself and literature, both reduced to a summary and fragmentary study. Although they use different standards and specific modes, they both mirror the diachrony of national identity's formation and preservation. The importance of the most significant Romanian historical figures is either reduced to the level of insignificance, or shown as derisory in the new curricular documents. In as far as literature is concerned, the study of this subject remains, on all stages of pre-university education, on the primary school level or, at most, on the level of the beginning secondary school years. Ultimately, the literary text tends to become an auxiliary didactic material in the development of communication skills. In other words, starting from a literary text, the pupil practices and perfects his language so as to be able to handle a conversation taking place at a football match, a rock concert or during a trip. For a proper understanding of this situation we employ the example (be it a little exaggerated, however necessary for our demonstration) of an English pupil who tackles a Shakespearean text, mainly so as to practice his communication abilities at the grocery store or at the scrap market.

The development of Romanian literature, its contribution to national culture and, to a certain extent, to the universal culture, the way this literature shaped its personality and the authentic scale of values configured over its historical existence - all these remain aspects that cease to contribute to the development of young people, in what regards their identity consciousness, their aesthetic consciousness and the awareness of the aesthetic value specific to the literary work. Due to the way in which the study of literature is organized in contemporary specialized curriculum, the pupil may no longer be able to register the difference in the value of an artistic text, as compared to a sports commentary. Moreover, he may no longer know with what specific cultural particularities he can identify in this increasingly globalized world.

It is interesting to point out that many countries belonging to the western political-cultural space preserve the identity component in its proper place within their educational policies, even in the last years. A case in point is the French educational system which, according to the official documents posted on the web-page for the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sport, constantly approaches the study of the literary work from a historical perspective, at the same time equally emphasizing the importance of the literary text's aesthetic value. The study of French literature lists among its aims the following, which we quote from the source mentioned above: "la construction progressive de repères permettant une mise en perspective historique des œuvres littéraires ; le développement d'une conscience esthétique permettant d'apprécier les œuvres, d'analyser l'émotion qu'elles procurent ; l'étude de la littérature dans son contexte historique". The system of competences targeted in the study of literature displays the same preoccupation: "Connaître quelques grandes périodes et les mouvements majeurs de l'histoire littéraire et culturelle ; savoir situer les œuvres étudiées dans leur époque et leur contexte ; avoir des repères esthétiques et se forger des critères d'analyse, d'appréciation et de jugement". Finally, what results from the presentation text of the same document is the idea of development in the spirit of a "common (identity) culture" and of an authentic aesthetic consciousness: "C'est en se fondant sur l'étude des textes et des œuvres que l'on donne aux élèves des connaissances d'histoire littéraire. Ainsi se mettent en place peu à peu les repères nécessaires à la construction d'une culture commune. On veille également à leur apporter des connaissances concernant les grands genres littéraires et leurs principales caractéristiques de forme, de sens et d'effets, afin de favoriser le développement d'une conscience esthétique."

In American educational policy, one may notice a specific aspect. The responsibility for preserving and consolidating the identity consciousness is divided between the educational system, mass-media and other means of communication, which are more attractive, while also being more efficient in terms of propaganda, for example film production. All of them reflect emphatically the heroic American myth, that of superiority, supremacy, invincibility and democratic quintessence. Therefore, the nature of the globalizing phenomena is efficiently supported by technology. The permeating force of these mediums is so great that, on the background of the frail educational

policies implemented in various states of the world, the American myths tend to irretrievably substitute the identity myths of the local cultures.

4. What will be the uniform in the planetary village?

The facts presented thus far invite to meditation, to attitudes and policies that would balance the two tendencies which, if left to develop excessively, can become equally dangerous for the structure, the organization and for the hierarchies of the future "global village" (McLuhan, 1962). In Romania there are such observations and appeals to equilibrium. Nevertheless, their resonance in the field of educational policy is, unfortunately, weak. Taken in their extreme forms, the two tendencies are perceived as "insolvent": "a) the nationalist triumphalism, blind and limiting, incapable of understanding that the contemporary world is an open universe and that you cannot live isolated and proud in your village and b) at the other end, globalism, blind as well, without roots, without a past and without a future, uniforming and cynical... incapable of accepting that universalism means difference and that a great cultural era is an era of identities who understand each other and who overlap. [...] Art originates in difference, not in uniformity." (Eugen Simion and Andrei Grigor, 2004)

Following an idea by Wright C. Mills, an individual who does not possess self-consciousness as part of a structure with a well-defined cultural identity, does not possess "sociological imagination," in other words, since he cannot situate himself in a diachronic and a synchronic system of cultural values, he is incapable of seeing his life from a historical perspective.

Being abandoned by an educational system which, by means of the specific subjects of study, refuses to aid in his development in the spirit of a culture with a specific identity and of authentic aesthetic landmarks, the individual becomes easy pray for the "entertainment" business which provides him with a cultural, moral and social uniform. The image of a "global village" in which the individuals know everything and they want to know even more about a hip-hop singer, a football player or a high-class courtesan, while knowing nothing and not wishing to know about Beethoven, Dostoyevsky or Picasso is not very attractive. The highly technologized and unlimited access to knowledge is not sufficient for the complete development of the man living in a global society, as long as the greatest part of the offer on the "electronic market" of knowledge consists of pseudo- and sub-cultural products and the institutionalized educational alternative is deficient.

The man in uniform is a man subdued and, thus, easy to manipulate. While the process and the supporters of the levelling globalization do announce this risk, they do not also try to avoid it by means of appropriate educational strategies added to the political, economic and financial strategies.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by University Dunarea de Jos Galati, Romania References

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