Identity and social memory from the perspective of intercultural education – based on research conducted among polish and israeli high school students

Abstract

In the article I refer to the issue of social memory and collective identity. The theoretical context of work is intercultural education. The conclusions presented in the text are based on research conducted in 2013 with the participation of high school students from Poland and Israel using the diagnostic survey method. The subject of research is the memory of Bialystok’s past as an element of the collective identity of Poles and Jews. The research was conducted in high schools in Bialystok and in the Kiryat Bialystok district in Yehud in Israel. The purpose of the analysis was to discover those elements of identity identification that facilitate intercultural communication and allow cultural groups – in particular Poles and Jews – to cooperate to learn about the common heritage of their ancestors. It turned out that the sense of belonging to many different cultural groups declared by high school students is connected with the occurrence of a monumental type of memory characterized by rich knowledge and functionality. This is the most desirable memory in educational work. The strong display of continental and global identification, but also national identification, correlates with desemanantisation of social memory. The more clearly young people are oriented towards the world and Europe and express their attachment to the nation, the more often they withdraw from involvement in the affairs of the local environment and the region. Social changes require a diagnosis of identity and social memory, detection of elements that cause communication problems.