Populism, educational media and schools in times of crisis

Abstract

In many countries in Europe and abroad, populist political parties and movements – both left and right – have experienced an increasing popularity in recent years. These developments are due to a sharp uncertainty among the vital shares of populations, due to increasing complexities in societies and to the acceleration of changes and challenges in daily life, including the educational sector. Many movements and parties have the reputation to use a rhetoric that is exclusive nationalist, portraying themselves as the supposedly “real” defenders of the workers and middle class’ interests. Also, they intend to represent the voice of the “people” more authentically than “the elite” does, defying the establishes cultures of memory and partially traying to substitute them for supposedly more authentic versions of the past. Using examples from different countries, this work intends to examine the ways in what they are being discussed in the educational sector and school books. The document would like to discuss how and the extend of it in the post-colonial contexts in other places. We would like to discuss how the hegemonic speeches are contested by the populists, if and the extend they tried to influence and reconstruct the identity, the memory and the history, and the scholar structures through the education against previous or prevailing traditions and how they – for this purpose – influence the production of educational media.