Heroes, Patriotic Education, and the Shadows of History

The idea that children need to be exposed to stories of patriotic heroes has again surfaced in recent legislative activity surrounding education. Often, this impulse aligns with a conservative, moralizing vision of teaching history: the flaws of past historical figures should be minimized for the purposes of national pride and traditional virtues. When nations have experienced moral catastrophe, however, this impulse runs counter to the need to teach for historical truth. In this paper, Bryan Warnick examines the link between heroes, historical truth, and patriotic education. For initial inspiration, he turns to a vision of patriotic heroism suggested by writer and historian Anne Applebaum in her analysis of Soviet oppression. After examining both the value of patriotism and the contested role of national heroes in constructing patriotism, he concludes that certain forms of patriotism can make a positive contribution to civic identity and that identification with national heroes will be an unavoidable feature of such an identity.