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42 Cristina lon 2

Vlad the Impaler, Ioan Voda, Michael the Brave), founding heroes, warri-ors, wise princes ¹. The “Golden Age" was followed by a period fuli of hu-miliations, the 18th century, the Phanariotic regime.

2. School is an important way to influence and make collective atti-tudes, together with other elements which take part in the continuity or slow cliange of the collective Outlook, such as: military service, formal his-torical anniversaries which were interpreted as a support for momentary interests. The textbook can be a space were the cliches that already exist or are forming, are kept and imposed. So the part of the school and textbooks is not to be neglected in making the image of a society about itself. The way in which the history is told to children is significant for those who want to know the identity of a society, its status during the passing time. As Marc Ferro States, there exists an “official history" which expresses and legiti-mates the political regimes of the time and a “history of the defeated", opposed and parallel to the official one and in many ways different, bom from the memory of the dominated societies, obssesed by their identity. This type of history has as main principle “tuming to the extemal boundaries of the society, defining itself in relation with the Others" (this was the case of the Romanian society in relation with the “Greeks") ².

In this context, it is understandable the concem for history and educa-tion as tcols of civic training.

After the half of the century, the trend became a school policy which involved the methodical printing of textbooks and the outlining of a pat-tern of teaching (based on setting forth legends and biographies of outstand-ing rulers) ^{3 4}.

Taking into account the differences, one can mention that something similar happened in Jacobinian France (where it had been tried to establish a school of formal “secular mythology") and also in France of the Third Republic, after the defeat in the war against Germany in 1871 (where it had been tried to wipe off the shame of the defeat by emphasising the values of the national solidarity beginning with the elementary school). In both cases history was useful, its educational power having an “urgency charac-ter” in the crisis moments ⁸. The aim was the obtainment of a special peda-gogical efficacy and history was suitdble to get it: “the historical image, kept out from ephemerity seems to have in itself the eternity of myths" ⁵.

1

   Alexandru Zub, Istorie si mit in epoca modern#, in "Istorie ęi finalitate", Bucureęti, 1991, p. 50.

2

   Stefan Lemny, La critięue dii regime phanariote: cliches mentaux et perspectives histo-riographiques_t in "Culture and society. Structures, Interferences, Analogies in the Modern Romanian History", edited by Alexandru Zub, Iaęi, 1985, p. 19—20.

3

   V. A. Urechia, Istoria ęcoalelor de la 1800 la 1664, Bucureęti, 1894, and G. Ionescu-Gion, Studiul istoriei nafionale in scoalele noastre, Bucureęti, 1889. On the ąuestion of the presence of national history in school, see also Vasile Cristian, tncepnturile invaf amant ul ui istorie in Principate, in Anuarul Institutului de istorie ęi arheologie "A. D. Xenopor ", XVI, 1979, Iaęi, p. 475-488.

4

   Claude Billard, Pierre Guibbert, Histoire mythologique des franęais, Paris, 1976, p. 279-284.

5

   Ibidem.