Abstract

A nation is a historical phenomenon, which, under specific circumstances, is constructed, reconstructed and deconstructed in time. The ideologies about a nation follow a similar process, but, in parallel, have an impact on perceptions about history, in terms of time and geographical territory. In this respect, national historiography aims at associating nation with the past, concentrating on a specific space and time of the past, which it appropriates and renders national. Educational systems as mechanisms, by reflecting the social and political ideas which they convey and promote to pupils, exploit the school subject of history as a means to convey dominant ideologies and exert social control, thus producing controversies about the educational value of the specific school subject and questions about the usefulness of learning history. The present paper aims at investigating the perceptions of Greek pupils in the sixth grade of primary school about the content of the history of Greece, following its conventional division in school textbooks in all levels of education, in ancient, Byzantine and history of contemporary Greece. In addition, the research aims at exploring which of the specific eras is considered most significant by the pupils surveyed, and which of the historical events the subjects have been taught are ranked high in terms of importance.