Attitudes Towards Patriotic Education and Armed Forces among Slovenian Youth

Contemporary democratic societies are encountering many demanding challenges such as decreasing political participation in the democratic societal sphere. In most European countries one can detect an almost annual drop in citizens’ political participation. Due to the dramatic changes in political, security and societal conditions in Europe in the last decade, today’s youth is being brought up in a fundamentally different spirit. In the pursuit of ‘creating’ more participative citizens for the future, there is debate in Slovenia regarding civic and patriotic education, as well as active citizenship among the youth. Differing opinions may be found on how to realise this education, and what forms and methods should be involved. In general, two different concepts are at odds: a) discipline of patriotic education, introduced in rather limited way into the Slovenian elementary schools in 2009; b) second concept attempts to cultivate a sense of taking responsibility and of the acceptance of democratic culture while simultaneously maintaining a critical stance on the very political system; this concept is traditionally not synced with military tradition, but was introduced into school curricula in 1990s. The proposed paper will analyse attitudes of youth towards patriotic education, and try to ascertain, wheatear the concept of patriotic education is has been able to deliver its goals. When analysing trust of youth towards different institutions of democratic state in the last decade, one finding is relatively high trust of youth in the armed forces and school as an institution on the one side and relatively firm distrust into various political institutions of democratic state. Research question will ask how patriotic education has been accepted by the pupils and teachers and how patriotic education is affecting pupils trust in the armed forced and school as an institution on the one side and distrust various political institutions on the other.