The Image of the Teacher in the Memories of Sofia English Language School’s Alumni From the 1970s
Journal Title: Martor. The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review - Year 2013, Vol 18, Issue 18
Abstract
The article aims at gaining a better understanding of the everyday life in an elite socialist school in Bulgaria. The text discusses why Bulgarian communist authorities not simply acquiesced to but actually supported the foundation of such a school in a society that aspired to equality and egalitarianism, and how they used the concept ‘childhood’ and adolescence in their pursuit of creating the ‘new socialist individual’. As the primary goal of the text is to shed light on the mundane, unofficial life in this socialist school, it makes use of memories of former students of the school. By analyzing these recollections the article wants to demonstrate not only how the schooling institution inculcated norms of social conduct and constructed publicly acceptable individualities, but also how the students reacted to these interventions; to what extent they subverted and resisted the dominant order. Last but not least, bearing in mind that these memories are as much embedded in the past as they are connected to the actual moment of narration, the article studies how the childhood/adolescent past of the narrators is deployed as a legitimizing resource for their meaningful and socially acceptable identity presentation now.
Authors and Affiliations
Nadezhda Velinova Galabova
Keywords
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