Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2015 number 3

The purpose of the article is to study the socio-philosophical problems of patriotism and nationalism in the context of language and language education. The relevance of the study is determined by the role that language, being an integral part of the national consciousness of the people, plays in socialization. Problems of language education are of particular importance in the present conditions, as inadequate language policy of the state can have disastrous consequences. The ideological influence of language education is manifested in the fact that it begins to change the views of the population. Indicative of this is the modern linguistic situation in the education system in Ukraine.From the point of view of the Ukrainian authorities, to promote the Ukrainian language is a manifestation of patriotism and love for their country, but from the point of view of the Russian-speaking population living in the territory of Ukraine, it is a manifestation of nationalism in its worst form, fascism, because Ukrainian nationalists through the language form a hostile attitude towards people who does not speak the Ukrainian language. Thus, the line between patriotism and nationalism disappears, and language, as shown by this example, may have aggressive character. Language is needed to the human being as the spirit of the people, his/her worldview. The policy of preservation of national languages in some countries of the former Soviet Union leads to the division of society into citizens and non-citizens and, as a consequence, to internal conflicts. For example, the residents of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (Transnistria) appeared outcasts in their own country because they speak a different language. For the same artificially created reason, the residents of Ukraine, concentrated in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, revolted against the oppression by language, «against the expansion of the spirit». Language education can contribute to both strengthening and destruction of the relations between speakers of different languages. Therefore, further study is necessary of how this or that language reproduces itself as a set of relationships in the global space of existence, taking into account all the factors that determine its specificity in a given period of development of society in the ontological and axiological aspects.