Many are sure that successful and effective education can be carried out only on positive examples. Is it so? Often the correct “work on mistakes”, “debriefing” give much more than experience without mistakes and victories without defeats.
During my trip to Denmark, I was extremely surprised when I learned that the historical memorial “1864”, located near the city of Sennerborg, is dedicated not to the victory of Danish weapons, but to their defeat. It turned out that in 1864, 10 Prussians defeated an irregular army of Danes, about three thousand strong, and as a result of this battle, Denmark finally lost Schleswig-Holstein, which still remains largely German.
And now, on the site of the seemingly sad defeat of the Danes, a pompous memorial appeared, reconstructing this battle. It is visited by a large number of people, many children’s groups come with excursions, films are shown; you can sit in a trench, taste the soldier’s cuisine, get a rifle bullet of that time as a keepsake, and much more.
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- Feelings of patriotism
I asked a Dane friend if there was a contradiction here – you were defeated and now you are celebrating it so widely. He said: “We do not celebrate, but we remember and nurture patriotism.” I asked for an explanation about the “education of patriotism”: “You lost in this battle to the nines. They suffered a bitter defeat. It’s more of a kind of humiliated patriotism.” My friend smiled and replied: “You can lose, but not lose respect for yourself, you can lose, but walk with your head held high and maintain self-esteem; it is possible to lose territories by being forced to submit to force, but to equip the remaining, albeit small, part of the earth in such a way as to live well and happily, better than the winners. “If you like,” he said, “even a sense of humor is brought up here: you can’t take history, especially military defeats, so seriously. We bring down the pathos a little, thereby helping to get rid of the complexes.
For our psychology, this is a rather unusual and even strange point of view: we generally try to forget defeats, drive the memory of them deep into the unconscious, leaving in our minds only a place for victories, the price of which we will not stand up for. This is the only way to cultivate sacrificial patriotism.
And for us, size still plays a fundamental role: 50 years before this battle near Sennerborg near Borodino, about 100 thousand Russians and French died. By the way, for all Western historiography, leaving the battlefield after the battle was a defeat, but we called the Battle of Borodino a victory, because we believe that patriotism can only be brought up on positive examples.
But it turned out that the Danes were able to adapt for this case and defeat. And learn from it, look for positive even where the canon, it would seem, requires you to sprinkle ashes on your head and mourn. After all, everything in life is useful – both sorrows, and joys, and victories, and defeats. Which, as you know, “you yourself should not distinguish.”