The role of the school manuals in the national identity formation of Albanians during the Renaissance

The main aim of this article is to present a larger view of the scholastic manuals' role in the formation of the national identity, as well as the conditions in the historical, cultural and pedagogical formation of a new nationality during the Albanian Renaissance (1878-1912). The crucial hypothesis of this study falls during this important historical period; it was made possible to construct a new form of national conscience thanks to the psycho-pedagogical content of the scholastic texts. Various contents of literature and linguistics textbooks published during this chosen period have been analysed aiming to prove this hypothesis. The elements that converge with the contemporary theoretical approaches on the formation of the personal, collective and national identity using a comparative method were identified in the course of this analysis. Eventually, it was demonstrated that, beyond the efforts and the achieved goals, the process of the common identity construction as well as of a sense of common belongingness has been entrapped in the insidious psychological dynamics of an individualist population having a fragile sense of community, which has been highlighted as a serious obstacle towards national unity.