In Singapore, for example, it is referred to as ‘national education’ or civic and moral education, with similar aims to the citizenship movement. It has a longer history in the USA than in Britain, going back to the days of the progressive educator John Dewey (1859–1952) and earlier. In the UK, it appeared in the mid-twentieth century and later in UK schools under the label of ‘Civics’ in some schools.
The notion of citizenship has had its critics, not least in being accused of brainwashing or indoctrinating students, imbuing them with an exaggerated patriotism and acting as an agent of capitalism. Attempts to make it part of the National Curriculum (NC) in England and Wales experienced a bumpy beginning. In the early days of the NC it was made one of the five ‘cross-curricular themes’, in 1989.
But it was non-statutory, non-assessed and largely ignored by secondary school teachers who experienced increasing pressure to ‘deliver’ the statutory subject pillars of the NC—these alone were the only real currency. Interest in citizenship education was revived after the 1997 election, which saw a huge victory for Tony Blair and ‘New Labour’. An Advisory Group, chaired by a former Professor of Politics at Sheffield University, Bernard Crick, was set up. The resulting Crick Report in 1998 identified three key dimensions to Citizenship: (1) participation in democracy; (2) the rights and responsibilities of citizens; and (3) the value of community activity (see their reflection in the three strands below).
Similarly, the Crick Report has been described as including three ‘heads on one body’: social and moral responsibility, community involvement and political literacy. As a result of the political will at that time, citizenship education in England and Wales became statutory, not optional, at secondary level in September 2002, occupying 5 per cent of curriculum time. Teachers could no longer ignore it and hope that it would go away (although it remained non-statutory at primary level).
In order to satisfy the demands of the citizenship curriculum (DfEE, 1999), teachers are obliged to ensure that pupils make progress in three areas:
1 knowledge and understanding about becoming informed citizens;
2 developing skills of enquiry and communication;
3 developing skills of responsible action and participation.
These are spelt out in detail in the Programmes of Study and can be labelled: knowledge, skills and action (KSA). They can safely be said to be quite demanding—for pupils, teachers and teacher-trainers. At Key Stages 3 and 4, Citizenship was to be assessed and inspected—and it was not long before Ofsted (the inspection body in England and Wales) had reported and commented on its implementation in secondary schools. Attention by the inspectorate, Ofsted, has ensured that schools have taken it seriously.
Yet early reports from inspections showed that the quality of Citizenship teaching ‘compared unfavourably’ with established subjects and that in 1 school in 4, provision was unsatisfactory (Ofsted, 2005). Some decisions made by senior management in schools were said to be based on ‘scepticism’. Schools were not confident about assessing Citizenship and pupils did not ‘know what they needed to do to make progress’ in half of the schools inspected.
One specific problem in these early days of compulsory Citizenship teaching was the problem of drawing a line between ‘personal, social and health education’ (PSHE) (see pastoral care and PSHE) and Citizenship. Ofsted offered a rule of thumb: Citizenship treats as a public dimension what PSHE treats at a personal level. Thus, PSHE is more about personal issues than Citizenship, which is more to do with the context of the person (the community, society and democracy) and action within that context.
This may help. Another problem for schools was in identifying and providing good opportunities for pupils to engage in ‘responsible action and participation’. Thus, teachers have been taken to task about Citizenship in their schools, perhaps partly because they have not always taken it to heart. The cynicism shown to civics and citizenship in the past century may still be present in UK schools—especially given the ultimate irony that in a constitution with a monarchy, pupils, on coming of age, will still be ‘subjects’ rather than citizens.
In some schools in England and Wales, Citizenship has been hijacked by the humanities departments, who claim it as their domain. Subjects such as Science seemed to be ignoring Citizenship in many schools: science teachers may perhaps ‘lack confidence’ in dealing with controversial issues, while other science teachers feel it as their duty to teach the ‘facts’ and leave the ‘values’ to others. My own view is that citizenship is far too important to be left solely to the huma-nities staff or assigned to PSHE/PSE slots in the timetable. Without a strong contribution from subjects such as Science, the citizenship curriculum is incomplete. One of the main aims of citizenship education in its current form is to produce ‘informed and critical citizens’ who can ‘act responsibly’. Science, and indeed all the subject curriculum areas, each have a unique role to play in meeting these aims.
Views will vary on citizenship, but one thing is certain: the notion of ‘citizenship education’ and what its aims should be will remain contested and debated. My own view, given the urgent need to protect the planet we live on, is that Citizenship should explicitly adopt a futures education perspective. The basic premise of this approach is that ‘the school curriculum should encourage pupils to think more critically and creatively about the future’ (Hicks, 2001, p.231). I follow Hicks’ view that ‘effective citizenship education’ should take this stance (ibid., p.238).
Read More : Secondary Education: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides)
