Search

Background: Youth citizenship is now on the international agenda with African countries increasingly interrogating their national perspectives on citizenship andcitizenship education. In this emergent field of research, African scholars arebeginning to challenge the prevailing (Western) theories of citizenship and democracy. Purpose: The aim of this paper is to contribute an African perspective to the study of citizenship education by exploring the political influences and meanings that shaped citizenship education in Kenya, and how these have evolved from independence to the present day. Data and Methods: This article is based on a documentary analysis of key policy-related documents, complemented by an analysis of some critical historical moments in the life of Kenya as a postcolonial nation. The policy-related documents include government policy documents, as well as political statements, speeches, development reports, technical commission reports, media articles, research publications and reports, education syllabi and curriculum documents. Main Findings: Post-independence, the Kenyan government focused on rethinking the colonial concept of citizenship in line with its political-cultural traditions, encouraging new notions of belonging, of civic virtues and of duties in relation to nation-building and economic development. Social Ethics and Education (SEE) programmes in schools were established and then later removed from the secondary school curriculum. Conclusions: This paper yields important insights into the international and national political agendas that shape Kenya's notions of active citizenship. It indicates the tensions which vulnerable and fragile states such as Kenya experience in negotiating their citizenship education agenda, whilst attempting to win foreign investment and aid for their economy, and whilst addressing regional and ethnic inequalities and high levels of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One problem faced by teachers of citizenship is that ‘politics’ is negatively valued. The concept is actually ambiguous in value. The paper sets out a neutral, a negative, and a positive meaning of the term. It then goes on to explore the way that even on the positive construction there can seem to be ethical problems with politics. This explains both aspects of numerous projects to ‘depoliticise’ society and government, and to depoliticise citizenship education. But, the alternatives mean that we lose important political values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Character education is a specific approach to morals or values education, which is consistently linked with citizenship education. But how is it possible for a heterogeneous society that disagrees about basic values to reach a consensus on what constitutes character education? This article explores how character education has returned to the agenda of British education policy, having been largely neglected since the 1960s in response to unsatisfactory attempts at character education going back to the nineteenth century. Between 1979 and 1997 Conservative governments attempted to reverse a perceived decline in moral standards, established State control of the schools curriculum, imposed on State schools the duty to provide for moral and other development, and established a National Forum which attempted to articulate a set of consensus values in education. Labour has extended these developments in the curriculum, introduced compulsory citizenship education, and its White Paper of September 2001 speaks of ‘education with character’. The character and virtues Labour seeks to promote through schools are pragmatic and instrumental in intention, linked to raising pupil school performance, meeting the needs of the new economy, and promoting democratic participation. Otherwise the vision is pluralistic and evades explicit directives, and there is no explanation or analysis of its theoretical basis. The question of how agreement can be reached on what counts as character education may benefit from Sunstein's analysis of how law is possible in a heterogeneous society –‘incompletely theorized agreements on particular cases’ allow for common laws without agreement on fundamental principles. Many schools in fact operate in this way, but such a consensus is not entirely stable and runs the danger of teaching character education as a series of behaviour outcomes taught in a behaviourist fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper examines and compares recent citizenship education policy documents from France and England and explores the extent to which they encourage inclusive or exclusive concepts of national identity and citizenship. Current policies are being developed in a context of perceived disillusionment and political apathy amongst the young. Whilst citizenship education has traditionally aimed to prepare young people to take their place in adult society and a national community, today the notion of a single national identity is increasingly questioned. Using framing questions from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) survey of civic education, we examine programmes of study in each country to determine the extent to which they promote human rights as shared values, make positive references to cultural diversity, and conceptualise minorities. We consider the potential of citizenship education thus defined to contribute towards the development of justice and equality in society and challenge racism and xenophobia. We note the strengths and limitations of each approach to education for citizenship and suggest what each might gain from the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the significance for citizenship education of claims that Western society is undergoing a major cultural reorientation, known by its protagonists as postmodernism, which is said to have wide-ranging implications for knowledge, morality, politics and individual identities In particular, the posited changes raise doubts about the future of citizenship, and the discussion reviews two responses to these questions Heater's optimistic proposal for a return to the classical ideal, and Wexler's pessimistic assessment of the prospects for citizenship in a society dominated by television and the consumption of images A third perspective is suggested, based on the expansion of the idea of citizenship from civil, political and welfare entitlements to greater participation in the cultural and economic dimensions of everyday life It is argued that such a concept can reform a comprehensive and coherent approach to citizenship, and a successful curriculum in citizenship education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Active citizenship’ is currently a popular term in citizenship education policy discourse. Despite this policy interest, there is no agreement about the meaning of ‘active citizenship’. This article draws on data from the IEA Civic Education Study to explore how students themselves construct ‘active citizenship’. The results show that students have quite sophisticated conceptions of citizenship responsibilities although their attitudes are gendered. They seem committed to political obligations rather than social obligations and they do not seem inclined to take advantage of their political rights or become involved in protest activities of any kind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citizenship as a compulsory subject was added to the National Curriculum in England in 2002 following the 1998 report, ‘Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools’. It was little noticed at the time that the report stressed active citizenship much more strongly than democracy. The underlying presupposition was what historians call ‘civic republicanism’, the tradition from the Greeks and the Romans of good government as political government, that is, citizens reaching acceptable compromises of group interests and values by public debate. This is contrasted to modern liberalism. To stress ‘democracy’ unduly in citizenship education can lead to definitional dogmatics about multiple meanings of the term, even to disillusionment. Democracy is a necessary element in good government but not a sufficient one, unless subjective opinion is enshrined over knowledge through education. The practices of free politics are both historically and logically prior to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]