Why it is critical that we are critical:

contesting 'commonsense' about citizenship and civic education

Helen Haste

October 24, 2008

• Not only HOW…

• WHY?

• WHETHER?

“Young people are not voting…”

Why this is a ‘moral’ panic:

• Nature of democracy

• Questions about equipping people for effective adulthood

Broadly, our agenda is that young people should voluntarily buy into a system of democracy and so ensure their active participation.

Within this, ‘critical awareness’ is designed to make young people take responsibility for what they have chosen to believe

Rarely do we educate for ‘resistance’

Four general models

• Strengthening national identity and common values (eg in defence against a stated or covert ‘threat’)

• Strengthening social capital and commitment to individual responsibility through community cohesion

• Ensuring freedom and the rights of individuals and groups

• Knowing how to access and use the conduits of power.

• In what version(s) of these are we as educators complicit?

• What is being ignored, denied or sidelined as these goals are pursued?

• What is, in fact, achievable in/through education?

Challenges to assumptions

• What do we learn from ‘new’ democracies• Single issue politics and the breakdown of the

Left-Right spectrum• Challenges to liberalism, especially from

communitarianism• The emergence of new technologies and the

transformation of democratic processes

Rethinking the nature of ‘participation’

Patterns of engagement

Conventional participation (voting, working for party, contacting member of Parliament,

signing petitions)

Making one’s voice heard (protest, boycotts)

Helping in the community

Action factorsDerived from items relating to likely future actions and the attributes of the’good citizen’

• Active monitoring

• Conventional participation

• Making one’s voice heard

• Joining organisations

• Helping the community and environment

% Not very important

63

25

31

31

21

24

27

48

38

37

38

31

12

16

19

23

26

5

6

8

8

9

8

6

8

9

32

4

3

How important is each of the following in being a good citizen? (1)

Participating in activities to benefit people in the community

Taking part in activities toprotect the environment

% Not at allimportant

% Don’t know

% Veryimportant

% Fairlyimportant

Voting in elections

Taking part in activities promoting human rights

Talking with your family andfriends about political and social issues in the news

90

73

69

67

60

56

Source: Nestlé Social Research Programme / MORIBase: All young people aged 11–21 (897), March – May 2005

Obeying the law

15

17

16

6

40

31

29

15

32

34

49

6

12

20

10

10

6

9

27

9Participating in a peaceful protest against a law you believe unjust

Knowing about the country’s history

Following political issues in the newspaper or radio and television

Joining a political party

How important is each of the following in being a good citizen? (2)

% Not very important

% Not at allimportant

% Don’t know

% Veryimportant

% Fairlyimportant

48

46

55

21

Source: Nestlé Social Research Programme / MORIBase: All young people aged 11–21 (897), March – May 2005

IEA study; what teachers thought pupils should be taught:

Protecting the environment: over 90% in 25 countriesPromoting human rights: over 90% in 23 countriesParticipating in peaceful protest: > 60% overall, > 80% in 11 countriesBe aware of the importance of ignoring a law that violates human rights? >55% in 26 countries, > 85% in 8 countriesBelonging to a political party: less than 20% in 26 countries (exceptions were Cyprus and Romania)

Rethinking how we think about values, beliefs and motivation

behind civic engagement

Thinking of values not as fixed ‘ideologies’ but as the tools for actively making sense of one’s experience and environment

Knowledge

Praxis

Affect

Technology and change; revolutionising democracy?

Engaged v. disengaged youth?

Media v. civic engagement?

How change happens

More of the same

Quantity into quality

The knight’s move

• Democratisation of communication and end of the ‘top-down’ model of controlled conduits

• Access to information and to communities

• Growth of virtual communities

• Empowerment through both the active generation of information, and its communication

BUT…….

What we should NOT be doing…

• Trying to use the new tools (or toys) for what we were trying to do before

• Assuming that technology is an elixir for democracy or youth participation

• Thinking that a technology ‘gap’ is either about hardware or skills

• We should question our assumptions about our current practices and goals, both with regard to the objectives of civic education and the means by which we think we can achieve these

• We should never assume ‘more of the same’, but consider how developments (political, technological, methodological) may transform not only HOW we do something, but WHY we do it.