Láser escáner terrestre (Palenzuela et al. 2011)

The latter part of the twentieth century saw previously authoritarian states in Europe and Asia adopt democratic values along with capitalist economic policies and this political repositioning demanded a realignment of the expectations citizen and state had of one another (Frazer 1999), providing fertile ground for the growth of citizenship education. Other nations have a long established citizen culture.

France’s republican tradition has utilised citizenship education in a process of assimilating young people into citizenship and the French way of life and the USA has a longstanding commitment to civic education through the totems of the constitution and swearing allegiance to the flag.

Aside from democratic forms of citizenship, it is worth noting that civic education has been used as a tool for the promotion of alternative ideologies. For example, education was a key tool in achieving the communist ideal in the USSR, with Lenin himself personally involved in educational reform as a means of supporting political aims. Counts (1975) points out that in the era of the Cold War, even textbooks for use by primary school teachers did not mince their words, as: ‘the pupils of the Soviet school must realise that the feeling of Soviet patriotism is saturated with irreconcilable hatred towards the enemies of socialist society’ (Counts 1975:55).

Indeed, to Marxists, apolitical education would be a contradiction in terms and civic education was referred to as the ‘third front’ of the revolution. In Nazi Germany, considerable pressure to join the Nazi Party was strategically exerted on members of the teaching profession, with curricula overhauled and textbook publishers controlled to ensure the reflection of Party values. Subjects such as history and biology were rewritten to emphasise the role of race as an explanatory factor and

provide justification for the superiority of the self and hatred of the threatening Other. It has also been argued that ideological ‘teachings’ associated with the Hitler Youth movement amounted to an extreme form of citizenship education (Haynes 2009).

In the case of the USA, since the Founding Fathers, the idea of raising children to have a strong sense of republican civic morality has permeated American social and political culture. Such virtues were perceived to be threatened by the huge social change witnessed in the nineteenth century, when industrialisation, immigration and democratisation transformed citizenship in the United States, with the ensuing urbanisation of the population blamed for eroding the sense of community built up around rural settlements. This shifting landscape brought with it new priorities for education and unsettled preconceived notions of civil, political and social participation. It was during the era of Progressivism preceding the First World War that the concept of civic virtue was revived, with education a central concern.

From the nineteenth century right through the twentieth, the themes of liberty and national destiny featured heavily in what became the civics curriculum, a subject that included both teaching from specialist textbooks and the use of patriotic ceremonies. The Pledge of Allegiance to the American national flag taken up by schools at the turn of the century was altered to include reference to god and make explicit allegiance to ‘the United States of America’ during the Cold War: an example of citizenship practice responding to its political context (Heater 2004b).

Steady progress was made in what was termed the social studies curriculum in the first half of the twentieth century, heavily influenced by some of the ideas of Dewey, who believed that it was the teacher’s task to identify pupils’ strengths and turn them to use for ‘what they are capable of in the way of social service’ (Dewey 1929). In one of Dewey’s lines of thought that is reminiscent of Mill, Dewey sought to develop children’s faculties to the end that they would grow into adults capable of engaging in democratic society and performing their civic duties. It was this element of ‘character’ in Dewey’s thought, rather than his ideas of reconstruction, which found resonance in a society mindful of the ramifications of revolutionising education. The social studies agenda did not seek to create a generation of radical thinkers, merely citizens equipped to competently fulfil their role (Jorgensen 2012).

In the late 1950s, however, focus shifted to scientific endeavours and the resulting neglect of social studies was evinced by surveys in the early 1970s that found political literacy among schoolchildren to be alarmingly low (Lister 1994). What

remained of the civics agenda was observed to be inconsistently taught and poorly supported. This decline in citizenship education coincided with the beginning of the

‘bowling alone’ phenomenon explored by Putnam (2000), with America’s vast economic expansion and increasing consumer culture widely regarded as responsible for the ‘breakdown of community’ and rise in pernicious ‘selfishness’.

Putnam’s conception of social capital moves beyond Bourdieu’s (1986) use to suggest positive promotion of social capital to combat this ‘breakdown’. In Putnam’s view, it is a locality’s effective accumulation of social capital that brings the gains of an efficient economy and the achievement of citizen participation. In effect, an increase in social capital would address the various social problems that had caused social decline and manifested in citizens’ retreat from public life (Siisiainen 2000). In this sense, Putnam’s is a functionalist argument for encouraging participation, but the nostalgic undertones of Bowling Alone nevertheless touched a nerve about the personal effects of a loss of ‘community spirit’.

This led to much soul-searching and the launch of a national campaign to promote consistency in the teaching of civic education so as to cultivate and inform enquiring minds that would be stimulated by community action. Despite this, the progress of active citizenship education has been stifled by a pervading tendency towards uncritical patriotism and purely economic approaches to citizenship. This has been seen as a legacy of the ‘civics’ approach, which Johnson and Morris (2010:15) differentiate from citizenship by its focus on ‘the provision of information about formal public institutions’. Citizenship education in the US has experienced unparalleled support from politicians and practitioners but this is perhaps the reason it has been so vulnerable to political and social change (Faulks 2006).

French citizenship education has traditionally been largely concerned with cultivating patriotism, with the imparting of information about institutions and nationalistic interpretations of history therefore prioritised over critical thought. Pre-Second World War French textbooks have even been said to have circumvented any mention of alternative political structures or lines of thought, denying the reader the tools to make a comparison or criticism of the French status quo (Faulks 2006).

The convention of regarding schools as didactic, strongly hierarchical institutions pervaded into the 1970s, with little softening of the formal relationship between teachers and pupils despite progressive calls for increased democratisation. There was strong opposition to the teaching of civic responsibility as historically this has been seen as the preserve of family life (Brubaker 1992).

Political opinion has therefore often served to stifle the promotion of civic engagement despite the French legacy of republican citizenship. French Republican values of equality, democracy, rights and duties continue to be taught, however, and in 1998 efforts were made to 'improve living together and good citizenship at school' (NFER 2002). This new initiative has been linked to concerns about xenophobia and the challenges of multiculturalism debated on both sides of the Channel. This new focus included a new charter for every school, which defined the rights and responsibilities of all members of the school community and was to be signed by teachers, pupils and parents. By the time French young people reach the end of their compulsory education, they will have experienced discretely delivered civic, legal and social education, reflecting the importance the government places on its citizens having a knowledge of the law and the legal system.

Syllabuses are also designed to enable students to draw on their learning to debate social issues of the day according to the themes of ‘citizenship and civility/incivility’,

‘citizenship and integration/exclusion’, which comprises issues of nationality,

‘citizenship, the law and relationships at work’ and ‘citizenship and changes to family life’, before considering practical applications of citizenship and in a

‘changing world’ in their final years of secondary school (NFER 2002).

Although the French model of citizenship education was re-visited by policy makers at much the same time as the implementation of the English model discussed in the following chapter, to address many of the same concerns, the French tradition of liberté, egalité, fraternité would appear to lend a more nurturing environment to a cohesive strategy for citizenship education. The French model has always emphasised the democratic importance of community, local democracy and formal political organisations, and sought to renew its commitment to these principles in the face of declining participation that led some to fear a European experience of Bowling Alone. In contrasting the French approach to active citizenship with English practice, Osler and Starkey give the example of a learning resource that reflects

‘the French Republic’s central task of promoting justice’ through active participation:

The book’s cover shows young people involved in a demonstration, and there are a further nine photographs of demonstrations and strikes, all presented positively. Active citizenship is linked explicitly to demonstrations, political party membership, and participating in strike action. Striking is described as “one of the great social achievements of workers, it is recognised by the Constitution.” (Osler and Starkey 2009:343)

These historical examples illustrate the importance of understanding the context into which citizenship education is introduced in order to appreciate the aims of such a contested area of educational policy and the particular social problems for which it is a supposed remedy. As can be seen in the cases of France and the USA, the definition of democratic values, whether through three core principles inscribed on all public buildings or a two-hundred year-old constitution, can provide a useful blueprint for citizenship education. Once a tradition of educating citizens is established, emergent needs of society can then be responded to.

Perhaps the greatest potential threat to active citizenship is the pandemic of political disengagement, or apathy, that has been perceived to have taken hold across established European democracies, whose lacklustre election turnouts and sliding indicators of social and political engagement suggest declining levels of participation mirroring those recorded in the USA (Crouch 2004; Boyce 1993).

Although some research has suggested that measures of disengagement use a narrow definition of the political (Roker et al. 1999), young people’s alienation from formal participation is largely accepted as a problem in countries like the UK. This phenomenon has been described as ‘democratic deficit’, whereby the shrinking relevance of politics to the everyday lives of citizens in stable democracies – who perceive political and economic problems as either not having a direct impact on their way of life or not surmountable by their involvement in political process – leads citizens to take a minimal role in democracy and erodes civic culture. This democratic deficit has been accompanied by claims of a proliferation of xenophobic views, particularly among the young, and it has been suggested that cohort effects may have produced a younger generation predisposed to disaffection as a result of a combination of such factors (Sturman et al. 2012). While it is widely agreed that this is a problem that must be tackled in the interests of upholding democratic values and for the sake of offering young people the inherent benefits of being fully informed, and fully formed, citizens, it has also come to be acknowledged that there is a clear correlation between educational attainment and political engagement and association (NFER 2010), suggesting education for citizenship may serve to complement existing educational agendas.

The school itself has also been imprinted with the role of a microcosm of society, reflecting the desired pluralism and inclusive cohesion of the world outside by bringing together members of disparate groups to work together with the shared values of the institution. It may therefore seem intuitive that schools are the best place to learn about citizenship. An abundance of research suggests, however, that

political identity and participation is strongly affected by social and familial networks as well as mass media (Roker et al. 1999; Sturman et al. 2012). Notwithstanding the significance of influences outside formal education, concerns over citizens’

disengagement from public life has seen a renewed focus on education for democratic citizenship in many post-industrial societies including the UK (Ruitenberg 2007).