Not all teachers, however, felt that the key aim of citizenship education was to tackle social problems. Some teachers believed teaching young people about their rights and responsibilities was a more valuable facet of citizenship education than instilling values for the sake of social cohesion. Some teachers were conscious, however, that there may have been some slippage in the curriculum’s aims over time. This teacher demonstrated his understanding of the policy context and recognised that the model of citizenship education that he was familiar with may not exactly match the original policy aims:
I personally think they equated citizenship education with civic responsibility as a kind of main driver ... every citizen to do their duty, no rights without responsibilities, volunteering in the community being a big element of it erm I think it set out, originally, didn’t it, under Bernard Crick as something slightly different, perhaps with that kind of political democracy at the heart of it... That kind of political angle I think probably got lost a bit along the way ... Teacher, Northern Academy
He saw the idea of the empowerment of young people as overshadowed by curriculum content concerned with a Thatcherite version of civic responsibility, which revolved around volunteering. This was felt to represent a loss of a political
“heart”. This shift in focus was thought by some teachers to miss opportunities to recognise young people’s strengths, as evident in this respondent’s analysis:
... pupils have these skills, pupils are politically aware, they might not be able to tell you what the wool sack is or who the cabinet minister is for this ministry but they’re very, very astute and they know how to organise and how to plan things. The
difference is they’ve chosen not to acknowledge that, they’ve decided that they don’t want to change the system ... Teacher, North West School
This teacher is obviously frustrated by what he perceives as a clash between his support for encouraging young people’s political participation and the “system” that precludes their involvement as agents of social change. In his opinion, unless young people are allowed to participate in ways that are meaningful for them, rather than following established channels of engagement, they will not feel that their involvement is desired or valued and so cannot be truly empowered. Key to this was a sense that the nature of academic disciplines did not encourage young people to use skills across different subjects (let alone between school and home), which the teacher quoted above exemplified in complaining that pupils seeking advice on personal finance had “left” their mathematical skills “in the maths room”.
The importance of engaging with established norms of participation was expressed across the sample, however, and failure to participate in public life was also seen as the result of a cycle of ignorance whereby some parents “struggle” to convey
“how to take a part in society” (teacher, North West School), and the resulting lack of participation precluding an appreciation of how democratic channels can be used to bring about change. It was suggested that this phenomenon was linked to young people’s social backgrounds and that where parents lack a certain capital in their own knowledge, their children may be condemned to disenfranchisement unless they are formally educated in the ways of democratic citizenship. Making citizenship a compulsory school subject was seen as a way of sending a message that the government was serious about changing attitudes, as one teacher described, so that it was not assumed to happen “by osmosis but it was actually a taught lesson, [a] really, really, really, really important lesson that people should be active members of the community that they belong to” (teacher, Northern Academy).
It was therefore seen as important to formalise the teaching of citizenship, and that lessons should not be about formal participation but should rather emphasise myriad ways of being an active citizen. The distinct benefit of citizenship, therefore, would be its use of its place on the National Curriculum to inspire young people to think about the importance of skills outside of the norms of academic disciplines, which might serve to ‘round off’ their education. Citizenship was seen as lacking the status enjoyed by other subjects and this was often attributed to a lack of understanding of how citizenship issues could be learned about within the parameters of a school subject. As one teacher elucidated, parents “think it’s about
being a good person and they don’t understand why their kids need to study citizenship” (teacher, Northern Academy). Teachers therefore felt the need to explain how citizenship could be ‘studied’ or ‘taught about’, to dispel ideas of children being trained to be “a good person”, which would lack the legitimacy of the format of other National Curriculum subjects. For teachers, citizenship straddled a divide between teaching young people about society’s expectations of them and encouraging their democratic participation. Both these goals were seen as served by fostering an appreciation of balanced discussion that would exemplify the behaviour of rounded citizens.
Some teachers at Northern Academy saw their pupils as being held back by a lack of confidence that would help them to express themselves so a priority for their teaching was “boosting” “real world” skills that would allow them to assert their opinions. This was seen, in a context of one of the most deprived areas in Europe, as “particularly important for our guys” (teacher, Northern Academy). This focus on building confidence shows how fundamental skills may need to be established before citizenship skills like critical thinking can be developed and suggests that schools whose pupils are not perceived as having this need may have a head start by virtue of not having to work on building up to this base level. As this teacher from Midlands Community attested:
I do think that I’m very lucky in that I’ve got a lot of young people who have what I would consider to be the answers of good citizenship already. Now why is that? ...
well, we come from a very privileged area of the city ... overwhelmingly our pupils come from economically benefitted backgrounds and therefore their parents are interested. We have a lot of parental involvement at the school. Huge turnout at parents’ evening, which shows you that they care about their children and what they’re being taught and what kind of results, and there’s a lot of ambition ... and ...
those golden tickets of how to succeed in our society: keeping yourself out of the negative views of the police, to be non-anti-social, I think they’re supported by their parents. Teacher, Midlands Community
These “golden tickets” would appear to be what the teacher from Northern Academy believed his pupils were missing and this teacher sees them as associated with a positive form of ambition and, crucially, with parental knowledge of “how to succeed”. Their inherited credentials therefore negate the need to empower them to participate, as they can simply channel the “answers of good citizenship” taught to them by their parents. This implies that the outcome of the
production of a good citizen was more of a priority than fulfilling a broad entitlement to the process of education for citizenship that would champion pupils’ active participation for its own sake. At Northern Academy, teachers felt that pupils’ input into lessons was key their development of rounded characters, as pupils:
... feel disenfranchised, that they don’t get listened to or they don’t have a voice, that the political parties have nothing to say for them, so we try and make them active citizens so we put a much greater emphasis on the moral and social elements of citizenship: if you are a good citizen, what kind of things do you do – it’s about, yes, you’ve got rights but equally you’ve got responsibilities ... I would certainly say that in the school as a whole develop the whole citizen, rather than just the political citizen. Teacher, Northern Academy
For this teacher, it is the process of citizenship lessons that offers the greatest learning opportunities for young people, especially the “disenfranchised” pupils of Northern Academy. The idea of a learning process that encourages a rounded character, rather than a focus on specific outcomes, was repeatedly expressed when teachers considered elements of their pedagogy through which they could foster young people’s potential to become agents of social change, amongst other goals. When considering their pedagogy, teachers reported that they were guided by the needs of their pupils and the opportunities and challenges of working within the framework of the National Curriculum, which another Northern Academy teacher described as pressuring teachers to “get results”, which amounted to:
... training pupils ... You can ask them a question at times and you can see them try to guess what’s in your head, and it takes an awful long time to say to them there is no right answer, the answer that’s valid is the one that’s inside your mind...
Teacher, Northern Academy
This teacher therefore felt constrained by his pupils’ expectations of their learning, which impeded their grasp of citizenship concepts, in particular the perception that another Northern Academy teacher expressed as “Sir’s giving us the right answer”.
He was frustrated by this conception because he felt it obstructed his goal of providing a forum for young people’s views and critical abilities. Across schools, there was a consensus among teachers that their teaching aimed to develop rounded citizens, which required pupils to take an active role in their learning rather than passively absorb knowledge about citizenship. This was further complicated by a desire to promote citizenship education as a legitimate National Curriculum
subject that could be studied. As their accounts show, differences in how their pupils’ backgrounds were perceived represented different challenges to the aim of enabling active participation but contributing to balanced discussion was considered a vital element of citizenship learning that would encourage a citizenly outlook.