Section 1: What is 'citizenship' and why is 'education for citizenship' important?
1.1 Meanings of 'citizenship'
The Advisory Council of Learning and Teaching Scotland subscribes to the view that everyone should be recognised as being a citizen, in a variety of senses, from birth. Young people should be regarded as citizens of today rather than citizens in waiting. Children are born with rights that are well described in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As young people grow into adulthood, new rights and responsibilities are acquired.
Everyone belongs to various types of community, both communities of place, from local to global, and communities of interest, rooted in a common concern or purpose. Citizenship involves enjoying rights and exercising responsibilities in these various types of community. This way of seeing citizenship encompasses the specific idea of political participation by members of a democratic state. It also includes the more general notion that citizenship embraces a range of participatory activities, not all overtly political, that affect the welfare of communities. Examples are, voluntary work, personal engagement in local concerns such as neighbourhood watch schemes or parent-teacher associations, or general engagement in civic society.
Citizenship is about making informed choices and decisions, and about taking action, individually and as part of collective processes. Being a citizen is, therefore, closely bound up with the multiple roles that individuals have in society - as producers or consumers of goods and services, as contributors to economic and cultural development - as well as with various facets of each individual's personal, social and working life. For example, the opportunity to exercise personal choice as a consumer of particular products or services is an increasingly influential strand of citizenship in contemporary society.
The rights and responsibilities of citizens are reciprocal in many respects. If we all have a right to be treated with respect, then it follows that we have a clear obligation to treat all others with respect. If we all have a right to a say on matters that affect our lives, then we have a responsibility to attend to the views of others on matters that also affect them. However, it is also clear that perceptions of rights and responsibilities by individuals in different social groups are sometimes in conflict. In contemporary society the perceived rights of rural dwellers and town dwellers, new and established members of the community, food producers and food consumers, convicted law-breakers and their victims are amongst those that sometimes are in conflict. Education for citizenship must recognise the existence of such conflicts, and must help young people develop strategies for dealing effectively with controversy. These strategies include negotiation, compromise, awareness of the impact of conflict on the overall wellbeing of the community and the environment, and development of well-informed respect for differences between people. At the same time young people need to learn that although individuals should always be treated with respect, some of the views some people may hold, including those associated with racism and sectarianism, are a grave threat to the wellbeing of individuals and communities and must be opposed.
Active and responsible citizenship is not just about individuals having a sense of belonging to, and functioning in, communities. It is also an aspect of corporate or institutional life. Just as a key facet of each individual's citizenship should be a caring and responsible use of material and financial resources, business organisations also have a responsibility, as 'corporate citizens', to achieve their economic goals in ways that are consistent with sustainable development and with the health and welfare of communities.
1.2 The value of 'education for citizenship'
Education for citizenship is important because every society needs people to contribute effectively, in a variety of ways, to the future health and wellbeing of communities and the environment, locally, nationally and globally. Fostering active and responsible citizens contributes to the process of developing a healthy and vibrant culture of democratic participation. Moreover, as the Report of the Discipline Task Group, 2001, suggests, 'people are more likely to understand the reasons for policies and procedures, and therefore genuinely subscribe to them, when they have been actively involved in determining them.'
Whilst all individuals share the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, regardless of status, knowledge or skill, it is clear that citizenship may be exercised with different degrees of effectiveness. A variety of personal and social circumstances can impede a person's capacity for active citizenship. For example, homeless young people may not secure the right to vote simply because they have no address. More generally, many young people living in poverty and experiencing other forms of disadvantage feel alienated. They see little point in participating in a system that seems remote from their concerns. It is in the interest both of individuals and of society as a whole that the rights and responsibilities of citizenship are well understood, that young people develop the capability needed to function effectively as citizens in modern society, and that structures are provided to enable them to do so.
The opportunities for learning that are provided in schools and early education settings make important contributions to the process of educating for active and responsible citizenship. At the same time, the contributions of formal education need to be seen alongside, and in interaction with, other influences. These include the influence of parents, carers and the media and opportunities for community-based learning. Also, school and early education establishments need to take account of the diversity of the local communities in which young people live.
Broadly speaking, the citizenship that formal education should seek to promote and foster needs to be thoughtful and responsible - rooted in and expressive of, a respectful and caring disposition in relation to people, human society generally, the natural world and the environment. It should also be active, in the sense of people being able to act and participate in various communities, wherever it seems to them desirable or appropriate to do so.
There are important implications for schools and early education centres of this view of citizenship. Approaches to all aspects of education for citizenship in the classroom, or the wider life of the school or community should be informed by the awareness that citizenship is best learnt through experience and interaction with others. In short, learning about citizenship is best achieved by being an active citizen.
Another implication is that young people and their parents or carers should be routinely involved in school development planning and other areas of school decision making. Also, because citizenship is a lifelong process, young people's learning experiences should encourage them to be disposed to be active and responsible citizens both now and later in their lives.