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EDITORIAL: CITIZENSHIP,DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATIONJames Arthur & Paul CrollVersion of record first published: 05 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: James Arthur & Paul Croll (2007): EDITORIAL: CITIZENSHIP,DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION, British Journal of Educational Studies, 55:3, 233-234

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00376.x

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British Journal of Educational Studies, ISSN

0007-1005

DOI

number: 10.1111/j.1467-8527.2007.00376.x

Vol.

55

, No.

3

, September

2007

, pp

233–234

233

© 2007 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2007 SES. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKBJESBritish Journal of Educational Studies0007-1005© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. and SES 2007XXX

EDITORIAL

EDITORIALEDITORIAL

EDITORIAL: CITIZENSHIP, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

by

James

Arthur

and

Paul

Croll

In this special issue of BJES we present six very valuable papersaround the theme of Citizenship and Democracy. We deliberatelydid not include ‘and Education’ in the title of the special issue inorder to give our contributors the widest possible scope. However, allof the papers have important implications for the study and practiceof education, both explicitly and implicitly. Most of the articles pub-lished here are based on papers given at the two conferences organ-ised by Citized on Citizenship and Education held at Oriel College,Oxford and the University of Sydney and partly sponsored by theSociety for Educational Studies, the sponsor of this journal. Citized(www.citized.info) was founded in 2002 and is a collaboration of aca-demics in higher education both nationally and internationally pro-moting citizenship education in many contexts. The support for thisinitiative from academics and government agencies is an indicationof the growing recognition of the importance of citizenship educa-tion and also of the challenges the issues discussed in this specialissue pose for education and more generally. We are particularlypleased that the contributors to this special issue include ProfessorSir Bernard Crick, who chaired the Advisory Group which led to theintroduction of citizenship into the National Curriculum.

The articles here reflect some of the tensions around the notionsof citizenship and democracy and which are inevitably reflected inattempts to educate for citizenship. One such tension is betweencitizenship education as a set of learning outcomes, relevant to thefuture, and citizenship as an ongoing process within educational institu-tions. This parallels the distinction in the sociology of childhoodbetween childhood as

being

or as

becoming

: a status in its own right oras a preparatory status for adulthood. Are we preparing children tobe citizens or do we want them to be enacting citizenship as a memberof a school (or other) community?

Of course, enacting citizenship is usually seen by its advocates asnot only intrinsically valuable but also as a good preparation forfuture citizenship. But this brings us to a second difficulty with regard

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EDITORIAL

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© 2007 The AuthorsJournal compilation © 2007 SES

to what sort of present or future citizens we want our young peopleto be. Crick’s paper makes the important distinction between a‘good citizen’ who obeys the law and so on and an ‘active citizen’who takes part in civic life and who is, inevitably, a political citizen.A number of other contributors refer to some versions of active citizen-ship, ranging from taking part in school councils to taking partin illegal protests. As is apparent in the papers by Kennedy and Print,young people typically have low levels of interest in conventionalpolitics. However, at least some young people are engaged in politicalactivity around very specific issues such as the environment. Suchactivism often involves unconventional forms of political activity andmay extend into the kinds of extremism which, as Ian Frowe shows,present such difficulty for educators and for the political processmore generally.

The difficulty is that as well as seeing citizenship as a process(voting, participating, protesting) we also see it as fundamentallyinvolving a commitment to a plural, liberal and tolerant society. Weare much happier for our children to be active environmentalists oranti-poverty campaigners than to be active religious fundamentalists(of whatever kind). Yet not only are the plural, democratic politicalprocesses failing to engage young people, they also, as ElizabethFrazer brilliantly argues, frequently appear to be part of the pro-blem, rather than as part of the solution. Her paper deals with thenegative associations that politics has for many people and the waythat this results in citizenship education becoming depoliticised.But, as she argues, it is vital that schools and teachers maintain asense of what can be achieved by the political process. Citizenshipeducation, as the Crick and Frazer papers make clear, is essentiallypolitical and a constructive and critical engagement with conven-tional as well as with outsider politics is an essential feature of thecitizens we are trying to create. Needless to say this is a very consid-erable challenge for teachers and especially for those concernedwith citizenship education. These people could be forgiven for think-ing that the behaviour of many political leaders could be deliberatelydesigned to make their job more difficult.

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