Citizenship Curriculum

— abelard

background:

• The Curious Republic of Gondour by Mark Twain
• from Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein

CONTENTS

Objectives
Areas of study

Psychology
Philosophy
Economics
Politics and law

Detailed curriculum (under development)

Concepts
Values and dispositions: what is ‘good’?
Developing skills – how to achieve change?
General knowledge, discussion and understanding society as it is at present

Brain washing—otherwise known as bias
The nature of the institution
Education Otherwise
Teacher training

Reference material
End notes

Objectives

1. To encourage awareness of the central importance of citizenship training as an essential foundation for effective learning.
2. To forward the establishment of citizenship education as a central core subject in education, to be treated on a par with related communication skills such as math/english.
3. To lay a basic curriculum for effective education for citizenship.
   

Areas of study

Psychology: [5]
The idea of the other. Who and what am I? See Laying the foundations for sound education - abelard.
Health and mental health.
Working and living with others, social arrangements.

Philosophy:
Communicating and learning to think clearly. Key guide document at Why Aristotelian logic does not work.
A more general, and easier, guide to some of the appropriate documents on logic can be found at Categories, analogy and reification

Economics:
Money as a store of value. See The mechanics of inflation.
Money as a medium of communication and exchange.
Money as an accounting unit.
Money for consumption. Money for power.

Politics and Law:
Laws are rules made by majorities to exploit minorities – discuss. See also The logic of ethics.

Detailed curriculum (currently under development

Theory	Practice	Background	Discussion

Concepts

Democracy and autocracy.

Values and dispositions: what is ‘good’?

Human rights.
Non-intrusion, leaving others alone.

Concern for the environment. Why bother?

Judging and acting by a moral code. What is a moral/ethical code?

Courage to defend a point of view. What is courage?

Dangers of crowd psychology.

Meaning of human dignity. Acting well out of self-respect.

Study to be carried out in context of power, ownership and freedom

Developing skills – how to achieve change?

63

General knowledge, discussion and
understanding society as it is at present

Brain washing—otherwise known as bias

The following is verbatim from Reference 1:

“Summary of the Statutory Requirements

“The Education Act 1996 aims to ensure that children are not presented by their teachers with only one side of political or controversial issues. Section 406 of the Act requires school governing bodies, head teachers and local education authorities to forbid the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in schools; and to forbid the pursuit of partisan political activities by pupils under age 12 while in school. Section 407 requires them to take all reasonably practical steps to ensure that, where political or controversial issues are brought to pupils’ attention, they are offered a balanced presentation or opposing views. (See also Power, ownership and freedom.)

“If anyone has reason to believe that a school is not complying with these requirements, they may make a formal complaint to the governing body under statutory local arrangements for considering complaints about curricular matters. If dissatisfied with the governors' response they may refer the complaint to the local education authority, in the case of an LEA-maintained school, and, ultimately, to the Secretary of State (in the case of either an LEA-maintained or grant-maintained school).”

This is followed by the next note:

“10.8 Such fears, while common, are largely unfounded and greatly underestimate both the professionalism and the prudence of teachers. In the early 1980s, when some attention was being given in schools to particularly sensitive issues such as Peace Studies, advisers and inspectors were required to be alert to the possibility of teachers abusing their position to persuade pupils to their point of view, and to investigate complaints. Verified examples were extremely rare and a senior staff inspector of HMI was able to reassure the then Secretary of State for Education that there was no evidence to substantiate such fears.”

Later, Reference 1 goes on to suggest three approaches to teaching:

“(a) The ‘Neutral Chairman’ This requires the teacher not to express any personal views or allegiances whatsoever, but to act only as the facilitator of a discussion, ensuring that a wide variety of evidence is considered and that opinions of all kinds are expressed.”

I thoroughly disapprove of such a stance. I regard it as an abnegation of responsibility. A teacher’s job is to widen the world of the young, not seek merely to keep out of trouble. Teachers have a duty to bring knowledge to the young, not to just stand idly by, while the young discuss their own limited world and prejudices.

“(b) The ‘Balanced’ approach by which, as teachers ensure that all aspects of an issue are covered, they are expected to express their own opinions on a number of alternative views to encourage pupils to form their own judgements. This requires teachers to ensure that views with which they themselves may disagree, or with which the class as a whole may disagree, are also presented as persuasively as possible – in other words, to act on occasion if necessary, as ‘Devil’s Advocate’.”

While I regard this as a considerable improvement, I object to the pretence and dishonesty involved in the ‘devil’s advocate’ stance. I also object to ‘persuasively as possible’. A teacher owes absolute honesty to others: the ‘devil’s advocate’ stance confuses that necessity. Further, a teacher’s duty is to teach people how to recognise and allow for advocacy, not to implicitly teach a promotion of rhetoric and other dishonesty.

Unfortunately in this primitive culture, teachers are not able to be entirely truthful towards others, for they are quickly likely to find vested interests exploiting honesty as a weakness. For adequate professional standards in teaching it will be needful to introduce a Hippocratic-type oath and special privileges of the type presently accorded to law courts and parliament.

When education was in the hands of the Church, teachers were subject to clerical law, separate from the state. Such a system should be reconsidered.

“(c) The ‘Stated Commitment’ approach in which teachers openly express their own views from the outset, as a means of encouraging discussion, during which pupils are encouraged to express their own agreement or disagreement with the teacher’s views.”

This approach is a necessity to good teaching, for all people including teachers have their own interests and views. The educational system should offset problems of bias by opening education to a wide variety of advocates with varying views, all the while encouraging ‘pupils’ to discuss and analyse different options and approaches to life. Trust the young to learn. Do not wrap them in cotton wool.

Reference 1 then goes on in the following manner, in an attempt to avoid as much responsibility as possible, by sitting firmly on the fence. Such is our ‘culture’.

“10.13 It seems to us that if used in isolation, rigidly or alone, each of these approaches contains significant shortcomings. A teacher using only the ‘Neutral Chairman’ approach is likely to find pupils are unconvinced by her or his ‘neutral’ stance, perhaps because of what they know and observe about the teacher during the rest of school life. There is also some evidence from the evaluation of the HCP pilot materials on race, that this approach may lead pupils to hear only what they wish to hear, thereby reinforcing their prejudices. The ‘Balanced’ approach runs the obvious risk that as a teacher strives to ensure every point of view is given equal attention in the classroom.[6] The pupils themselves, already subject to a barrage of partisan opinions from the mass media, may not be adequately equipped with ideas and information which counteract those that they get from the media. And the ‘Stated Commitment’ approach alone carries with it, from the start, the grave risk that teachers who use it may well be accused of bias and attempting to indoctrinate those whom they are teaching.”[7]

Teacher training

1. Adequate teacher training will take five to ten years. For the first five years, it is unlikely that any but the most talented, or the most experienced, are capable of managing the education of others without supervision and help. During this time, they should be regarded as classroom assistants, under a form of apprenticeship and guidance. It is my view that it will usually take ten years for an intelligent and capable teacher to be in a strong position to supervise new assistant teachers. See also theory and reality.
2. The level of teacher training is currently inadequate to the purpose of teaching able and professional lead teachers
3. A central part of the problem is a poorly taught or non-existent fundamental philosophical basis for the educational process. I am dealing with these technical issues in other writing, primarily via active participation in appropriate news groups uk.politics.misc, uk.education.misc and alt.politics.british, and via other documents on this web-site. I am working through this new technology, as it is by far the best means of reaching a wider audience without the self-congratulatory and inward looking self-censoring ‘educational’ establishment.
4. For all the problems, education is slowly improving. There is growing efficiency in teaching methods, however a great deal remains to be done. Idiotic and ill informed whining about how much better education was in days of yore should be entirely ignored. Our schools of fifty years ago were sinks of bullying, incompetence and oppression on a criminal scale.
5. Effective heads should be given charge over the educational colleges and given supervision over groups of schools, while the least able should be demoted or sacked.
6. Every act to protect a lame dog teacher, rather than educate or remove them, is to leave pupils with an oppressive, boring and ineffectual learning environment.

The nature of the institution

Integrating the school with the community instead of accepting school as a dumping ground for children. Refusal to accept a forbidding and insular response from schools.

Intrinsic nature of being in a social situation, for instance like a school.

Compartmentalisation.

Education Otherwise

No, you are not forced to send ‘your’ young to school.

The ‘law’ states that:

“Every child must be educated in accord with its age, aptitude and ability in school or otherwise.” 
(Education Act 1944.)

For those who are interested, Joy Baker categorically established this right in the early 60s. She bravely fought the attacks on civil liberty by a previous generation of politicians, to the extent of going to prison. To read about her fight and her experiences, read Children in Chancery.[4]

See the web page of Education Otherwise, a self-help group for home education.
Also see who owns the child: hampshire jobsworths seem to believe they do

End notes

Education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools
Available free from the Qualifications And Curriculum Authority (QCA), 29 Bolton St. London, W1Y 7PD, Tel: 01787 884444 for a free copy. THis is now available on the net at http://www.qca.org.uk/downloads/crick_report_1998.pdf, with added slush in the form of appendices.

This is a very useful summary introduction from which I have cribbed at will and then hacked, improved and expanded while building this document.

Any person interested in education should obtain their free copy of this document.

The terms of reference for this publication follow:

[Note very carefully the highlighted sections.]

 On 19 November 1997, following proposals in the education White Paper; Excellence in Schools, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment pledged ‘to strengthen education for citizenship and the teaching of democracy in schools’, and to that end set up this Advisory Group with the following terms of reference:

“To provide advice on effective education for citizenship in schools - to include the nature and practises of participation in democracy; the duties, responsibilities and rights of individuals as citizens; and the value to individuals and society of community activity.”

The framework document setting out the Group’s terms of reference explained that it would cover:

“The teaching of civics, participative democracy and citizenship, and may be taken to include some understanding of democratic practices and institutions, including parties, pressure groups and voluntary bodies, and the relationship of formal political activity with civic society in the context of the UK, Europe and the wider world […] and […] an element of the way in which expenditure and taxation work, together with a grasp of the underlying economic realities of adult life [...].”

The framework document also made clear that the Secretary of State expected the main outcomes of the Group's work to be:

“a broad framework for what good citizenship education in schools might look like, and how it can be successfully delivered - covering opportunities for teaching about citizenship within and outside the formal curriculum and the development of personal and social skills through projects linking schools and the community, volunteering and the involvement of pupils in the development of school rules and policies.” 

From the preface I quote the following:

1.1 We unanimously advise the Secretary of State that citizenship and the teaching of democracy, construed in a broad sense that we will define, is so important both for schools and the life of the nation that there must be a statutory requirement on schools to ensure that it is part of the entitlement of all pupils. It can no longer sensibly be left as uncoordinated local initiatives which vary greatly in number content and method. This is an inadequate basis for animating the idea of a common citizenship with democratic values.

1.5 We aim at no less than a change in the political culture of this country both nationally and locally: for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and with the critical capacities to weigh evidence before speaking and acting; to build on and to extend radically to young people the best in existing traditions of community involvement and public service, and to make them individually confident in finding new forms of involvement and action among themselves There are worrying levels of apathy, ignorance and cynicism about public life. These, unless tackled at every level, could well diminish the hoped-for benefits both of constitutional reform and of the changing nature of the welfare state. To quote from a speech by the Lord Chancellor earlier this year (on which we end this report): 'We should not, must not, dare not, be complacent about the health and future of British democracy. Unless we become a nation of engaged citizens, our democracy is not secure.'

1.6 Citizenship education is an unfulfilled expectation in a national agenda established by the previous Government in Clause 2 of the first paragraph of the 1988 Education Reform Act. That required a 'balanced and broadly based curriculum' which 'promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils' and also 'prepares such pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life'. Citizenship education in a parliamentary democracy is also part of preparation for adult life, just as the activity of acting as a citizen, not just as a subject, is part of adult life. Following the 1997 White Paper; Excellence in Schools, we were set the task of advising how to fulfil this expectation.

1.7 Citizenship education must be education for citizenship. It is not an end in itself, even if it will involve learning a body of knowledge, as well as the development of skills and values. Such knowledge is as interesting, as intellectually demanding and as capable as any other subject of being taught and assessed at any level. The study of politics and civil life, concerned with both institutions and ideas, began with Aristotle, has continued ever since, and flourishes today in our universities.

      A green history of the world by C. Ponting
[the GoldenYak rating would be substantially higher, but for the criticisms noted in review at abelard.org.]

$11.20 (amazon.com)
Reprint edition (April 1993), Penguin USA , 0140176608 pbk

£10.13 (amazon.co.uk)
Reprint edition (April 1993), Penguin, 0140176608 pbk

For subsidiary discussion on the replacement of fossil fuels; where there are also further links.

There is a growing bank of resources regarding the environment in the abelard.org news zone, see in particular ecology, oil, science, (associated archives index).

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 1999, draft release 4.1


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