Editorial: Citizenship, Democracy and EducationAuthor(s): James Arthur and Paul CrollSource: British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Sep., 2007), pp. 233-234Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Society for Educational StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4620566 .

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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

EDITORIAL: CITIZENSHIP, DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

byJAMES ARTHUR and PAUL CROLL

In this special issue of BJES we present six very valuable papers around the theme of Citizenship and Democracy. We deliberately did not include 'and Education' in the title of the special issue in order to give our contributors the widest possible scope. However, all of the papers have important implications for the study and practice of 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 the

Society 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 this initiative from academics and government agencies is an indication of the growing recognition of the importance of citizenship educa- tion and also of the challenges the issues discussed in this special issue pose for education and more generally. We are particularly pleased that the contributors to this special issue include Professor Sir Bernard Crick, who chaired the Advisory Group which led to the introduction of citizenship into the National Curriculum.

The articles here reflect some of the tensions around the notions of citizenship and democracy and which are inevitably reflected in attempts to educate for citizenship. One such tension is between citizenship education as a set of learning outcomes, relevant to the future, and citizenship as an ongoing process within educational institu- tions. This parallels the distinction in the sociology of childhood between childhood as being or as becoming: a status in its own right or as a preparatory status for adulthood. Are we preparing children to be citizens or do we want them to be enacting citizenship as a member of a school (or other) community?

Of course, enacting citizenship is usually seen by its advocates as not only intrinsically valuable but also as a good preparation for future citizenship. But this brings us to a second difficulty with regard

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EDITORIAL

to what sort of present or future citizens we want our young people to 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 part in illegal protests. As is apparent in the papers by Kennedy and Print, young people typically have low levels of interest in conventional politics. However, at least some young people are engaged in political activity around very specific issues such as the environment. Such activism often involves unconventional forms of political activity and may extend into the kinds of extremism which, as Ian Frowe shows, present such difficulty for educators and for the political process more generally.

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

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