Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
Creating Model Citizens in
Broken Britain
Nicola Horsley BA MSc
0
Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
Creating Model Citizens in Broken Britain
Abstract
Citizenship is a concept which has been contested by theorists for centuries. In introducing
the subject to the National Curriculum in 2002, making the teaching of citizenship a statutory
requirement of secondary schools in England, the New Labour government chose to
endorse and advocate a particular conception of citizenship for young people to learn about
and practise. Drawing on research conducted in six case study schools across England, this
paper examines the extent to which experiences of teaching and learning reflect this
conception, and suggests that opportunities to introduce radical change have been missed
due, in part, to the inflexible nature of the National Curriculum.
Introduction
This paper begins with a review of competing conceptions of citizenship and the context in
which Tony Blair’s government sought to implement the teaching of citizenship in English
secondary schools. A discussion of findings of the author’s qualitative research in schools
then compares the aims of the policy with experiences of teaching and learning. The paper
offers a description of the model of citizenship education found to predominate in the case
study schools and concludes with an analysis of this model’s capacity to achieve the aims of
the citizenship curriculum and related policies.
Citizenship – a Contested Concept
Though the concept of citizenship has played a central role in social and political thinking
since at least the time of the Ancient Greek philosophers, debates about definitions and
meaning have abounded – to the point where citizenship could be said to fit the criteria of an
“essentially contested” concept (Connolly 1983). Certainly, the concept of citizenship is
characterised by the cluster of normative and descriptive facets that contribute to an
understanding of its meaning and, it could be argued, to conceptual disputes between those
of differing understandings. Connolly (1983) asserts that when a concept exhibits such
complexity, and when it continues to foment debate about its application while retaining its
status as a valued ideal, it may be considered “essentially contested”. As can be seen from
the discussion below, theorists of citizenship agree that citizenship is a worthwhile pursuit
but different interpretations of key sub-concepts (such as liberty/freedom, rights,
responsibilities, and civic duty) come into play, resulting in disagreement over the adoption
of these sub-concepts as criteria that may determine the valid application of the term
“citizenship”. Even when there is common ground on which criteria should apply, conceptual
disputes arise when theorists of different perspectives consider the extent of each
constituent’s role in defining the concept.
The most obvious example of this is the disagreement between thinkers in the liberal and
republican traditions over whether the rights or responsibilities of the citizen should be
privileged. Each of the considerations explored below, however, are marked by differences
in their treatment of the extent, content and depth of their ideal model of citizenship, and it is
around these axes that the main theoretical contestations revolve. For the purposes of
discussing citizenship education, it is the issue of content, in terms of whether the New
Labour government’s focus on “active” citizenship was corroborated by the discourse, with
which this paper is concerned. It will be shown that approaches vary in their support for more
active or passive models, often referred to as “thick” or “thin” citizenship.
“Thin” liberal accounts of citizenship position the citizen fundamentally as a legal member of
a defined political community who should be enabled to enjoy certain rights (particularly the
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University of Leeds
right to liberty). Over the centuries, liberal theorists have argued about the nature of these
rights – especially the nature and extent of liberty and the degree of support from the state
and other public institutions that may be required to give liberty real meaning.
Republican thinkers, on the other hand, offer a “thicker” definition of citizenship that locates
the citizen not just as the legal recipient of certain rights, but as an active, “engaged”
member of a defined polity who has an obligation to contribute to the common good. Here
the state, and the formal public sphere more generally, takes a more significant role than it
tends to be given by liberal thinkers. In consequence, notions of social justice, duty and
“civic virtue” become especially important in republican thinking. The notion of the
“reasonable” individual that characterises much of liberal theory has been employed to
demonstrate the character required for such co-operation, and republican theorists speak of
model citizens who transcend self-interest and act on virtue. Traditionally, this has brought
about an emphasis on the promotion of equality and universal rights to empower citizens to
realise their potential
Liberal Citizenship
Locke’s social contract approach (Locke 1946), later to be advanced by Rousseau (1968)
and Rawls (1973), viewed states as if they were products of formal or informal agreements
amongst numerous individuals, who then become their citizens. Locke believed that any
disadvantages produced by the state’s minimal role would be mitigated by individuals’
natural concern for others and early liberal theory was heavily influenced by Locke’s
superficial vision of the individual as ostensibly “reasonable”. Rousseau’s subject was the
“natural man”, who needed to be “denatured” in order to have the character instilled in him
that would allow him to make a contribution to society. Rousseau believed humans could be
trusted to choose not to be motivated by pure self interest once they were so enlightened. In
On Education (Rousseau 1979), he considers the relationship between the natural man and
society in terms of how a comprehensive education system could mould children into model
citizens. Envisioning a state free from the corruptions attendant of the Revolution, he argued
that education for citizenship was crucial for achieving an ideal state in which the general will
was served. His belief in the power of education to homogenise the interests of the individual
and the state led him to write one of the most sophisticated treatises on education of the
time, although critics contend that it could be read as an instruction manual for indoctrination
(Heater 2004).
Kant’s ideal of citizenship is based on a Realm of Ends, a collective of rational beings, in
which a state of harmony between the goals of every member has been achieved. The laws
of such a community, if observed, combine all the rational beings, as ends in themselves,
and their individual goals, into a reciprocal system of shared ends. The Realm of Ends,
therefore, not only defines acceptable behaviours that support the community’s values but
also those that are incompatible with them and so admonished. Drawing on Rousseau’s
concept of denaturalisation, Kant asserts that humans’ innate fear and ambition are forms of
self-interest that must be de-programmed from the human psyche through a process of
“moralisation”. It is an ethical ideal that cannot be achieved through coercion, as this would
conflict with the right of a member of the realm to freely agree their own ends.
Kant’s late work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, describes historical progress
as “the progressive organisation of citizens of the earth in and to the species as one system,
cosmopolitically combined” (Kant 1974); that is progress towards a realm of ends. However,
“the perfection to which humanity is destined and for which it also has a disposition” can only
be achieved through the engendering in individuals of morality, discipline, “cleverness” and
the acquisition of a trade. “Cleverness” is the skill which enables the individual “to turn civil
society to [his/her] purposes and to accommodate [him/herself] to it” (Kant 1960). The
realisation of this, according to Kant, is to be “educated as a citizen”. His focus on individual
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University of Leeds
rights and the capacity of citizens to bend others to their will has led to a perception of
Kantian ethics as individualistic but Kant’s primary aim was to resolve the conflict between
our desire to enjoy our natural freedom and our need to interact with others in society, and in
this sense, to promote active citizenship. Kant’s psychological analysis identified these
aspects of human nature as being played out on a grand scale in warfare and it is this
propensity that he wished to pacify through a cosmopolitan education that would cultivate
citizens with the character to co-operate amicably with their peers and achieve “perpetual
peace” (Knippenberg 1989).
John Stuart Mill was also concerned with developing people’s capacity to co-operate in
society. In fact, although famous for his treatment of liberty, Mill actually believed that
developmentalism was more important because liberty should be reserved for those judged
to have acquired the requisite faculties. Although he argued the moral case for giving
colonies their independence, he believed that imperial rule served to elevate people out of
barbarism to civilisation and only then were they capable of self-governance (Levin 2004).
Mill believed in democracy for the sake of developing people’s faculties and that only a
government built on participation could stimulate public concern that is in itself
enlightenment, and his Considerations on Representative Government presents a
convincing case that the development of these skills will be stunted if they are not to be put
into practice. He argues that this holds for the development of
both knowledge and morals (Mill 1910).
A general State
Mill believed parents’ moral obligation to cultivate their children’s
education is a mere
contrivance for
knowledge should be enforced by the state but it should be left to
moulding people to be
the parents to decide how to educate them. He was an advocate
exactly like one
of diversity of education as better for character building than a
another: and as the
narrow national curriculum.
Rawls’ principle aim was to achieve fair social co-operation, and
establishing a citizenry of free and equal individuals was really a
“companion idea” that he thought would aid the realisation of this
goal (Freeman 2007). This view was set out in A Theory of
Justice, in which he proposed that a well-ordered society was an
ideal of social co-operation, a “highly idealised concept” (Rawls
1971) to which Rawls presumed we aspire; his version of Kant’s
Realm of Ends.
mould in which it casts
them is that which
pleases the
predominant power in
the government … it
establishes a
despotism over the
mind, leading by
natural tendency to one
over the body (Mill 1910:
199).
As he furthers this idea in Political Liberalism however, Rawls asserts that reasonable
pluralism and reasonable disagreement about the fundamentals of justice are part of the
make up of a well-ordered society. This more sophisticated view of ideal society is a move
away from a Kantian vision of moral consensus. In preferring the democratic idea of
“overlapping consensus” (Rawls 1993), Rawls makes a notable departure from the
contractarian accounts of Locke, Kant and Rousseau, towards a more pluralistic model of
participation.
TH Marshall’s conception of social rights that served to mitigate the worst effects of
capitalism so that inequalities did not “cut too deep” greatly influenced twentieth century
thought on British Citizenship. In his considerations of increasing citizens’ share of power in
capitalist society he claimed that his main concern was the impact of citizenship on social
equality. He saw social rights as Britain’s area of need in the twentieth century, after the
development of civil rights from the eighteenth century and political rights through the
nineteenth century (Marshall 1992). Marshall believed that, once a society had embarked
upon the journey towards liberal democratic citizenship, it was charting a linear path of
progress for which milestones could be determined.
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University of Leeds
His approach was based on the universal enjoyment of
classic freedoms but he did not believe that this
necessitated the demolition of social stratification.
Rather, as set out in his essay Citizenship and Social
Class, he was in favour of installing an “educational
meritocracy”. Through this system he believed an ideal
(Marshall 1992: 102).
of “a structure of unequal status fairly apportioned to
unequal abilities” (1992: 109) would be rightly achieved
and those most suited to public life would naturally enter into it. Marshall recognised that he
was replacing one hierarchy with another but believed that, because his was based on merit,
it had “the stamp of legitimacy” (1992: 39). Critics argue, however, that with inequalities in
education come inequalities in job opportunities and ultimately, embedded economic
inequality of the sort Marshall would consider to “cut too deep” (Heater 1999).
… societies in which citizenship is
a developing institution create an
image of an ideal citizenship
against which achievement can be
measured and towards which
aspiration
can
be
directed
The social-liberal approach advocated by Marshall and Rawls has influenced many
contemporary theorists attracted to its treatment of social inequality. However, even as this
social-liberalism was gaining momentum, it encountered opposition in the shape of the
nascent doctrines of conservative neo-liberalism and neo-republicanism. Although less
influential than their coeval, these new approaches provide useful critiques of socialiberalism. Conservative neo-liberals like Hayek and Nozick introduced ideas that were
incorporated into the “New Right” theories adopted by the policies of Thatcher’s government.
Hayek’s critique of social-liberal theory centres on a rejection of social rights in favour of a
laissez faire approach that does not seek to redress economic inequalities (Hayek 1944;
Nozick 1974). Nozick takes the early liberal master/slave relationship of state/individual to
develop the idea of state as “hired protection agency”, akin to the notion of power being
isolated in the sovereign, but this time with the free market as the sole distributor of
resources. Citizenship in these terms is very much in the passive end of the spectrum as
there is little compulsion for the citizen to enter into public life.
Although the legacy of earlier liberal thinkers such as Rousseau continued to be influential, it
was the more republican strands of their theory that resonated more strongly in late
modernity, and led to a resurgence in the republican ideals of public duty, social justice and
civic virtue as a foundation for citizenship. The republican model of citizenship is based on a
“thicker”, more active role, with citizens encouraged to think and act on behalf of the
common good and the state given more power to intervene in citizens’ lives. The republican
approach is more demanding in terms of what it expects of its citizens but still takes freedom
as a central theme. Rousseau’s is a view that encapsulates that of civic republicans, who
argue that civil liberty, seen as freedom to combine self-interest with a sense of duty, is
preferable to natural liberty, seen as freedom to purely pursue self-interest. Freedom in
republicans’ terms is also freedom from the distraction of mankind’s base urges that conflict
with a morally guided lifestyle. Performing one’s civic duty is the most desirable use of this
freedom, and the very expectation of participation serves to emancipate the citizen from the
threat of an autocratic, tyrannical state (Heater 1999).
In many western countries including Britain, perceived abuse of social rights, together with
despair at a burgeoning “claim culture” that prizes rights without the counterbalance of
responsibilities, has weakened support for liberal citizenship. Today’s citizens are, according
to Bauman, consumers who believe in an individualised “right to enjoy, not a duty to suffer”
(1998: 31), and the ensuing competition for luxuries has been identified by some concerned
commentators as socially erosive (Stevenson 2003). Such a breakdown of responsibility to
others threatens society’s homonoia, the concord that discourages anti-social behaviour and
allows for a less intrusive state role. Republican theory’s solutions to such problems have
therefore found support in new social climates, especially with reference to instilling in the
young those values thought to be missing in twenty-first century life, through education.
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University of Leeds
Republican Citizenship
Republicans view citizenship as a form of education, an edifying experience (Dagger 2002).
But there is a slight disagreement between republicans who favour simple dedication to the
community (Rousseau’s patriotism) and those who support a more Millian enlightenment, a
more sophisticated development of the faculties through engagement. In particular,
accusations of paternalism have been levelled at those who seek to direct education and
other resources to state-driven ends, which is seen by some as negating the cultivation of
free choice and critical thought – which republicans claim is so vital to making a citizenly
contribution. The Rousseauean commitment to the Aristotelian elite of the polis, however,
conflicts with many thinkers’ concept of equity of opportunity for participation. Drawing on the
Ancient Greeks’ distinction between polit s and idiot s, Rousseau shows his distrust of
individuals left to make their own decisions.
Despite
their
attempts
to
move
republicanism into the twenty-first century,
neo-republicans like Oldfield (1990) have
been attacked for their support for the
coercion of wayward citizens into “civic
virtue”. The authoritarian overtones of this
approach has left it open to the same
criticism as that of Rousseau’s neglect of
individual rights. Neo-republican thinkers have also faced the slight that they are utopian in
their vision of the promotion of trust and solidarity and that they misconceive the complexity
of conflicts caused by social inequalities and competing identities (Beckett 2006).
“How can a blind multitude, which often does
not know what it wants, because it seldom
knows what is good for it, undertake by itself
an enterprise so vast and difficult as a system
of legislation? … The general will is always
rightful, but the judgement which guides it is
not always enlightened” (Rousseau 1968: II.6).
Although republicanism’s popularity waned towards the end of the eighteenth century, more
recently, republicanism has enjoyed a resurgence of interest, as active citizenship has been
posited as a remedy to the failings of the “thin”, passive citizenship that has taken root in
much of the West. In particular, lamentations of the decline of electoral participation and
social capital (see below) have been construed as a desire for republican citizenship, and
some republican notions have remained in the public conscious, as evident in the use of the
term “good citizen”. Attributes that have made republican citizenship an attractive theory
include its basic proposition that human beings are inherently social and should not be
expected to live in a disaffected state without the capacity to influence, or be influenced by,
others. As the complexity of social relationships has evolved, the argument that social life
must be codified with clear rules of obligation governed by the agencies of the state has
gained strength.
Beyond Liberal and Republican Accounts of Society
Foucault saw the state’s role in the development of its citizens as the result of the practise of
power relations. Two extremes he identified were technologies of power, whereby the power
of governmentality is exercised over people as a means of achieving some sort of conformity
in their behaviour so that they may better serve a purpose beyond themselves; and
technologies of the self, with which an individual can acquire knowledge in order to “effect
their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own
bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in
order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality”
(Foucault 1988: 18).
Communitarian theorists dispute the polarisation of debate between free market and state
intervention approaches. They point to different types of American communities in which
individualistic, anti-social behaviour is more or less prevalent, dependent, they believe, on
the strength of communal bonds (Etzioni 1998). Communitarians are motivated by what they
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see as liberal society’s undermining of the values that bind communities together by its
emphasis on individual rights. They therefore seek to redress the balance between rights
and responsibilities. Advocates of communitarianism have suggested more or less intrusive
remedial action including scaling down social welfare provision and more vigorous promotion
of traditional “family values” (Heater 1999).
Civic communitarianism promotes a brand of republican civic engagement to build social
capital (Putnam 2000), a proactive approach that promotes democratic values of trust and
solidarity in order to prevent conflict rather than cure it (Delanty 2002). The social capital
analysis of citizenship acknowledges the late modern trend towards less active civic
participation and the rise of “communities of limited liability”, wherein “thin, single-stranded,
surf-by interactions are gradually replacing dense, multistranded, well-exercised bonds” as in
the example of social fragmentation in the USA (Putnam 2000: 183-4); what would be
recognised by the British tabloid press as the symptoms of “broken Britain”. Central to social
capitalists’ agenda for change is a form of “civics education” that provides the essential prerequisites for effective participation: “not just “how a bill becomes a law” but “how can I
participate effectively in the public life of my community?”” (Putnam 2000: 405). It is these,
more progressive, strands that have led to the adoption of the principles of
communitarianism by western governments, most notably New Labour.
The challenge of how society can best equip people with the tools to achieve social goals
and build a culture that reinforces the citizen role is therefore set. Most commentators
support the use of education to this end but, again depending on whether an active or
passive approach is favoured, there is dispute about whether this should take the form of
simple knowledge transfer or a more “character building” formative experience. Whatever
the method, can such measures ever work to elevate people out of natural self-interest to
take a broader perspective of the value of their contribution to society and become “active
citizens”, or is it preferable simply to extend individuals’ freedom to take a passive role?
What Kind of Citizen is the Model for Citizenship Education in England?
Such questions have been taken on by theorists of citizenship education, many of whom
take Marshall’s social addition to civil and political rights as a starting point, but embroider
this with a more defined reciprocity between rights and responsibilities in acknowledgement
of the need for an active model of citizenship that stands up to the rigours of late modernity.
Advocates such as Bernard Crick, who led the committee that developed England’s
citizenship education curriculum, have extolled the enlightenment benefits of education and
experience, echoing the sentiments of Rousseau (Crick 1999). On these terms, citizenship
clearly needs to be interwoven across public and private spheres, and messages relayed in
the classroom need to be reinforced in citizens’ interactions with each other and with the
agencies of the state in everyday life. How this can be managed on such a scale when the
very concept of citizenship is a combination of so many points of contestation is the
challenge faced in delivering a coherent programme of citizenship education.
The “introduction” of political education to English schools has historically been resisted in
observance of the liberal convention of keeping private values separate from state influence,
in the belief that this element of children’s education was solely parents’ responsibility; a key
factor in the UK’s late adoption of formalised citizenship education compared with many first
and second world countries. New Labour’s application of an active citizenship rhetoric to
combat social ills said to stem from the possessive individualism of the previous
(conservative neo-liberal) administrations propelled citizenship education onto the education
policy agenda, with Tony Blair making his motivations clear:
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A significant minority of children, often in sink estates, grows up amid
instability, poor education, endemic crime, drug abuse and few decent job
opportunities … Education is our number one priority because nothing does
more to reduce exclusion than confidence and achievement at school. But
schools are not value-free zones. They are an integral part of society and
shape its character. That is why the curriculum reforms to be announced
tomorrow emphasise personal, social and health education, including the
importance of marriage; and why citizenship education is to be given a firm
place in the curriculum. (Blair 1999)
Although Crick’s committee – the independent Advisory Group on Citizenship – was carefully
composed of members from across the political spectrum, he himself admits to wondering
“how many of my group realised that they were signing up to the radical agenda of civic
republicanism?” (Crick 2002). Certainly, New Labour’s policies aimed at pioneering
investment in the next generation’s social capital but just how profound the changes effected
by this form of social engineering could be would depend on the transmission of this rhetoric
to pedagogy in schools.
Practitioners in English schools at the beginning of the twenty-first century could hardly have
escaped the message to promote children’s active participation in their education. The
Education Act (2002) featured a section entitled Consultation with Pupils, an Action Plan for
the Involvement of Children and Young People was released in the same year, and pupil
participation was a fundamental theme of Every Child Matters (2003). However, as May
observes in her analysis of the context of pupil participation in the UK (May 2005), the aim of
standardising what is taught necessarily encourages didactic methods to transmit
preordained values and academic knowledge, rather than privileging experiential knowledge
which would be subject to context. How an active form of citizenship education may translate
as an aspect of the National Curriculum is, then, especially poignant.
Citizenship Discourse in Schools
The programme of study for Citizenship at key stages three and four states the importance
of citizenship as lying in its ability to equip pupils: with the knowledge and skills needed for
effective and democratic participation. It helps pupils to become informed, critical, active
citizens who have the confidence and conviction to work collaboratively, take action and try
to make a difference in their communities and the wider world ... It equips pupils to engage
critically with and explore diverse ideas, beliefs, cultures and identities and the values we
share as citizens in the UK (QCDA 2007). The remainder of this paper will explore the
resonance of this statement of intent with ways in which citizenship is perceived by pupils
and teachers in six case study secondary schools in England. The concept and subject of
citizenship will be taken together as they were found to be symbiotic for the participants in
this research; a theory of citizenship removed from the school curriculum was not ventured.
Throughout the sample, teachers were passionate about citizenship and agreed that
education for citizenship should be about critical discussion and debate, fostering young
people’s ability to challenge dominant views and building awareness of moral judgments.
There was, however, some division in perceptions of what the motivation for incorporating
citizenship education into the national curriculum had been. Scepticism was expressed
particularly around government reaction to media hype and the need to recognise “moral
outcries” around negative social issues and demonstrate action to tackle concerns around
broken Britain. The controvertibility of this subject reflects the essentially contested nature of
citizenship and the difficulty inherent in delivering an educational programme based around
a particular vision of society with defined roles, when in practice the very meaning of the
vernacular is constantly susceptible to shift.
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A notably prevalent theme expressed by teachers and pupils across participant schools
(although acceptance of the narrative’s accuracy and identification with its protagonists
varied) was the idea of broken Britain and the need to lift people out of the negative
influences of attitudes that contributed to young people falling into a repeat pattern of antisocial behaviour. Schools’ role in this was considered vital, especially where parental
involvement in children’s development was thought to be minimal at best and detrimental at
worst. One teacher believed that citizenship lessons were important because:
“kids do get some information filtered down from parents and it obviously
might not be quite correct, it might just be biased opinion so it is good to tackle
it in schools, especially when it’s something that’s in the media, I think they do
need to know exactly what’s happening and develop their own opinion on it.”
In this teacher’s view, schools were the best qualified arbiter of “unbiased” views and well
placed to undo values that may have been instilled in children by their parents. This is clearly
a matter of contention for parents who would claim it was their right to bring their children up
to share in their belief system, and raises the question of where the limits of the school’s
authority to impose the supremacy of particular attitudes and behaviours lie. Given the
reticence to introduce political thought to schools that delayed the inclusion of statutory
citizenship education in the National Curriculum, this is an area around which teachers might
wish to tread carefully.
Strongly evinced in the testimony of many of the teachers who participated in this study, the
use of citizenship education to advise young people to adopt attitudes and behaviours that
make them less likely to fall into anti-social behaviour is at the heart of understandings of
citizenship for many of those engaged in English secondary education. This was certainly
voiced by a majority of students from areas identified as suffering the effects of broken
Britain. With limited reference to values from home, the underlying precept was that, if
something was worth learning, it was schools that should deliver the message.
“I think [citizenship education should be taught at school]
because you come to school and you’re obeying what the
teachers say you then you get out of school and I think you
could be sort of lost, cos you don’t really know you haven’t
learnt the proper skills to behave in our society today.”
In a school in a more affluent area, one student alluded to the social
advantage that reduced her need for education in social and moral
responsibility:
“I think the things that we need to know that we get from the
citizen lessons can easily be supplied by parents ... I don’t
think we need that much information on it. If there wasn’t any
citizen lessons anymore then I don’t think it would be too
much of a big problem... cos we have the news, we have the
internet, we have parents again ... the responsibility you have
as just being a human, sort of, not doing anything bad, kind of,
living how you were brought up by, if you had acceptable
parents that taught you, you know, the right morals and kind of
sticking by that and living by that.”
“So if you think
about the people
you know at this
school and the
people in your
class, do they need
to know about
these things?”
“Well several
people from this
school are from a
kind of rough
neighbourhood so
drugs plays quite a
large part in where
they come from so
they need to know
what’s right and
what’s wrong about
it.”
Pupils were assured in their conception of citizenship as being about their responsibilities,
expressed as helping one’s community by getting on with people, in particular seeking to
understand and respect others’ points of view, working together and demonstrating one is a
good and law abiding person; their rights, seen as a result of benefitting from living in a
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University of Leeds
society in which people’s behaviour accords with their responsibilities and values are
respected; and generally making the “right” choices in life and exemplifying the behaviour of
a good citizen. To a lesser degree, it was about having one’s own opinions and being
politically and socially aware.
“Citizenship is basically teaching you how to be a good citizen and how the
laws and stuff and how you’re meant to act in this country and what you can
and can’t do.”
“...it gives
you the
rights or
wrongs in
life and
stuff that
you should
do and
shouldn’t
do to other
people.”
Across the country, when asked why Britain would need its citizens to acquire
citizenship skills, pupils often drew on tabloid sensationalism to explain how
the kids from the bad estate (rarely the participant, their friends or even
classmates) would benefit from being “educated out” of prejudice and antisocial ways, and more generally taught how to get on with people. Such
peers were viewed, in the main, as misguided, ignorant of the bigger picture
regarding immigration for instance, whereas participants demonstrated their
awareness of appropriate ways of talking about citizenship issues that had
been validated by their teachers. For example, pupils took great care to
assure the interviewer that they were “not being racist or anything” at every
passing mention of race or cultural difference.
Being a Model Citizen
The young people who participated in this study showed an understanding of the values the
citizenship curriculum was designed to impart. Their use of language associated with
citizenship discourse in Britain – reference to community, diversity, rights and duties –
reflected the prominent themes of the syllabus but a greater familiarity with citizenship
terminology is not evidence of increased identification with the message or propensity to
demonstrate affinity with the actions of the model citizen over their predecessors to whom
the subject was not taught in its current statutory form.
Writing on sociology and education policy, Whitty cites Bernstein’s work as a compelling
argument that quick-fix responses to continuing problems in education policy are prone to
limited effect (Whitty 2002). While the teachers in this study articulated greater consensus
around the belief that issues covered by citizenship education are indeed important than
perhaps even the Crick committee could have hoped, the question of whether citizenship
should be a statutory subject, with all the attendant bureaucracy of formal education, or
something closer to a way of life and not necessarily schools’ jurisdiction, remains.
For some teachers, the aims of citizenship education were incommensurate with the
syllabus. One teacher posed the questions, “what makes someone good at citizenship, what
makes someone bad at citizenship?”; feeling that her role was too skewed towards the
delivery of “here are some things about citizenship for you to know”. To her, that was “not
education, that’s regurgitating ... what’s the purpose?” The difficulty of reconciling subject
matter based on subjectivity with its place in an education system based on objective
evaluation of attainment was a recurring theme throughout the research.
Although all the teachers who participated in the study were rightfully conscious of the
potential for political and personal bias in citizenship education, most expressed a view of
education more generally as playing a role in shaping the kind of citizen a child would grow
up to be, often using expressions like “creating a person”; a “worthwhile” citizen who would
be “better received” by society. There was a consensus that personal views could be drawn
upon in teaching, so long as they reflect widely held mainstream principles such as the
inherent unacceptability of racism.
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Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
With this in mind, teachers felt they could support some of what they believed to be the
original aims of the policy; encouraging people to “care” about their community and society
at large and raising awareness of social and moral responsibilities. While some were wary of
political intentions which may have taken the agenda too far in a particular direction; instilling
a sense of civic responsibility in the form of a desire to serve others, rather than helping
people feel empowered in society. There was talk of a “hidden strand” that sought to tackle
the “breaking down” of society that many sympathised with, although some questioned
whether schools were the best weapon to use to counter this threat. Such a “top-down
imposition” was seen as an act of social engineering that attempted to change attitudes,
particularly towards economic rights and responsibilities, and to re-engage the next
generation with the political system as well as with their local communities. Overcoming
prejudice and promoting community cohesion for the benefit of social order was seen as
another key driver for the development of citizenship education.
“I think the original concept of citizenship was a response to the social
disorder issue ... Because every government has to come out with something
that’s how they’re going to deal with social disorder. They don’t look at it in
historical context that social disorder is far more orderly than it was a hundred
years ago but they’ve all got to argue that case ... And I think that was
probably a positive attempt to address something but unfortunately, from an
education perspective, the imposition of that type of thing never works as fully
as it would’ve done if it had gone through an open discussion. For example,
they imposed citizenship rather than actually spending a year working with
young people, getting a broader outline of their views, and I think they
probably would have come up with something better.”
The model citizen approach to citizenship therefore attenuates the role of free will and takes
a purely negative view of social disorder, “anti-social” behaviour and crime. In order to
internalise the model citizen, however, its value must be reinforced by the subject’s relations
with society. Students did report their education to be reinforcing of and reinforced by the
media in the promulgation of one dominant view of social disorder as a symptom of an
unhealthy society, as in Foucault’s critique of Rousseau’s natural man who must be
denatured.
The discourse of citizenship education
excludes a Durkheimian view of crime as
a normal part of civilised society,
precluding debate around oppressive
societies with low crime rates, progress
that has been made and laws that have
been changed by individuals imposing
their free will on society in the form of
“criminal” or “immoral” acts, and the
construction of what is criminal, moral and anti-social generally. It seems that, even within
the confines of this approach, discourse is further narrowed, for a discussion of the character
of model citizens in different contexts in history and geography could actually serve as an
exploratory tool for engaging “critically with and explor[ing] diverse ideas, beliefs, cultures
and identities and the values we share as citizens in the UK” as set out in the key stage
three programme of study (but this would, of course, explode the myth of the model citizen
as an ideal). As the teacher quoted above intimates, however, the model citizen narrative of
citizenship may be the dominant discourse of the classroom but if its two-dimensional
curriculum is not supported by other social realities produced in wider society, its power will
be weakened.
...the only cohesion asked of individuals is
intended to protect, not a natural existence, but
the free exercise of sovereignty over and against
nature. The relation established by Rousseau is
precisely reversed; sovereignty no longer
transposes the natural existence; the latter is only
an object for the sovereign, which permits him to
measure his total liberty. (Foucault 1989: 269).
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Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
Teachers’ role of “creating” or “developing” a “person” or a “rounded individual” was
considered a goal of their teaching generally and specifically citizenship education, although
rarely mentioned without a caveat that their role as teacher of a non-academic subject
afforded a lesser influence than would be needed to fully accomplish this goal. As well as the
detracting influences of familial and social groups, it was widely felt that the system within
which the citizenship curriculum operated was not conducive to the production of this “whole
person” because of the segregation of academic subjects enshrined by the National
Curriculum’s “permeation model”.
Agency and the National Curriculum
When the National Curriculum was introduced in 1988, its stated aim was to prepare young
people for “the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life” (DfE 1988). Its
“permeation” model was purported to enable the cross-curricular themes that its architects
encouraged despite the segregation of subjects as distinct disciplines. Bernstein uses the
term “educational knowledge code” to refer to the principles which should shape curriculum,
pedagogy and the means of evaluating teaching and learning. The citizenship curriculum
grew out of such a code and was added to the National Curriculum as a statutory subject, to
be taught and examined and inspected upon alongside established subjects that had long
since defined secondary education in England. As such, citizenship became an addition to a
collection type curriculum made up of subjects with strongly classified content and a strongly
framed pedagogical relationship. This determines what counts as appropriate to a particular
lesson and may be why several teachers lamented the lack of comprehension when they
drew on the territory of other subjects.
“... when a pupil comes to me to talk about personal finance, and they can’t do
the mathematics – they’ve been taught it, it’s just left in the maths room. They
don’t understand how to take these skills and to use them across different
subjects...”
Pupils often expressed the feeling that citizenship was not like other lessons and referred to
the amount of “work” done in citizenship lessons as separate from any time spent on
discussion and debate (“work” was solitary and required writing to produce evidence of
reading from textbooks). This reflects findings from Whitty’s research into forms of talk in
secondary school classes that the tightly framed discourse of the Curriculum makes explicit
to students that the subject does not validate agency in the form of the contribution of their
own views and ideas, and inferences should not be drawn from outside the subject.
Citizenship is therefore an exemplar of a
subject that ultimately suffers from this
absence of links, as its nascence as a
statutory subject places it as the end of
the chain, in need of justification for its
relevance to both formal education and
the “real world”. Whitty draws on the work of Mannheim to understand the origins of this
disconnect. Mannheim believed that academic pedagogy had generated “the suppression ...
of ... awareness”; extreme specialisation had led to “neutralizing the genuine interest in real
problems and in the possible answers to them”, with the student “rendered entirely uncritical
by this method of teaching where everybody takes responsibility for a disconnected piece of
[knowledge] only and is, therefore, never encouraged to think of situations as a whole”
(Whitty 2002: 9). In such a system, where students are denied the tools of critical thinking,
citizenship education will not promote the agency necessary for effective, democratic
participation, and a far-reaching change in attitudes is needed to contest the value of sharply
drawn boundaries between academic fields. As one teacher complains –
To him the science lesson was self-contained and
self-referential.
To
have
produced
work
inconsistent with what he perceived as the subject
code would have indicated that ... he had failed to
achieve the required scientific competence”
(Whitty 2002: 36).
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Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
“... because there are a lot of people in our society who only value academic
excellence, they don’t understand the idea of multiple intelligences, you know,
which is why you might go and see a doctor and they can’t look you in the eye.
You might have a merchant banker who’s a brilliant mathematician but morally
he’s completely bankrupt, yeah? It’s basically trying to make pupils more
human, more understanding of each other.”
Perhaps this absence of examples of rounded characters is why the neat outlines of the
model citizen who travels down the “right path” are so often invoked to illustrate the
jurisdiction of citizenship as a subject. This caricature does not, however, empower young
people to develop their own character and make their own decisions. The model citizen was
not, of course, the only tool teachers used to develop understanding of citizenship. There
was evidence of attempts to engender skills for effective participation in teaching methods,
for example.
“Well in citizenship we get more involved with things, like in basic subjects we
just work but in citizenship, we get together in groups – again it’s social – we
get in groups and then we work together, which I think is a good idea, cos it,
again, it helps us to get along with each other it gets us together like a
community basically.”
Also, the young people’s use of citizenship vernacular was not limited to superficial
references in all cases; some demonstrated ability to apply citizenship values, at least within
citizenship lessons.
“So what happens when you are having a discussion and people have
different views?”
“Well everyone has the right of free speech and if I’m saying something like I
believe and then they say something they believe, I respect their views and I
think to have different views and different points is good.”
Understanding on this level could certainly be seen as an empowering precursor to
embracing citizenship values more deeply, as some commentators would argue that an
individual who does not have a grasp of the language is excluded from the discourse. It is
through such discursive practices, however, that pupils are constructed as subjects. As
Bourdieu would argue, language is both the medium of communication that binds society
and the mode of domination of subcultures by the dominant culture. Language, in his
analysis, serves to justify existing hierarchies, as a criterion of inclusion that is conditional
and stratified; determining the power of groups according to their skill at using the language
of the dominant group (Bourdieu 1992). Deviation from the language of the dominant culture
isolates and excludes groups from the discourse, labelling them subcultures.
Therefore, if we are to accept that schools are places where knowledge is transmitted to the
end of “creating a person” through a discourse in which young people are both subjects and
objects of knowledge, a Foucauldian understanding of this power/knowledge relationship
between teachers and pupils would dictate that pupils come to construct themselves as selfobserving, self-monitoring, self-disciplining and self-improving subjects by their acceptance
and internalisation of desirable forms of identity and behaviour (Foucault 1988). Certainly,
there is more resonance with Foucault’s ideas of technologies of power in this use of a
hierarchical relationship to produce reality through relations with others than technologies of
the self which focus on relations with oneself. The division of “expert knowledge” in schools
echoes the power of governmentality experts in disciplines such as medicine and
psychology were said to exert.
12
Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
It is not enough then, to provide a hollow narrative of two-dimensional model citizens who
follow the rules set out for them by a distant elite. An understanding of the discourse at a
deeper level than this purely reductionist model and the bolstering of this framework by
meaningful content that includes marginalised groups and extends to all opportunities to
participate should be the blueprint for citizenship education. The outlook for embedding this
type of citizenship in English schools does not look promising. Even in a school whose
academy specialism was developed on the basis of providing innovative platforms for pupil
voice, reservations were expressed.
“I think there are some mechanisms within the school that exist. I’m not 100%
convinced that the opportunities are totally equitable amongst all students, we
have to work hard to avoid that syndrome of the keen students always being
put forward to represent the views of the majority erm how you do that I’m not
exactly sure but that seems to be sometimes an issue. I think you need to be
careful, again that you get an equal input across the board, I think sometimes
at key stage four students can get wrapped up in their exams and their
attainment and that can take precedence over other issues. I think you can get
some students being a bit freer to express their views and contribute and
things like that. In terms of my practice, again, on a lesson by lesson basis, I
try my best to ensure that everybody gets an equal opportunity to input into
debate or put their views across. I’m aware that some students are more
confident in speaking in class, some like writing it down so I need to be careful
about knowing my class and knowing who’s uncomfortable with kind of like
answering questions and that kind of thing but again that’s just the teacher’s
toolbox and that.”
Indeed, pupils who took the initiative to take part in school councils and other pupil voice fora
expressed themselves in terms that revealed a level of informed awareness that was not
typical of the young participants in this study. One year eight school council member told me
his motivation to become a councillor was that he “thought it would look good on the CV”.
This attitude spoke of a conception of citizenship as “taking care of yourself” quite different
from his peers’ interpretation of “staying out of trouble”, instead suggesting a Kantian
cleverness: the skill which enables the individual to use society for their purposes. More
commonly represented in this research was Mill’s notion of developmentalism: education for
an understanding of democracy that seeks to encourage an awareness of the existing
system and acceptance of the learner’s role in it, rather than cast him/her as an active agent
of systemic change. Revisiting earlier liberal thought on citizenship and the transformative
powers of education is especially insightful at a time when the current government is scaling
back the state and using the language of the social contract to describe expectations of
citizens in the Big Society (Helm 2010).
Conclusion: Can the “Model Citizen” approach to citizenship education raise social
capital in “broken” Britain?
Can citizenship education achieve the policy’s original aims to create citizens with the
knowledge and skills for effective and democratic participation, helping them to become
informed, critical, active citizens who have the confidence and conviction to work
collaboratively, take action and try to make a difference in their communities and the wider
world? The findings of this study suggest that the model of citizenship education commonly
taught in English secondary schools cannot achieve the original aims of the policy, that is
raise social capital amongst future generations in order to promote greater civic participation.
The goals of the curriculum are hampered by its disconnected permeation model, and its
reliance on deference to fixed moral and social norms, embodied by the totem of the “model”
or “good” citizen, which fails to become internalised or identified with by a generation of
13
Nicola Horsley
University of Leeds
young people who neither feel affiliation with youth culture as it is problematised and
presented to them, nor look to formal education to bestow upon them skills which transfer to
life outside the classroom. As both the subjects and objects of this curriculum, they are
offered a narrow platform from which to discuss an abstract “Britain” of the tabloids and a
“community” they are compelled to offer their service to, but this is contradicted, rather than
reinforced, outside school.
The citizenship of citizenship education is thin, not active in a sense meaningful for young
people. Traditional liberal overtones of adherence to a restrictive social contract find greater
resonance in pupils’ experiences of citizenship education than the radical communitarianism
or civic republicanism envisioned by Crick. Their social capital may be increased by a richer
knowledge of the science of citizenship but they are denied opportunities to practise the art
of citizenship: they are not encouraged to become agents of social change and set their own
agenda for the future of their country and their world.
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