Teaching students to be better citizens

Students should learn about the historical and present-day democracy - subjects which are especially taught in Systems of Knowledge - but they should also learn and truly understand what their responsibility as democratic citizens is. The challenge in fact lies in teaching students to become democratic citizens.

So argues Philip Caruana, who teaches Systems of Knowledge at the Junior College, in a recent paper published in the Faculty of Education's latest Journal of Maltese Education Research.

Mr Caruana is particularly concerned about what students should understand by "democracy" and "citizenship". He believes that these concepts should be used as tools to acquire skills that will enable them to live more fully and successfully as democratic citizens.

In his paper Promoting Democratic Citizenship: An Exploration Of The Current Educational Debate About What Students At The Beginning Of The 21st Century Should Be Encouraged To Understand By The Concepts Of "Democracy" And "Citizenship", Dr Caruana says that students should not only be taught these concepts during elections, but all year round.

With regard to schools which seek to mould students through education for citizenship, whether towards national identity or a community of shared fate, Dr Caruana says that in developing a national identity, there are new opportunities to develop a more rounded curriculum, where questions of identity and cultural development are balanced with a knowledge and understanding of human rights and democratic practice. "While one should work hard to create and safeguard a country's national identity, students should also be increasingly prepared to accept an idea of a community of shared fate since there are many influencing agents that emphasise diversity in our evolving societies. In this way citizens would be urged to look for unity in diversity," he says.

Dr Caruana explains that the concepts form a small part of the syllabus of Systems of Knowledge, a compulsory subject followed by post-secondary students who intend to continue their studies at the University. The subject aims to introduce different values to students, and initiate their thinking about the role these values take on in making them better citizens.

Citizenship education should aim to develop skills, capacities and virtues on which a healthy liberal democracy depends since "it is important... to have a critical mass of citizens with appropriate moral commitments and affective attachments, and this cannot be left to chance."

"All individuals should rightfully learn about their civil and political rights, and that these rights are the product of struggles, ideas, experiments and more struggles. They should learn about the structure and process of the institutions of government, about the mechanics of political participation in the form of voting, lobbying, peaceful demonstration, petitions, and grassroots organizing," the paper states.

Because of this, Dr Caruana stresses that students should be encouraged to develop a sense of political agency, to understand themselves as contributing to an ongoing story of democratic self-rule with other people of different cultural and religious background, who form part of the society they live in and that they are able to work on projects of cooperation aimed at prompting shared ends.

The paper also identifies the need for a contemporary definition of the concepts of "democracy" and "citizenship", since changes in societies, and therefore in concepts, is an ongoing process.

"When one defines democracy, one is obliged to define citizenship, since one can be considered as a by-product of the other. If democracy is threatened then the status of the citizens in that society is threatened," the paper states.

In view of the need for a contemporary definition of the two concepts, the paper includes an analysis of two theories - one that focuses on a definition of citizenship as that ingredient that promotes national identity, and the other arguing that the effects of citizen migration from one country to another, the effects of globalisation, and the need for a global stand on international issues have reduced the possibility of a clear cut identity for every nation.