Never Too Young

'Never too young to learn democracy!: a case study of a democratic approach to learning in an RME secondary class in the West of Scotland'

Henry Maitles

Head of Social Studies Education, University of Strathclyde Faculty of Education

Isabel Gilchrist

RME department, Stonelaw High, Rutherglen

Paper presented at the Scottish Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Perth, 27-29 November 2003

Introduction: education for citizenship

Attending a conference on culture and democracy in China recently and preparing a paper on the effectiveness of political education in schools, it seemed incongruous that there had been in Beijing a central issue in terms of the type of citizenship education that we might want to try to develop in our schools. The movement for democracy in China and their demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989 was an inspiring moment. In particular, in the confrontation with the army, the picture of the student in front of the tanks throws up a central vital question relating to both democracy and citizenship; in essence, there are two models of citizen -- the twenty year olds in the tank and the twenty year olds in front of the tank.

Interestingly, the Chinese government was particularly worried about the desire by young people to participate in the decision making process. There is a near moral panic in Britain (indeed in most representative democracies around the world) that young people are apathetic, alienated and disinterested in politics. In Britain, there is the example of the recent European Union election in 1999 in which, as a whole, turnout was barely above 20%, in some areas just in double figures and amongst the 18-24 year olds much lower than for the population as a whole. And, indeed, for those who felt that whatever happened in this 'less important' election, the General Election would hold up, June 7th. 2001 showed that this was over optimistic; turnout was under 60%, the lowest since 1918. Put bluntly, more people voted for the winner of 'Big Brother' on Channel 4 than voted in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and London Mayoral elections combined in 1999. Even more worryingly, the Scottish Parliament, described as having the raison d'etre of bringing interest in politics and participation closer to the people and, consequently providing a forum that would reverse the trend in terms of voting participation, achieved a sub 50% turnout in May 2003. Yet, the devolution of decision making to the countries of the UK has fuelled a debate around more open government and an idea of a participatory democracy needing informed citizens. Whatever the voting figures may show about participation in formal politics, there is also evidence that although young people are alienated from formal politics, they are active and interested in single issue, environmental, political, developing world and animal welfare issues (Roker, Player and Coleman, 1999). Indeed the support for the fuel price protests some years ago, Globalise Resistance anti-capitalist actions and the anti-Iraq war protests at the beginning of 2003 and the protests at President Bush's visit to Britain November 2003, has shown that single issue politics is still capable of mobilising massive support. Marshall's (1950) definition of the components of citizenship per se -- civic citizenship, political citizenship and social citizenship -- are still valid but now need economic citizenship added to be relevant in the modern world. People can have all the formal rights in the world but if they feel that they have no say in the day to day matters that affect their lives, their citizenship is fairly shallow and they quite rightly point that out to their employers, political representatives, school managers and other figures of authority.

A crucial but difficult area relating education for citizenship to schools is whether one only learns about democracy or also lives it. Are pupils in schools citizens or citizens-in-waiting? If we take the 'living' and citizens now model, then there are implications for our schools and indeed for society as a whole. Firstly, there is the difficult issue of whether democratic ideas and values can be effectively developed in the fundamentally undemocratic, indeed authoritarian, structure of the current typical Scottish secondary school, where many teachers, never mind pupils, feel that they have little real say in the running of the school. It has been argued that it is not possible (Arnstine, 1995; Puolimatka 1995; Levin, 1998). In interviews with Modern Studies teachers, the problem was acknowledged. As one put it:

Yes, it is a bit awkward...you keep telling them that they should be questioning things, they should be challenging things and there are ways to do it...you are trying to get them to do these things and they feel they are getting nowhere, then it can be very counter productive...no matter how patient they are, they very often feel that they are getting nowhere. So they come back to you, shrug their shoulders and say 'What's the point? We've tried what you said.' It's a pity.

Yet, most teachers interviewed felt that it could, indeed must, be attempted. One actually claimed that he used the school system as an example of democracy or lack of it and another said that: 'There will be some tension between the inevitable dictatorship of the classroom and the sort of ideas that you are preaching...it would be a good example for them of what's wrong with a dictatorship' (Maitles, 2003).

For schools, it means there should be proper forums for discussion, consultation and decision-making involving pupils. The Education (Scotland) Act, 2000 from the Scottish Parliament enshrined Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, that young people should be consulted on issues that affect them and proposes functioning pupil councils as a means of facilitating this. However, the experience of school councils throughout Britain is not yet particularly hopeful; although there are some very positive examples (Polan, 1989; Dobie, 1998; Shinkfield, 2000; Taylor and Johnson, 2002), far too many are tokenistic (Hannam, 1998; Dobie, 1998; Rowe, 2000).

Thus, for the individual young people, schools and society as a whole, it is important that young people's views must be actively sought and particularly it is important that all young people are not targeted as moral panic crusades sometimes do. In the West of Scotland, for example, there