Should Children Be Taught How to Engage in a Democratic Society?

Assignment 6

Should children be taught how to engage in a democratic society? (1500 words)

In this essay I am going to discuss the issues relating to children and if they should be taught how to engage in a democratic society. I will look at identifying the problems and make an argument for and against I will then take the main points from my research and report on the main issues. Finally I will review my finding and make a conclusion.

In order to start this essay I needed to know the real definition of the word democratic. In order to define this correctly I have taken its true meaning from The Oxford English Popular Thesaurus, which says, classless, chosen, elected, popular, and representative.

I attended a lecture at UEL where Sue Ritchie presented an introduction to Citizenship. From this lecture Sue Ritchie gave information about the Crick report (1998) and discussed social diversity, democracy, and she made reference to Thompson (1996) Peoples skills, Macmillan: p.70. The two quotes highlighted from Thompson were "When we interact with other people, we do not start from a natural standpoint. We bring with us a whole range of values, beliefs and assumptions." and "So how can we all live together in the same world if we differ so much?"

Is it possible to achieve effective teaching of citizenship?

This is a huge statement, which challenges the teaching of Citizenship

I wanted more information about the Crick report 1998 so I took information from a web site, which helped me with my essay. The following points have been taken as examples.

The government has made it policy to teach children how to engage in a democratic society by introducing a subject call citizenship. An advisory group was formed to produce a structure. A summary of the final report was presented to the secretary of state on 22nd September 1998. (The Crick report)

The main recommendations from the Crick report 1998.

* "The teaching of citizenship and democracy is so important both for school life and the life of the nation that there should be a state requirement on schools to ensure that it is part of the entitlement of all pupils."

* The statutory teaching citizenship should be the knowledge, skills and values relevant to the nature of and practices s and development of a participative democracy, the duties, responsibilities, rights and development of pupils into citizens; and the value to individuals, schools and society of involvement in the local and wider community both national and local and the awareness of world affairs and global issues, and the economic realities of adult life.

* These learning outcomes should be based on what can take no more than five percent of curriculum time.

* Citizenship should be taught in combination with other subjects such as history and geography.

* The learning outcomes should be taught over a period of years. This is because of the newness of the subject and to avoid overloading the teachers.

* The teaching of Citizenship should be introduces with the revised new curriculum in the year 2000.

(Http//www.dur.ac.uk/r.d.smith/Crick.html)

In reading the above statements it made me question why the government has invested so much in the teaching of Citizenship and will the investment produce a better-informed society and will it give the government more votes? As the subject of citizenship is so large, then why is the learning outcome only 5% of the curriculum, and will the subject in time be given more that 5% to learning time when new teachers have been trained? How important is this subject to the future of our country?

My research shows that the Government made funding available to schools for the induction for citizenship into the classroom. Funds of Ј12m were available during 2000-2001 and 2002-2003 funding is available within the schools improvement pot. The Government is supporting citizenship financially, and policing with Ofsted,

Awards schemes are available from bodies such as Activecitiizen, Anne Frank Trust, Barclays New Futures, Breakfast Club, National Lottery Good Causes, Duke of Edinburgh Award, National Youth Agency, and the Princes Trust.

It would be right to say that the Government and many out side bodies are taking the teaching of Citizenship very seriously.

The Crick report identifies three strands that should run through all education for citizenship.

1. Social and moral responsibility. Children learning from the very beginning self-confidence and socially and morally responsible behavior both in and beyond the classroom, both towards those in authority and towards each other.

2. Community involvement. Learning about and becoming helpfully involved in the live and concerns of their neighborhood communities, including learning through community involvement and service to the community.

3. Political literacy. Pupils learning about the institutions, problems and practices