Citizenship education as an instrument for strengthening the state's supremacy: an apparent paradox?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the overt and tacit role of the state and other stakeholders in defining objectives, concepts and approaches to citizenship education. It suggests a new approach for understanding citizenship education based on the assumption that trans-rational dimensions of human existence – interests, institutional culture, and traditions – are not just external environment, influenced by citizenship education, but they are imbedded in its contents, character and dynamics. This approach is summed up by the metaphor of ‘battle’, since citizenship education is revealed not as a pre-given univocal entity but as a developing matter that results from social combats among different stakeholders. It is argued that there is a common tendency in different countries for the state to take over the citizenship education advocating ‘disciplinary citizenship’. Thus, although there are some positive trends in citizenship formal education in the different European post-communist and post-authoritarian countries, this education does not necessarily function as an effective instrument for building genuine citizenship ethos. The paper claims that there is a need for substantial changes in the citizenship education practice and that its development should be based on creating institutional premises for ‘active citizenship’. The latter will help schools to overcome the alienation of students from studying. In order to get rid of its deep crisis the contemporary school needs the transformative impetus from citizenship education which in turn will get at least one mighty stakeholder in its advancement.