Teenagers’ Citizenship: Experiences and Education

Abstract

By Susie Weller London : Routledge , 2007 ISBN 9780415404648 , 194 pp, £22.99 (pb) Teenagers’ Citizenship is a valuable and timely contribution to the existing literature on both citizenship and ‘childhood’. Whilst much has been written on these topics, this book effectively combines these literatures to provide an informative analysis of the barriers to and the opportunities for positioning teenagers as citizens. After examining teenagers’ problematic relationship with traditional notions of citizenship, Weller explores teenagers’ attitudes towards citizenship education. Concluding that the school curriculum ‘fails to recognise both alternative and more holistic understandings of citizenship, which in many ways are more inclusive, and perhaps more relevant to many teenagers’ lives’ (p. 70) she moves on to explore how teenagers practise citizenship in their everyday lives—at school and in the community—and some of the barriers which prevent children from being seen as citizens in society. Weller's theoretical approach is grounded within the ‘New Social Studies of Childhood’ (NSSC)—a theoretical perspective which upholds the value of studying ‘children’ in their own right and which asserts that children should be seen to be competent social actors (Prout and James, 1997). This is an appropriate backdrop for exploring teenagers’ participation in society. Indeed, her empirical research reflects this theoretical standpoint. Adopting a child-centred approach, she employs a range of participatory methods to give voice to the young people's viewpoints and experiences. More attention could have been given towards exploring how children perform citizenship through the actual research process — for instance, through discussing their ideas in group discussions and acting as advisors to the researcher. Citing extracts from the young people she studied helps to breathe life into her analysis. For instance, in chapter 3, Weller focuses on the introduction of compulsory citizenship education in schools. Importantly, her analysis moves beyond a theoretical discussion of the ‘problems with implementation’ towards a grounded discussion of the real-life difficulties that teenagers themselves identify with the subject. By exploring how children actually practise citizenship across and within different spatial contexts Weller effectively draws attention to how children ‘do’ citizenship in the ‘being’ of childhood (encouraging us to critically engage with dominant understandings of ‘children as citizens-in-the-making’). In line with the NSSC children are therefore positioned as worthy of study in their own right — as children, rather than as future ‘becomings’. From this analysis, Weller argues for an ‘alternative’ (‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘cumulative’) approach to citizenship which more effectively includes teenagers’ everyday experiences and understandings of what citizenship is. Her argument is accessible, clearly structured and supported through her empirical research findings. Overall, this book simultaneously provides us with an introduction to debates about citizenship and the social construction of ‘childhood’. This book would therefore be of interest to students of sociology, politics, human geography, social policy and childhood studies.