The civics study as a study of general education

Abstract

By 1970, research by the author and his colleagues (summarised in Raven, 1977a, 1978a) had shown that most people believed that the main objectives of education were to foster such qualities as the willingness and the ability required to take the initiative to introduce change, willingness to play an active part in one's community, the spontaneous tendency to tolerate others, find their strong points, and work well with them, openness to new ideas, and the willingness and the ability to make one's observations and learn without instruction. There were, however, very few studies of whether the educational system was successful in reaching these goals. The IEA “Civics” study was clearly relevant to the task of finding out how successfully the Irish Educational System was reaching such objectives - in both absolute and comparative terms. It also held out the promise of enabling us to go some way towards specifying the types of educational programme which would enable us to reach these goals more effectively. And the cross-cultural data seemed to have the potential of throwing light on the actual long-term social consequences of pupils having developed certain attitudes, civic perceptions and expectations and, thereby, helping us to clarify the goals of education.