The stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels … have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated.

         Robert Pirsig

If we want to equip young people to be active participants in public life, we need citizenship education to run much deeper than it ordinarily does. Standard curricula chiefly focus on conveying knowledge of the electoral process, the Constitution, legislative process, and our purported ‘national identity’. But for real access to power in a democracy, young people need experiential, active citizenship education.

“Advocacy, campaigning, and taking informed action are at the heart of effective citizenship education,” observe educational researchers Peter Brett and Damon Thomas. Students need to become adept at marshalling evidence, critically engaging with ideas, articulating a position, and making a case for change. These are bedrock skills for participation in deliberative dialogue, and essential competencies for anyone using the force of reason to persuade fellow citizens, governments or policy-makers.

If we’re serious about achieving a just democracy, young people need two transformative learning experiences that are rarely (if ever) included in standard Civics & Citizenship curricula.

First, they must come to understand the sordid and sometimes deceptive nature of our political system, including problems like undisclosed political donations, lack of institutional accountability, and ministerial power grabs; the injustices perpetrated by our justice system; and the extent to which political promises are shaped by vested interests, ideologies, veiled agendas and entrenched norms.

Second, students must discover their own agency and capacity for grassroots action. Citizenship classes should teach students, among other things, that democracy is fragile and that it demands of each competent citizen “an orientation to the public good, a willingness to actively engage, and the capabilities needed to participate and deliberate well“. Beyond abiding by just laws and casting the occasional ballot, citizens need to be able to organise themselves in communities, participate in public reasoning and negotiation, and make cogent demands of their leaders and institutions.

In the service of these ends, core curricula should feature learning about citizens’ assemblies alongside other deliberative structures that draw on civic participation to repair dysfunctional democracies. These structures typically go unacknowledged through the ordinary course of schooling, despite the promise they hold for democratic renewal.

With the creep of authoritarianism, and in the midst of an environmental crisis so devastating that serious thinkers regard societal collapse as probable, restoring our democracy is a priority that can’t be ignored. Those of us who work in and around the school system should ensure that students have the opportunity both to experience deliberative education and to reflect on the broadest conceptions of democracy, including the place of radically transparent and accountable government processes, open avenues for citizens to access political leaders and policymakers, media that are independent and diverse, and opportunities for experts to meaningfully influence policy in their fields.

Ultimately, students must learn that citizens (including young ones) have a role to play in scrutinising public affairs and making their voices heard — not only through conventional channels like letter-writing, meeting with MPs, and voting (for those deemed old enough*) but also by taking direct action via rallies, sit-ins, strikes, boycotts, and acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, where these strategies are warranted. Philosopher and social scientist Brian Martin, in his paper ‘Protest in a liberal democracy’, elaborates:

Far from destabilising democracy, protest has been instrumental in forcing the introduction of most of the freedoms that now exist in liberal democracies. Direct action, mostly nonviolent, played a major role in the ending of slavery, extension of the franchise, curtailing ruthless aspects of the exploitation of labour and extending rights to women and minorities. Many of the so-called normal channels for working through the system, which are often recommended as prior to or preferable to direct action, have themselves been established through direct action. Many of the constitutions which embody the rights and restrictions which have come to be identified with the status quo were established not in calm contemplation but in the aftermath of social revolution or turmoil.

Martin’s paper — well worth reading in its entirety — goes on to broach a series of challenging questions in political philosophy:

Is it morally legitimate to break just laws in order to protest against unjust ones? For example, is it legitimate to block traffic if one agrees with traffic ordinances but wants to protest against laws against homosexuality? A narrow perspective, which requires civil disobedience not to challenge and hence undermine respect for valid laws, answers no. A broad perspective, which sees civil disobedience as part of a wider struggle for social justice, answers yes. Must civil disobedients accept any legal punishment as right which is imposed for their violation of the law? A narrow perspective, which puts acquiescence to the law and the state as an unquestionable priority, answers yes. A broad perspective, which puts pursuit of justice above acquiescence to the law and the state and hence questions punishment as well as the unjust law, answers no. Must civil disobedience be nonviolent? A narrow perspective, which is built on the assumption of the state monopoly over legitimate violence, answers yes. A broad perspective, which weighs state violence against countervailing violence without exempting either from moral judgement, answers no. (A broad perspective does not necessarily favour violence, since violence is often counterproductive. Rather, it does not accept the double standard of automatically condemning protester violence while justifying or ignoring state violence.)

I’m convinced that we shouldn’t shrink from raising these thorny questions and perspectives in school classrooms. As John Stuart Mill famously argued: without full, frequent and fearless discussion, even the most credible opinions will be reduced to dead dogma.

Unless we continue to dig deeper, our vital channels of thought and communication will soon fill with the sediment of unreflective orthodoxy. A more forthright and experiential Civics & Citizenship curriculum may be just the shovel we need.

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Note:

* See our philosophical stimulus on lowering the voting age and associated questions for discussion.

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The Philosophy Club works with students and teachers to develop a culture of critical and creative thinking through collaborative inquiry and dialogue.

You may be interested in our other blog posts concerning citizenship.