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Citizenship Education: Is It Getting A Raw Deal? |
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More often than it is acknowledged, education is expected to play quite contradictory roles.
On the one hand it is expected to inculcate in learners attitudes and skills congenial to economic prosperity. In other words, education is expected to drive economic development by providing a skilled and educated workforce.
On the other hand, it is expected to develop in learners, moral and social values, democracy, citizenship and self-esteem.
On the surface of it these demands may not seem contradictory. In practice, however, they are. Often they are in competition with one another. One is valued more than the other, depending on the circumstances prevailing at the time.
For example, there is no doubt that the view that education exists to serve the interests of the economy dominates today. All over the world education systems are being reformed with a view to attune them to the needs of the economy. Economic competitiveness is the in-thing today. All forces, education being one of them, are being mobilized to realize this objective.
In economic forums and debates education is posited as the key to economic prosperity. In fact, it is interesting to observe that economic problems today are explained in terms of the quality of education. Poor economic performance is blamed on education.
How it is that education is expected to solve what essentially are economic problems surprises me at times. Education has become the bad guy. There is an ideological angle to this ‘blame mentality’, though. It is an escape route for economic planners and politicians.
Theorists of globalization agree generally that the latter (globalization) is transforming the nature of the nation-state. Developments in telecommunications and technology and increased flows in trade are eroding the power the nation-state used to command in determining domestic policy.
The evolution of sub-national and supranational layers of governance means that policy-making is no longer the preserve of domestic policy-makers and politicians. In an integrated world economy domestic economic policy is influenced by external factors as much as it is by local ones.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) have assumed a major role in policy-making. Domestic policy-makers are no longer in full control of domestic economies. They can no longer be certain that their policies will succeed.
At the same time they cannot come out and openly declare their impotence. Something else must be blamed for economic failures. That straw man is education. When economies fail it is education that is blamed.
By so doing economic planners and politicians are absolved from blame. It is also convenient to blame education in that to appear convincing they need to blame that which is within their control. It is easier to reform education than to reform the economy.
So once education is cast as the culprit a Commission of Inquiry can always immediately be instituted to come up with corrective measures. The measure (in the form a new education policy) is then sold to an unsuspecting public, often presented as a panacea to economic problems.
By so doing economic planners and politicians are able to conceal their impotence as they are engendered by globalization.
This ‘scapegoating’ exercise has one other unfortunate effect: it marginalizes the social mandate of education, what is often called Citizenship Education.
Ideals such as self-esteem, democracy, critical thinking, etc., are as a result cast as being ‘lofty’, ‘fuzzy’ and luxuries. Educating for citizenship is therefore viewed as a waste of scarce resources.
This attitude is then extended to those disciplines traditionally associated with citizenship education, i.e. the social sciences and humanities. The current bashing of these disciplines is symptomatic. In the sphere of education, these disciplines are cast as luxuries. Those who elect to study them must pay for them in full.
This is the philosophy underpinning the Grant/Loan scheme currently being used in tertiary education. It is important to point out that the taken-for-granted view that education, particularly vocational and technical education is a prerequisite for economic development, is in fact based on inconclusive research evidence.
It is on this inconclusive evidence that the current expansion of education in this country and many others is based. More importantly perhaps is that it is on the very same evidence that the social sciences and humanities have been relegated to the back waters, and yet these are the very disciplines needed in the moulding of the youth’s character.
How then is education expected to contribute towards the moulding of responsible citizens?
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