Burgerschapsonderwijs / Citizenship #1: Definitions and problems (1 of 2)

 ‘Learning without thinking is useless.
Thinking without learning is dangerous’ (attributed to Confucius)

 There is an on-going debate in the Netherlands about the place to be given to citizenship education – Burgerschapsonderwijs in Dutch. Citizenship (burgerschap) is in fact a required part of secondary schools’ curriculum; that is, all schools are legally required to teach it. Since teaching something necessitates first defining that something, the problem starts with a simple question: what does one mean with Citizenship and citizenship education?

While at first it may seem redundant to ask that question (after all, don’t we all know what being a citizen means?), it quickly becomes clear that it isn’t, as it turns out we don’t all agree on what citizenship means, nor what teaching citizenship entails.

I’m not exactly interested in tracing back the history of that subject, so suffice it to say that so far, one camp has dominated the Dutch discussion – something that is very obvious where I work. That camp basically says: Citizenship is Democratic citizenship, that is, citizenship as understood within a democratic framework and related to what our democracies consider vital – let me be French for a second and translate that as Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Liberté as in freedom to speak, think and be; Egalité as in everyone – whoever they are – having the same rights as all others; Fraternité as in treating everyone as a fellow citizen, deserving of your respect and support.

Now, no-one would argue against these lofty ideals being indeed building blocks of our living-together; and after all, if citizenship means anything it must mean the ability to co-exist with what is different from oneself to create a collective that functions without being a one-size-fits-all model. Being a citizen is the Platonic idea of being a participant in the Polis: responsible, respectful, equal and with everyone’s interests in mind for the good of that Polis – of that City, of that collective, of that society. Leaving aside Plato’s specific ideas of who could actually be a citizen and why (much less generous that the above might lead you to think), this Democracy-first Citizenship approach basically says: ‘If you know how things work, if you know how institutions work, if you learn what democracy means for us, if you understand that our values are these and you accept them, you’re good to go – you’re a citizen’. Knowledge is power; Go forth and multiply, one is tempted to add.

Can it be that simple?

I would like to argue that this approach to citizenship is flawed, incomplete and potentially problematic – and so is its implementation at schools. But there is a remedy!

I would like to argue that Citizenship education must have more approaches at its disposal than explaining how democratic institutions work, how one votes or what a society legally allows or disallows, values or rejects. And that those approaches are in the hands of all teachers, of all subjects.

I would like to argue that citizenship is also a set of skills that go beyond ‘knowing’ - skills that are necessary in dictatorships as much as in democracies, and which can be developed by (language) teachers through the use of fiction. Citizenship is a notion that encompasses democratic citizenship, it is not defined by it, and citizenship education should reflect that. Knowledge is power perhaps, but it is nothing without thinking skills.

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One problem with citizenship education – in the Netherlands at least – is that it has been delegated to a set of teachers, and made to focus on knowledge. It probably suited many that it should be so, as some became specialists, and others could stop thinking about how to deal with it. But the problem is that it introduces a false dichotomy; it factualises what is in effect a set of behavioural, social, cultural, societal and psychological relations; and it views thinking skills as secondary to knowledge.

It is also important to re-iterate what many have said (Biesta, among others): citizenship doesn’t start at 18 (or whichever age legal majority begins) – citizenship doesn’t start with being allowed to vote. Civic participation starts with early socialisation, it is an enculturation process, and like all such processes, it tends to make us forget that it is cultural, i.e. not universal. In other words, it’s difficult not to consider as normal and natural the values we hold dear and the institutions that stand (up) for them, which is why it is often difficult not to consider others’ values and institutions, if different from ours, as somehow not quite good enough (what Post-Marxist thinkers identify as constitutive of ideologies). There’s no better proof than Malinowski himself, founding father of practical, on-site anthropology, who shows in his diary that while he knew and understood South Pacific tribes’ norms and values, he still found it very difficult to consider those tribes as equals to Westerners. He knew they were, yet in his heart it was still a struggle to accept it.

So what is to be done, as the old Lenin phrase goes?

The first stage I think is to realise that knowledge in itself, while essential, is not enough. You must reflect on your knowledge, and you must be able to think for and against your knowledge. In fact, you must be able to reflect on how you think, and not just on what you know. You need critical thinking skills to build a cohesive society, and to ensure Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité .

A second stage is to immediately realise the limits of doing so on the basis of real-life examples in class. Because we are all very loyal to our internalised values, even if we know they are wrong or at least not quite right, discussing them openly is very difficult. We all know that as the classic case of ’When we’re taking about my mother/child/family, I’m allowed to be negative but you’re not’. Debating, in a group, the validity of your values when they do not entirely accord with others’ is a very confrontational thing to do; hearing others say that your grand-father, whom you love, is wrong to think the way he does is difficult if not impossible for a young learner. That learner is not thinking about the idea but about the grand-father: the heart and the guts dictate the thinking, whereas the thinking should be independent of them.

The first question then is: can that young learner be made to think clearly and objectively about issues close to their loyalties? Can that young learner dissociate themselves from those loyalties (understood or otherwise, vocalised or otherwise) and from those who embody those loyalties (friends, family)?

A second question is therefore: can we have such a learner exercise critical thinking skills in a safe environment, where their loyalties (therefore their identity) are not stretched?

I will argue next time that of course we can: by using fiction – Fiction as a safe place. Fiction as a safe retreat when loyalties get in the way. Fiction as a set of alternatives to help reflect, think, and grow as a citizen.

• B. Malinowski: A diary in the strict sense of the term; published 1967, written between 1914 and 1918 in New Guinea. A tough read at times but well worth the effort.