Radical citizenship education

Abstract

All education is political; the radical approach to Citizenship Education promotes social justice and critical active participation. In synthesizing a pedagogy of discomfort and the principles of subversive teaching, this is predicated on the notion that authority should be accountable, that people should be able and enabled to take decision makers to task, that those decision makers are the servants of the people. This article is based on research conducted and published during 16 years as subject leader for Citizenship Education on a pre-service qualifying programme for specialist teachers. It is adapted from the commentary submitted as part of my PhD by publication. The proposed ‘Radical Citizenship Education’ aims to enable people to question and, if they wish, to change social circumstances rather than to stoically accept the status quo. Couched within a framework which owes as much to Postman and Weingartner as it does to Marxism, studies are summarized largely chronologically to explain and contextualize the data collected. The influence of many other thinkers and writers is acknowledged, from the 19th Century to the 21st, in the continued belief that the purpose of Citizenship Education should not be to protect the civic landscape, but to change it.