Member News
16th November 2010
Andy Thornton, chief executive of the Citizenship Foundation, explains to ePolitix.com why citizenship education should remain firmly on the national curriculum.
Your background is in the third sector and specifically youth volunteering; how has this equipped you for your new role at the Citizenship Foundation?
I'm particularly interested in the way that the voluntary and the statutory overlap. I think I'm similar to many people who came into the voluntary sector because of specific issues and then discover that they are complex and enmeshed with the political sphere. Before you know it you're embroiled in dimensions of the political will of the wider population, and what seemed like a single issue is connected to how society is formed and sustained. I think that politics is the art of negotiating and managing the social order to everyone's best possible outcome – there is no avoiding that, and we all need to get wise to it. So to return to youth volunteering: it is a way in and an aspect of creating better futures, because many young people discover deeper truths about society that way – as well as helping themselves and others.
The Citizenship Foundation is a founding member of 'Democratic Life'; a coalition of organisations that champion citizenship education – who is involved in the coalition and why have you taken this approach?
The coalition was founded by a number of us – Amnesty International, Association for Citizenship Teaching, British Youth Council, Changemakers, CSV, Hansard Society, Institute for Global Ethics UK Trust, involver, and LSN – and has been joined by another 11 organisations since then, plus over 200 individuals, including many teachers and headteachers, who feel that to lose citizenship education from the national curriculum would be a retrograde step.
We decided to form the coalition for fairly simple reasons: to evidence the strength of opinion, to combine arguments and perspectives for a more compelling campaign, and to provide support and information on the proposals to as many networks as possible. We also want to reach out to opinion-formers in government, giving them the courage that they will be representing a large constituency if they stand out against any measure to reduce schools' delivery of education for democracy and community action.
As an organisation are you wary that citizenship education could be at risk because of the government's moves to open up the curriculum in schools?
We have heard indications that the new government's rationalisation of the curriculum will seek to relegate statutory citizenship education, and they certainly haven't denied it. We can see their desire to slim down the burden on teachers by lowering the number of expectations and orders on their working day, but to remove this subject, and to do it now when our country needs capacity for citizenship to get through the momentous times of change we're in, well it just can't make sense. We certainly don't want to burden teachers, but we think that there are other ways to do this, and elements of school efficiency that can leave citizenship education intact and get the best for the Big Society aspirations that we welcome.
Why do you believe citizenship education is crucial for a healthy democracy?
At the highest level: because it's fair and creates a fair and inclusive society. But I need to unpack that…
When everyone is equally capable of contributing to the negotiation and management of our common life then we are most stable, because their voices have been included, and social justice is more likely to prevail because no-one has been left out. It's not simply an issue for education, it's an issue for wider society: how will we prepare the next generation to have the tools to perpetuate strong democracy? We'll do it by taking responsibility for passing the competence down to the next generation, rather than expecting their compliance to our blueprint. This serves deeper needs for prosperity and sustainability. So if we want to pass that down, and we want to make it available to everyone, then an obvious place to embed it is in the educational system. But it needs to happen all over the place – in informal settings, around the dinner table and TV sets, in any gatherings where people exchange the know-how to build society.
As I see it, social justice is the oxygen in our collective lifeblood and without it our societies become unhealthy. Somehow we've got to let the next generation realise that before they think the X Factor is more important… But that kind of awareness won't happen just through teaching – people have got to get involved, and they've got to have their fear of getting involved taken away, and that's another practical thing that schools can encourage and model. An effective citizenship-rich school doesn't just teach it – they live it and they introduce their students to the value of democracy in simple and rewarding ways, whether it's through community engagement or democratic decisions in everyday school life.
Is there a lot of disparity in the way citizenship education is taught across schools? If so, do you think there is an efficient way to remedy this?
Yes – the evidence is clear on that. Some schools have resisted it from the start. For some it's been a badge of honour, because they perceived its imposition as a New Labour device. Their governors thought the same, so they didn't mind approaching it with disdain.
There are clearly very simple, tried and tested methods of getting better teaching around such a subject – like giving more training to practitioners, and appointing a specialist teacher in every school, so it isn't the Cinderella subject that gets the fag-end of everyone's time. It's a much more complex and demanding subject than that. I used to help teachers deliver sex education to kids in poorer areas of Glasgow. It didn't take long to build their confidence, despite their trepidation. Citizenship is no different on one level, in that you need to watch someone doing it well, and take in the tricks of tackling the nuances of the subject, but it's a lot broader and far-reaching in its scope than PHSE, and so schools need more and better-dedicated resources.
The criminal thing would be if it was pulled now though, because the research is showing that the competences, and the networks and the professionalism are building and the resources for teaching (like the many that the Citizenship Foundation has developed) are now in people's hands. These things take a while to build and certainly don't happen overnight, but it's becoming much better delivered. A sustained inspection system, accompanied by placing a high value on citizenship education's delivery, will take away people's doubts as to its value. It really is a matter for conviction, just like every other aspect of the Big Society idea: it would be very strange if this government – above all others – couldn't see that.
Article Comments
What a load of hogwash. Full, as it is, of excruciatingly annoying public sector meaningless terms and phraseology adopted by the 'third sector' in an effort to appease the civil service bureaucrats that dish out the cash. The cash in question in this case being a commodity that, in terms of civil service thinking, has already lost connection with its private sector wealth creating tax paying source.
A healthy democracy, if that's the aim of the Citizen Foundation, starts with the example set by our elected representatives. The examples set here imply that we should all be self-serving sycophantic career politicians that milk the system at every opportunity. It is an example that teaches the observer that to reach a position in society that allows one to obtain authority over others one should either acquire loads of cash or have ones genetic origins firmly based in wealth. Wealth and power are the yard sticks by which success is measured by Western Societies and others. Persons so equipped, history would have us believe, provides the justification as to why those with wealthy and privileged are best equipped to understand the mechanics that make a cohesive functioning society. With wealth comes power and influence, that is the mantra and we all know it to be true. Wealth and power provide the means to determine how others in society will lead their lives much to the annoyance of those without wealth and power.
How much does friend Thornton with his posh 'Chief Executive' job tile take in terms of financial reward for his undoubted precious time in support of the Citizen Foundation? I very much doubt if he himself is acting as a volunteer in his third sector world. If he doesn't get a cut subject to the usual PAYE regulations I would expect the 'out of pocket' expenses are no small figure. Perhaps he gets a bit of both. No matter how friend Thornton is recompensed for his undoubted important and valuable time one cannot escape the fact that the time children and young adults spend in education is finite and as such more brain washing should not be added to that which already exists.
Selfishness is not removed by preaching garbage or in fact by preaching at all, good, bad or indifferent and it is certainly not removed by preaching that contains a hidden political agenda. The young are far too clever at spotting crap. Garbage in any form eats into and robs the finite time required to equip a child with the tools needed to survive society when they leave education.
If friend Thornton's aim is to instil a sense of responsibility in an individual that is sufficiently powerful for one person to act in support of another without seeking reward then his Citizen Foundation is starting in the wrong place. Perhaps he should set himself up in a port-a-cabin outside the London Parliament and every council office throughout the country followed by several more based near the European Commission's many offices. At least in these places they will all speak the same language and benefit the most from his evangelism.
The poor have enough problems surviving from day to day without the no doubt well-meaning preaching of friend Thornton and the Citizen Foundation. With success measured as it is friend Thornton and the Citizen Foundation better get used to the fact that no matter how much they preach good citizenship the poor are going to act badly. Seeing as there are more of poor and disenfranchised than there are rich and powerful, cleaning up the mess afterwards will always be bloody expensive. That's a situation that is inevitable when the playing field slopes very much in favour of the few.
Kevin Jones
16th Nov 2010 at 10:47 am
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