The House of Lords provides various opportunities for members to raise issues. I have been very fortunate in the number of occasions I have been successful in the ballot for a full debate; I have also raised issues or contributed to debate through a Question for Short Debate. The nature of the House – its membership and the inability of parties to move in any significant way against members – also facilitates the raising of contentious issues that may deserve an airing but which may be unpopular. Topics like assisted dying are clearly contentious but it is important that the arguments both for and against are heard. The House provides a vaulable forum for such debate.
I plan to do posts shortly on various issues that are highly contentious and which I think deserve discussing. In my case, I don’t have a strong view on them and don’t have a personal interest, which I think is an advantage in raising them. First, though, I wish to raise an issue on which I do have a view and something of a professional interest. It is something I touched upon in debate in the past session – and got a positive response from the Leader of the House – and one on which I may seek to initiate a debate in the next session. The issue is that of citizenship education.
The teaching of citizenship in schools is, in my view, a public good. It has the potential to create a politically aware public, well informed of our political system – its strengths and its weaknesses – and how they can contribute to and influence political debate. Part of the problem at the moment is a lack of awareness of politics, illustrated by the number of people who claim that they have no interest in politics because it doesn’t affect them. Politics affects everyone. A lack of understanding disempowers people. Parliament could do well to spend time discussing the value of citizenship teaching and what it can deliver in building links between public and Parliament.
However, there are problems with delivering citizenship teaching. Too many schools fail to take it seriously – there are not sufficient incentives for them to do so – with the result that they fail to devote sufficient resources to it. In some cases, this results in people who are not properly trained teaching citizenship; this is inherently dangerous, since political bias can creep in. The curriculum itself is too broad, encompassing topics that are socially important but not core to politics.
Some schools are good at teaching citizenship. The problem is with ensuring that the subject is taught well and consistently, with sufficient resources devoted to it. That means that both government and schools need to take it seriously. If readers have any experience of citizenship teaching, or any particular insights, I would be interested to hear from them.
In addition to civics classes in the USA we have two institutions which might be inspirational (if they do not already exist in the UK. I would think the proprieties would be different from basic differences in the society. These institutions are student job-shadowing and Boys ____ and Girls ____. One can insert “House of Lords”, “Water District”, “County”, “Wales” or anything else into the blanks. These are just a day or so each year in which real government facilities are surrendered to secondary students who have excelled in relevant studies and activities. It provides an engine for keeping focus on the mechanics of governance. Clinton met JFK at Boys Nation and arguably it focused his life. My ex-wife was hugely affected by her time in Girls State. I personaly was abroad during the year for such things but if it is not done in the UK I would dare to recommend it for consideration.
Whether her Britannic Majesty and the Archbishop of Canterbury could find acceptable protocol to participate might determine whether such a thing could have the emotional value it has here. Possibly it could not be done — but it might be valuable.
I think part of the problem is the word “citizenship”. For many it has connotations of the government knowing what’s best for us and appears to be yet another example of state involvement in our lives. In my mind it could only have come from the New Labour camp, so I was surprised to see that you are a Tory. “Citizenship” has implications for me of yet more micro-managing of teachers and the curriculum, a hallmark of the last twelve years.
In your paragraph where you describe the problem, you mention the word “politics” (or variations) six times. What you are clearly asking for is for schools to teach politics. Why do you want to spin this as “citizenship”? Perhaps you need to find a way to present it that does not come across as politically loaded or having an ulterior motive. e.g. “Current affairs”. The thought behind it needs to be: “it’s really interesting to understand how the country works” rather than “we think it’s important for society that you’re a good citizen”.
Maybe the answer is broader still – educate young people well and their understanding of politics will naturally improve. I don’t pretend that this is an easy solution but how many people who are currently interested in politics (or are good citizens if that is how you see it) were taught it in school? My interest has come from having had a good education. How about you?
It’s great to read about your support of and interest in Citizenship Education – I very much hope you initiate that debate.
You identify a couple of problems with the existing arrangements namely breadth of the curriculum and the quality of teaching and I agree with you on both counts but both are symptomatic of a lack of central direction and support for the curriculum.
As a young subject (introduced in 2002) Citizenship Education was always going to need sustained support from the centre but support has dwindled greatly in recent years. This has fed through government departments out to local authorities and down to head teachers, management teams and teachers resulting in the lacklustre approach to teaching Citizenship that many (but by no means all) schools take.
Teacher training is a big problem but, in my opinion, much that is wrong with Citizenship would be solved by greater and noisier support from the centre. A champion at the heart of government would give a much needed lift and greater strategic direction.
The elephant in the room of course is what impact a change of government would have on current arrangements. It would be great to hear your thoughts on this Lord Norton.
Michael Raftery
Hansard Society
Great Heavens, Lord Norton, you don’t think the state wishes the population to be citizens, do you? It certainly doesn’t behave that way.
Citizenship would require a degree of responsibility, and that is something that central government clearly does not wish anything but itself to possess. I think it considers such a scheme far too French.
Besides which, if citizenship had any value, Labour would nationalise it and the Conservatives would then sell it. Or, if it didn’t but was required, somebody within the M25 would create a standard minimum specification of citizenship, and a Compulsory Competitive Tendering process would be forced on local authorities to achieve the said specification at the minimum price.
Central Government places great emphasis on local people not being able to take decisions. Local councils, which created the infrastructure and once ran water, health and in many cases electricity, transport and phone undertakings, have been divested of them, and they have been regionalised and/or largely sold. Councils are no longer able to even employ their own refuse collectors and have lost many of their schools to that dreadful abomination called Whitehall.
And, after years of eating away at these powers and responsibilities, Central Government wonders that the persons which it governs are no longer living up to what it terms “citizens.”
How very English.
I’m not sure how much trained teachers will prevent bias – some will add it consciously or unconsciously even with training. Either way there will almost inevitably be a bias created by the available topic the curriculum mandates and the schools freely or under pressure select. Just as you can study what you want in history as long as as its Hitler/the holocaust! An exaggeration, for effect, I know but I can see civics shoehorned into much the same difficulty.
(Offtopic do you know of any studies/papers online that show the effect of the various proposals for the reduction in the number of MPs in terms of the differential number of votes needed for Lab/Tories to gain a given number of MPs?)
Thankyou for a challenging piece on Citizenship education- most pertinent a decade after the Crick Report. I shall be sending you a copy of our latest booklet Testimonies. It is a compilation of writings by head teachers, Citizenship teachers, young people and others about the impact of Citizenship education on them and their lives since 2002-the year of the introduction of Citizenship education into the school curriculum in key stages 3 and 4. The Testimonies bear witness to the enormous potential of the subject to skill pupils to become active citizens, helping to enable schools where standards are raised and communities are more effective. Only Citizenship education can provide an entitlement for young people to gain the skills and the motivation needed to address the democratic deficit. New reports by Ofsted and NFER this Autumn will also evidence this. The report by the Education Select Committee last year into Citizenship education is also worth reading. Chris waller, Professional Officer, Association for Citizenship Teaching.
This is a very, very good idea, not just for citizenship, but it can apply for many other aspects of education that do not fall under the current system.
I left High School with no understanding of how this country works, and it took until much later to work it all out, of course, once I did I too started wondering what the point was, but nevermind.
I think much of the problem is in the way that the education system works, something like citizenship education seems to me to require some flexibility in its approach – current events, PMQs, the Lords and so forth – as politics is an always moving thing, and not suited to how the current system is structured.
I remember I was leaving school just as it was being brought in. Once we had the basics covered (what taxation and other things actually were and a rough idea of how they worked) we were pretty much free to initiate debate on the topics of the day.
However, it lacked structure and didn’t seem to be in order with other subjects. Everything seems to be so dissociated, where what is actually needed is a cohesive education. History and English can be taught (at secondary level at least) to compliment each other. Topics can interlink and new intellect gained in one lesson can be utilized in anohter, or certain developments can be studied in history, whilst in literature, a book or poem from the period could be read and the historical context could be interpreted alongside it.
Similarly, Citizenship should have been structured with a ‘five year plan’ (for want of a better, non-communist phrase) in mind, where perhaps the development of citizenship over the course of time – the acquisition of extra rights, suffrage – could be developed as such important topics are analysed in History and its contemporary novels countenanced in Literature. Perhaps we could even look at how progressive taxation works in Maths, or the geographical conditions that make middle east warzones so hazardous in Geography.
It all could link together quite well, but it seems that everything is put into its own cupboard and nobody ever takes a more cohesive, synoptic look at all subjects as a whole in those five years when that’s what’s really needed.
I know it would be a big project that would probably require more top-down (oh doom and gloom) approach, but I think they should at least give it a try.
Kate: do you really wish to be a citizen in the same country as the morons that inhabit Westminster? Surely not! Surely you have a greater sense of citizenship than to place your allegance alongside persons sent there to get them out of the way by their local communities for four or five years at a time due to lack of space in the local prisons and asylums?
My God, you’ll be voting next, and thus providing your statistical backing for the moronic first past the post system.
Get thee to the inside of the M25, and do not be seen outside it again!
Thanks for some very interesting and enlightening comments. I am much encouraged by the responses.
Frank W. Summers III: We do have various placement and shadowing programmes. Some universities organise parliamentary placements as part of a degree course – I run such a course – and it is not unusual for sixth-form pupils to shadow the local MP for a week or so. Parliament also has an education programme than enables groups of school children to visit Parliament; the number doing so has increased substantially. However, all these opportunities only encompass a minority of young people. The way to reach all schoolchildren is through citizenship education.
Julian Gall: There are indeed various problems with the use of the term: for some, it has political connotations, not least given that people are subjects of the Crown and not citizens, and for others it sounds too much like the old ‘civics’ classes, taught on a wet Wednesday afternoon by a teacher who drew the short straw. I use the term simply because it is the one already in use and my principal concern is with its delivery. If it was to re-named politics, it would also attract criticism: some people cannot separate ‘politics’ from partisanship. I did study politics (titled Government and Public Affairs) at 0-level – it wasn’t offered at A-level – before taking it as a degree subject, but my interest in politics pre-dates the formal study.
Michael Raftery: I agree completely with your analysis. There was initial enthusiasm and support from the centre, but that declined following the departure of David Blunkett as Education Secretary. Citizenship education has strong support from some leading Conservatives, not least Lord Baker (Ken Baker). I shall be pressing my case under a future Conservative Government.
stephenpaterson: You write almost as if citizenship education was not already on the curriculum. The challenge is to ensure that the resources for it are enhanced and that schools take it seriously as a subject. I am not against schools having a large degree of discretion as to how it is delivered – the best teachers tend to be the most innovative – but the essential thing is to get it embedded in the consciousness of headteachers.
Croft: The bias is greatest where you rely on people who are not properly trained in the subject. Bias is not a great problem in schools (or universities, for that matter) where politics is taught. A-level politics is often taught by politics graduates who have gone into teaching through the history route and who offer to teach politics. They know how to teach it and usually do so enthusiastically and well. The task of the teacher is to teach students how to think, not what to think. If you are trained in the subject, you know how to present both sides of the argument. (On your other query, this is something I am exploring. I am an advocate of reducing the number of MPs, though my primary concern in exploring the consequences has been the effect on constituency service rather than on the partisan benefits.)
Chris Waller: Many thanks. I shall look forward to receiving the booklet. I did draw on the report of the Education Select Committee in making my comments in the House; I was also influenced by a briefing from a former citizenship teacher – ‘former’ because his school did not give the subject priority and when there were financial pressures his was the first post to go.
Troika21: You make some telling points. It is important to explain the process when people are still at school. I take your point about the dynamic nature of politics, but I think that can be encompassed within the teaching curriculum; indeed,the very dynamics should be part of the teaching. There is certainly a practical problem in keeping track of what is happening. In this respect, material made available on the web (on, for example, the Parliament website) is a great boon.
Kyle Mulholland: You make an excellent point. I agree. Indeed, I think it crucial that students should be able to see the relationship. If citizenship is taught as a discrete subject, where students fail to see the connection with history and other subjects, then I think we have failed. The ‘eureka moment’ is when a student realises the relationships between subjects and can draw on one for understanding and explaining another.
Well I was taught politics by someone who had ‘gone into teaching through the history route and who offer(ed) to teach politics’. The teacher was open about their personal politics but I believe that by the time you reach A-Level students ought to be able to engage with and distinguish between a teachers view, their own view and an impartial position. It does seem somewhat of a sine qua non of the subject!
On the other point, I assume people must have done some calculations as it’s repeatedly under discussion. I seem to remember one of the other LotB commenting that much an MP is asked to do is really not their job. So bigger constituencies would seem to present an opportunity for MPs to rationalise what exactly their job is and isn’t and what properly falls to Cllrs, AM, MSP and so on.
Croft: There is no need for a teacher to express a partisan opinion, at whatever level, since their task is to teach students how to think, not what to think. I take the view that for a teacher to make partisan observations(as opposed to being known for having a partisan view outside the classroom) is to undermine the confidence of pupils.
Creating larger constituencies may well force MPs to concentrate on those tasks which MPs alone can undertake and devote less time to those tasks for which they do not have responsibility and which could just as well (and often better) be performed by other grievance-chasing agencies.
Lord Norton, you say that people are subjects of the Crown and not citizens; are you certain that is true? I only ask because I know that my passport declares me a British citizen, and I thought I recalled hearing about something in the 1980’s that involved turning subjects into citizens.
Len: We are formally citizens, but because the term has republican connotations many people dislike it. I should have said that we are citizens and subjects. If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified we become both UK citizens and EU citizens.
Well I was taught politics by someone who had 'gone into teaching through the history route and who offer(ed) to teach politics'. The teacher was open about their personal politics but I believe that by the time you reach A-Level students ought to be able to engage with and distinguish between a teachers view, their own view and an impartial position. It does seem somewhat of a sine qua non of the subject!
On the other point, I assume people must have done some calculations as it's repeatedly under discussion. I seem to remember one of the other LotB commenting that much an MP is asked to do is really not their job. So bigger constituencies would seem to present an opportunity for MPs to rationalise what exactly their job is and isn't and what properly falls to Cllrs, AM, MSP and so on….
The nearest I got to any ‘citizenship education’ was in my 6th form “general studies” lessons. An hour a week for 6 weeks, we we taught the difference between government & parliament, the roles of local MP’s and the House of Lords, how laws are passed, and how the voting system works (most of my class believed you voted for the PM, rather than for your local MP). It was relatively interesting, but aside from Jury Duty, paying taxes, and needing various licenses for certain activities, I still couldn’t tell you what my ‘duties’ as a citizen are.
I think the problem with a lack of interest in politics stems from the intricacies of political language:- it’s almost entirely impenetrable to anyone under the age of about 15, and can be pretty impenetrable for anyone with even a casual interest. I had to read the Guardian for about year before I could make head-or-tail of the Private Eye, and I had to read THAT for a year before I could make sense out of some of Humphrey Appleby’s speeches. Understanding politics involves understand a wealth of new words and concepts first.
Joey: Thanks for drawing attention to your experience; that is most helpful. You identify well the continuing limitations. I take your point about language. It is a difficult problem. Attempts have been made to simplify the language. In the Lords,for example, we used to have something called Unstarred Questions. Nobody outside really understood what this meant. We have now re-named them ‘Questions for short debate’. However, it is not clear how far one can go. ‘Secondary legislation’, for example, may not be a particularly clear or exciting term, but I am not sure what could replace it. The same with many other terms. Part of the problem is that those of us in the process tend to get rather used to the terminology, so it is difficult for us to stand back and recognise the problems it causes for other people. It is helpful when others draw attention to particularly impenetrable terminology. If anyone has suggestions, I would very much welcome them.
Having produced I’m a Councillor, Get me out of here! for 7 years the reaction we get from students and teachers is that they are hungry for good ways to teach the subject. The problem is that Citizenship is still a long way down the list of priorities for schools and will remain that way whilst league tables and DCSF reporting requirements force the attention on the multitude of other subjects on which schools are measured. Unfortunately very few people, government and parents alike, really care too much about how well a school performs in Citizenship teaching.
Shane McCracken: I very much agree. The barriers to be overcome, at the level of government, schools and, indeed, parents, are substantial. We need to create the conditions in which schools recognise that it is in their own interests to take the subject seriously. There have to be incentives built into the system.
Citizenship is something the citizens have to teach central government. Westminster is about as far away from citizenship as it is possible to get. A good starting point would be to talk to fellow citizens on the topic of: “This is Westminster: how do we work together to avoid being in any was like it?”
Really, Lord Norton, what an enormously pompous, arrogant lot of twaddle this posting is! Would we purport to arrive at Westminster with a course to teach you how to be members of the House of Lords? I do realise the House has been deeply envious of the French with their romantic history of tumbrils and guillotines, but this really is going too far.
You appear to think that my earlier posting was in ignorance of the fact the government already purports to teach citizenship. I am afraid that you and the government on the one hand, and I on the other, have totally different concepts of citizenship.
I imagine, for example, that citizenship for you involves voting in an election. For me, citizenship requires not voting in an election because to vote in a first past the post election would be to add credibility to a system that does not deserve it, and therefore contrary to my principles of citizenship. The attribution of apathy to people like me by politicians and the London media is, to me, a demonstration of the citizens’ failure to provide basic education in fundamental citizenship to the inhabitants of London in general and Westminster in particular.
You are a Lord.
<strongI am a Citizen.
Know your damn place!
Stephen Paterson: I know a good deal about pomposity (some people think I am an expert) as well as citizenship education. You are on thin ground on both. We do have some training courses at the Lords and your imagination in terms of what I think of citizenship plays you false. Citizenship education is education, not indoctrination, and can encompass discussing why people vote and why they do not vote as well as the normative dimensions of each. I may also add, perhaps pompously but nonetheless relevantly, that I am also an academic.
I knew I’d regret that comment when I posted it.
I think what I’m really unhappy about is the title “citizenship education”. It has a nasty Orwellian ring to it. The content, insofar as I can make out, seems fine, and I think there should be more of it. But perhaps “social studies” would be more fitting?
Lord Norton: The notion of UK citizenship is somewhat facile.
EC citizens come here and set up shop as economic migrants without having to attend citizenship classes whilst non EC citizens do if they want residency. Even then UK companies bring foreign nationals here by the bucket load on secondment programmes without citizenship education.
As for UK nationals, those immersed in foreign cultures in colonised parts of our cities speak English as a second language and often their only exposure to British culture is from our American culture dominated TV. The rest seem to thing that they are part American and that British culture is something they are supposed to know about but don’t.
Members of ethnic communities are viewed with suspicion both in their originating country and here. In fact they exist in a cultural limbo being neither one thing nor the other. Education in these locations touches on Britishness but it has no relevance being simply academic. Outside of ethnic communities history education in schools concentrates on modern European history as British Imperial history or just plain British history is regarded as not PC. Again individuals find themselves afloat and without any sense of national identity.
The BNP are preparing there own version of Britishness and it will be all white on the night so no need to worry? Nature abhors a vacuum and the vacuous BNP will fill it.
Senex: I don’t disagree with much of what you write, though I do tend to agree with David Blunkett that, for people in ethnic communities who do not speak English, learning the language, as well as about the nature and customs of the society in which they live, is empowering. It contributes to getting them out of the cultural limbo to which you refer. The irony of the BNP is that they claim to be ‘British’ without actually understanding what Britishness actually constitutes.
stephenpaterson: I agree with you in respect of the name. Citizenship education as a title annoys some people because they dislike the name citizenship. Some people object because it sounds too much like the old ‘civics’ that it effectively replaced. I think the main problem is simply that it doesn’t really convey anything that is likely to excite the very pupils one wants to get engaged with the subject. ‘Social studies’ would be an improvement, but again doesn’t have the ‘wow’ factor (and may lead some people to think it is a soft subject). I would certainly welcome suggestions for an alternative name.