Education, Democracy and Inequality

Political Engagement and Citizenship Education in Europe

Bryony Hoskins, Jan Germen Janmaat

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781137489753
• eBook ISBN: 9781137489760
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Comparative Education

This book posits that national education systems are enhancing socioeconomic inequalities in political engagement. While the democratic ideal is social equality in political engagement, the authors demonstrate that the English education system is recreating and enhancing entrenched democratic inequalities. In Europe, the UK has the strongest correlation between social background and voting behaviours. Examining the role of the school and the education system in the potential reproduction of these inequalities, the authors draw upon the theories of Bourdieu and Bernstein and compare the English school system to other European countries to analyse barriers that are put along the way to political engagement. In times of political disaffection, frustration and polarisation, it is particularly important to uncover why young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to engage politically, and to help inspire future generations to use their voice. This timely book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational inequality and political engagement.

© The Author(s) 2019

B. Hoskins, J. G. JanmaatEducation, Democracy and InequalityEducation, Economy and Societyhttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48976-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Bryony Hoskins¹ and Jan Germen Janmaat²

(1)

Department of Social Science, University of Roehampton, London, UK

(2)

Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

Bryony Hoskins (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Jan Germen Janmaat

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Why This Book and Why Now?

The level of youth participation in the 2017 UK election is contested and widely debated (Sloam et al. 2018; Sloam and Henn 2019; Prosser et al. 2018). However , what is uncontested is the fact that by some considerable margin the social group who voted the least were disadvantaged young people (young people aged 18–34 who were either unemployed or doing unskilled and semi-skilled labour). Their level of voter turnout was about 35% (Ipsos MORI 2017). The second-lowest group in terms of turnout levels were young people (18–34) doing skilled manual labour at 49%. All other social groups according to gender, age, social class and ethnicity had a turnout rate of more than 50% and the overall turnout was about 63% (Ipsos MORI 2017). Thus, the intersection between social class and age was the crucial factor amongst the myriad of ways in which people differ that defines the likelihood that they voted in the 2017 election. Research indicates that political participation at a young age instils patterns of behaviour that individuals draw on through the rest of their lives (Flanagan and Levine 2010). Thus, from this initial evidence, social differences in political engagement are unlikely to improve in the short term, and it is the next generation currently in education that we need to support in their learning of political engagement.

The phenomenon of socioeconomic inequalities in political engagement unfortunately is not new, not confined just to voting and applies to most of the democratic western world (Dalton 2017). Nevertheless, these inequalities are significantly worse in the UK compared to other countries in Europe. To see this visually, the graph in Fig. 1.1 shows the strength of the association between socioeconomic background, as measured with parental education and occupation, and electoral participation for 14-year-olds and young adults across Europe. The UK stands out as the country in Europe with the largest effect of social background on voting for both age groups (voting intentions for the 14-year-olds). This effect is positive, which means that turnout among young people of disadvantaged backgrounds is much lower than among their more socially privileged peers.

Fig. 1.1

The relation between social background and voting among two age groups. Sources: ICCS 2009 for the 14-year-olds; European Social Survey, Rounds 4–7 (2008–2014) for the young adults

Adding to the importance and urgency of examining how social disparities in political participation come about, particularly in the UK, is the fact that these disparities appear to become more salient during adolescence. This is demonstrated by Fig. 1.2, which shows that the association between socioeconomic status (SES) and intention to vote among young people in England is becoming stronger between the ages of 12 and 20, moving from an insignificant positive correlation of 0.15 to a significant one of 0.31.

Fig. 1.2

The relation between social background and intention to vote among English teenagers. Source: The Citizenship Education Longitudinal Study (CELS)

The democratic ideal is social equality in political voice. The justification for this is that everybody’s views and needs should be taken into account in political decisions and policy development for a democracy to be truly representative and responsive to its electorate. Nevertheless, social inequalities in political engagement have been rife within western democracies for a considerable amount of time, and the evidence suggests that this gap is increasing in the ever more unequal and globalised world in which we live (Dalton 2017). This phenomenon has been connected to ‘Diploma democracy’ (Bovens and Wille 2017, p. 140), which refers to a situation where the university educated dominate the parliaments, the political parties, NGOs and even protest marches whilst the less educated are participating less in all these political arenas and have great difficulty in having their voices heard. The long-term effect of this has been that the educated and wealthy have acquired a greater influence on public policy (Verba et al. 1995), leaving the poor and least educated feeling alienated, powerless and distrustful of mainstream politics (Bovens and Wille 2017). The feeling of political alienation not only excludes certain voices from the decision-making process but also leaves untapped frustration, which has been exploited in referendums and elections by populist and extremist parties (Huber and Ruth 2017; Kriesi 2014; Mair 2009; Katz and Peter 2009). These parties and political agendas have quite successfully positioned themselves as outsiders agitating against the political elite and have had some success in politically mobilising the disaffected and lower socioeconomic groups, as exemplified by the UK EU referendum in 2016, Trump’s election in the US in 2016 and the victories of populist anti-immigrant parties in the 2018 Hungarian and Italian parliamentary elections.

Instead of tackling the issue of political alienation head-on with a strong citizenship education (CE) programme, gradually more and more schools in England have been able to opt out of citizenship education as they have taken on the status of academies or free schools and are only required to teach Math, Science, English and Religious Education. In England in 2018, just under three quarters of state-funded secondary schools had this status and their number is growing rapidly (UK Government 2018). Thus, this recent trend in England may well undo the progress made with the introduction of compulsory citizenship education in the national curriculum in 2001. In the US, a country which the UK often follows, inequalities in the provision of citizenship education have become so extreme that in New York, students are suing the Rhode Island Department of Education for not providing the education that they need to vote or have their voices heard (New York Times 2018).

Nevertheless, citizenship education may not always be the most effective way to learn political engagement. How young people learn to politically engage is complex and the influence of social class and family background on this process is even more difficult to tease out. Recent political socialisation research indicates that the political alienation and disengagement of the disadvantaged are passed down from one generation to the next (Brady et al. 2015; Hoskins et al. 2017), thus maintaining the status quo and preventing social mobility in political engagement. Nevertheless, until now, there are few in-depth theories that explain the reproduction of social inequalities in political engagement and little in the way of systematic analysis of empirical data on the role of the school in this process. In this regard, Brady et al. (2015) berates the lack of political socialisation theory and empirical research that identifies the transmission process between generations of economic, human and social capital, and how this perpetuates unequal patterns of political engagement. Rather than researching the education system to explore how social inequalities in political engagement are reproduced, much of the focus of recent political science research has been on the social status afforded by education (Nie et al. 1996; Campbell 2006; Dalton 2017) and contextual factors such as the changing nature of political participation in western democracies, which demands higher levels of knowledge and skills to participate (Dalton 2017). We might have thought that the question of social reproduction in political engagement demands attention from the education field, but few educational studies appear to have focused on it. This book addresses this gap by discussing theories and evidence of the socialisati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Learning Political Engagement
• 3. Access to Forms of Political Learning
• 4. Social Gaps in the Forms of Learning and Political Engagement: 11–16-Year-Olds in England
• 5. England in a Comparative Light: Lower Secondary
• 6. Learning Political Engagement in Further and Higher Education in England
• 7. The Influence of Post-16 Education on Political Engagement: England Compared to Other States
• 8. Conclusions and Implications for Policy and Practice
• Correction to: Education, Democracy and Inequality
• Back Matter