We consider that Citizenship Education must be relevant to the lives of learners and to the lives of those around them if it is to have any worthwhile effect. We also consider that Citizenship Education requires pupils to question social institutions and all their sources of information, assumed truths, parents, teachers and themselves. It is an area of study and an approach to engaging with communities and societies which should enable learners to unlock doors and their own potential. For young people to learn about themselves and those around them, they will have to engage with those with whom they share the spaces, rights and responsibilities inherent in being citizens. The objective of our perception and construction of Citizenship Education is for learners to understand how they can take informed and responsible action in order to hold to account those in government and others with power.
Our position fits within the paradigm of social justice, an essential element of which is to give voice to the powerless and the unheard. In order to achieve our objective, we need to deploy both historical analysis and systemic societal contrast. Furthermore, we need to consider a wider range than exclusively the young disempowered learners in order to provide an informed context in which to understand their views and concerns. We also need to consider teacher insights and the perspectives of those young learners who have the capacity to receive teaching according to the intended goals and therefore hold the empowering resources that make them representative of the majority society—those who have access to capital in all its forms.
Our reasons for taking a close look at how English and Swedish schools arrange for the development of youngsters as future citizens relate to the actual conditions for citizenship in both countries. Those countries have been selected because they approach education for citizenship in starkly contrasting ways, with it being an explicit and compulsory aspect of England’s National Curriculum—albeit one often ignored or only partially applied—while in Sweden it is an element of the social studies curriculum. Both countries can also be considered to have highly developed welfare systems which came about for different historical reasons. Those welfare systems have been under considerable strain in recent decades and are under threat from a range of political positions and organisation due particularly to the emergence of neoliberal policies and the illusory demands of “austerity politics”, and it is the simultaneous similarity and difference that attracts us to investigate them and make comparisons.
It is also the case that the English and Swedish societies and school systems have strong and significant similarities which can be seen as representative of other European societies and school systems. This allows the present study to contribute to ongoing discussions of key issues such as students’ knowledge, citizenship and social sustainability in a European context. Consequently, our intention is also to relate to the European research area regarding Citizenship Education, in particular to discuss the variations in both purpose and content of the various curricular and systemic approaches and the apparent motivations behind these.
Citizenship involves the potentially simultaneous membership of several collectives such as disability, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and social class. The intersectional approach1 draws our attention to ways in which such collective categories interact to constitute the conditions that affect people diversely, and it enables a richer understanding of the experiences, conditions and perspectives of young people than do the “traditional” insights that arise from considering each community in isolation. We also consider it essential that those experiences and insights primarily are articulated by the young people themselves. We therefore consider the work of T. H. Marshall (1950) and of Yuval-Davis (1997, 2011) to be both illuminating and essential to an understanding of the complex relationships and experiences which comprise citizenship, as explained below.
Formal and Real Terms for Citizenship
Marx wrote over 160 years ago that, “if you assume a particular civil society … you will get particular political conditions” (Marx and Engels 1973, p. 660), from which it must follow that any society divided on the grounds of class, ethnicity, gender, functionality, sexuality, etc., will present political conditions and power relations that reflect such divisions. It is also the case that there is likely to be a significant space between what is (the real ) and what is perceived (the formal ); just because there is inequality, it does not follow that everyone is aware of that inequality.
The real nature of citizenship , as we use the term, is therefore that which reflects the everyday experience of citizens. This will inevitably vary to some extent, dependent upon to which social categories an individual belongs and therefore what constitute that individual’s capabilities. The formal is a narrower, more standardised and, perhaps, more idealistic version. The formal is found in official documents and legislation, in textbooks and in curricula. It is idealistic in that it reflects the ideal version of life as we are intended to see and experience it. While the formal will be fairly consistent and established, often entrenched, the real will vary in respect of different experiences, background, belonging, identities etc.
This dichotomy, and our research approach, raises several questions of process and interpretation that we will address below. As we have stated above, there are good reasons to take a closer look at how English and Swedish schools arrange for youngsters’ futures as citizens according to the actual conditions for citizenship. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify and investigate the real meaning of citizenship ; who have access to it and who are excluded? What identities and origins lead to full citizenship and which are limited? What is the relationship between education and citizenship? What knowledge is perceived as valuable and which is useless? How important is school education in preparing young people to develop into citizenship in its real meaning? These are some of the issues we will discuss once our theoretical approach has been defined and clarified.
Marshall’s Threefold Definition of Citizenship—Opportunities and Limitations
In order to clarify the conditions necessary for citizenship in its real meaning (as opposed to the merely formal ), we refer to the British sociologist T. H. Marshall’s noted lecture in 1949 (1950). Marshall’s main thesis regarding citizenship was that, in Western industrialised countries, it takes three forms:
- i.Civil Citizenship, which is represented in equality before the law, freedom of speech and freedom of religion and other personal liberties;
- ii.Political Citizenship, typified by universal and equal s...