Questions I am repeatedly asked since South Africa’s sixth democratic election are: Why did students seem to be apathetic about voting? Why did they seem to take their democracy for granted? And why did young people in general seem to be disinterested in participating in their own democracy?
You see, it’s fine to ask why students or citizens are not voting, but then a few follow-up questions are: What are they voting for? For democracy? An enactment of responsible citizenship? What does this mean? Why would young people feel the need to vote, when neither democracy nor citizenship is visible to them?
But it is important to bear in mind that these are prescriptions that ought to be taught. Whether they are being taught, and whether what is being taught is being learnt, are two separate questions. For now, both these questions might be bypassed by asking, first, how prepared and, second, how willing our teachers are to teach democratic citizenship education.
Not only have there been large-scale assumptions that teachers know what it means to teach democratic citizenship education, but there remains an unequally uncontested assumption that citizenship and civic education can indeed be taught. Citizenship is embedded and made visible in how people give meaning to life on the personal, the interpersonal and the sociopolitical levels. Young people traverse numerous spaces and relationships and what these spaces and relationships entail depends on social and economic capital, which they might or might not have.
This means less concern with teaching frameworks and policies, and more attention to providing the contexts and conditions for the nurturing and thriving of diversity and mutual respect for all.
Strange, sounds a lot like George Soros' explanation of democracy.
Government studies and public admin should be taught in schools as a matter of understanding! Basic political theory and history is also vitally important for learners to know. Together with leadership skills and a solid dose of compulsory community service.