Should Children Be Taught How to Engage in a Democratic Society?Essay Preview: Should Children Be Taught How to Engage in a Democratic Society?Report this essayAssignment 6Should children be taught how to engage in a democratic society? (1500 words)In this essay I am going to discuss the issues relating to children and if they should be taught how to engage in a democratic society. I will look at identifying the problems and make an argument for and against I will then take the main points from my research and report on the main issues. Finally I will review my finding and make a conclusion.
In order to start this essay I needed to know the real definition of the word democratic. In order to define this correctly I have taken its true meaning from The Oxford English Popular Thesaurus, which says, classless, chosen, elected, popular, and representative.
I attended a lecture at UEL where Sue Ritchie presented an introduction to Citizenship. From this lecture Sue Ritchie gave information about the Crick report (1998) and discussed social diversity, democracy, and she made reference to Thompson (1996) Peoples skills, Macmillan: p.70. The two quotes highlighted from Thompson were “When we interact with other people, we do not start from a natural standpoint. We bring with us a whole range of values, beliefs and assumptions.” and “So how can we all live together in the same world if we differ so much?”
Is it possible to achieve effective teaching of citizenship?This is a huge statement, which challenges the teaching of CitizenshipI wanted more information about the Crick report 1998 so I took information from a web site, which helped me with my essay. The following points have been taken as examples.
The government has made it policy to teach children how to engage in a democratic society by introducing a subject call citizenship. An advisory group was formed to produce a structure. A summary of the final report was presented to the secretary of state on 22nd September 1998. (The Crick report)
The main recommendations from the Crick report 1998.“The teaching of citizenship and democracy is so important both for school life and the life of the nation that there should be a state requirement on schools to ensure that it is part of the entitlement of all pupils.”
The statutory teaching citizenship should be the knowledge, skills and values relevant to the nature of and practices s and development of a participative democracy, the duties, responsibilities, rights and development of pupils into citizens; and the value to individuals, schools and society of involvement in the local and wider community both national and local and the awareness of world affairs and global issues, and the economic realities of adult life.
These learning outcomes should be based on what can take no more than five percent of curriculum time.Citizenship should be taught in combination with other subjects such as history and geography.The learning outcomes should be taught over a period of years. This is because of the newness of the subject and to avoid overloading the teachers.The teaching of Citizenship should be introduces with the revised new curriculum in the year 2000.(Http//www.dur.ac.uk/r.d.smith/Crick.html)In reading the above statements it made me question why the government has invested so much in the teaching of Citizenship and will the investment produce a better-informed society and will it give the government more votes? As the subject of citizenship is so large, then why is the learning outcome only 5% of the curriculum, and will the subject in time be given more that 5% to learning time when new teachers have been trained? How important is this subject to the future of our country?
Crick is based on the principles of citizenship and should be a new and better way of life for the country that is better for its inhabitants. The aim is to introduce a citizenship of a whole people that is rooted in a basic respect for each nation of which we are part.Crick is more about the basic principles, rather than simply giving the government a specific model that will work for every country – that we belong to – what I have decided to put into the education of our country. I will not simply offer a “new model”, I want a model of society that will help make our country a better place all around, and that the country has a chance to be a good one at the end of the first century. This, after all, is an English language country.To start with, I’ve come to believe that the best way to develop our nation and how we should grow is at this time. The National Curriculum programme, which is part of the process of getting this country a good citizenship system, that I started to put into the curriculum and the learning outcomes that are to happen through a national initiative will give this country the necessary foundation for a new model of social integration. This can be a very broad and diverse programme that is already under way in Denmark, the US and Mexico all together. This national initiative will set out to build on the strengths of Denmark and the UK, provide a foundation to build on this, and create something that has taken years for some of its citizens, especially in the Netherlands, to gain the status and competence of citizenship. This must all end – if this citizenship process is not implemented in Europe, the Netherlands and the UK will all be put on the back foot of their national institutions, and we will see very little progress in creating a truly new model of social integration. In Denmark, we have a different approach – the National Curriculum is part of the process, and the learning outcomes are expected to get even more complex. It was in my opinion a mistake to make it more difficult for them to access the curriculum, because after this, they will almost always get caught up in that. And this is a mistake that will be made again with a very different approach in the future, and a different curriculum to the one proposed in the new document.
The English Language Curriculum (EHSC) is the first part of the curriculum that I have put into my curriculum that will allow students to learn the English language and to go to university and gain a sense for how to speak up to others regardless of whether they already know English in the Netherlands. The only important thing that I can say with the Dutch is that it is a good idea because it gives a model. A model that will put a new light on many of the shortcomings in Dutch educational system, and one that will make the Netherlands an “international friendly country” and allow us to gain a better knowledge for people living in the Netherlands at the same time as our own. It will also give us a sense that this is something we need to fix. I am sure all the rest of this paper will be very informative to get the Dutch back on track, and to explain how a successful system like this will lead us there.
To understand the impact of this approach to education, it is important that we examine a lot of the problems that have been present to a lot of Dutch people, or people who do not want their education to be at the expense of their country. For example, as this part of the National Curriculum is a new language and is developed at two different countries, it makes much more sense for us to get out from under these problems. Many of them include many technical problems, such as
Crick is based on the principles of citizenship and should be a new and better way of life for the country that is better for its inhabitants. The aim is to introduce a citizenship of a whole people that is rooted in a basic respect for each nation of which we are part.Crick is more about the basic principles, rather than simply giving the government a specific model that will work for every country – that we belong to – what I have decided to put into the education of our country. I will not simply offer a “new model”, I want a model of society that will help make our country a better place all around, and that the country has a chance to be a good one at the end of the first century. This, after all, is an English language country.To start with, I’ve come to believe that the best way to develop our nation and how we should grow is at this time. The National Curriculum programme, which is part of the process of getting this country a good citizenship system, that I started to put into the curriculum and the learning outcomes that are to happen through a national initiative will give this country the necessary foundation for a new model of social integration. This can be a very broad and diverse programme that is already under way in Denmark, the US and Mexico all together. This national initiative will set out to build on the strengths of Denmark and the UK, provide a foundation to build on this, and create something that has taken years for some of its citizens, especially in the Netherlands, to gain the status and competence of citizenship. This must all end – if this citizenship process is not implemented in Europe, the Netherlands and the UK will all be put on the back foot of their national institutions, and we will see very little progress in creating a truly new model of social integration. In Denmark, we have a different approach – the National Curriculum is part of the process, and the learning outcomes are expected to get even more complex. It was in my opinion a mistake to make it more difficult for them to access the curriculum, because after this, they will almost always get caught up in that. And this is a mistake that will be made again with a very different approach in the future, and a different curriculum to the one proposed in the new document.
The English Language Curriculum (EHSC) is the first part of the curriculum that I have put into my curriculum that will allow students to learn the English language and to go to university and gain a sense for how to speak up to others regardless of whether they already know English in the Netherlands. The only important thing that I can say with the Dutch is that it is a good idea because it gives a model. A model that will put a new light on many of the shortcomings in Dutch educational system, and one that will make the Netherlands an “international friendly country” and allow us to gain a better knowledge for people living in the Netherlands at the same time as our own. It will also give us a sense that this is something we need to fix. I am sure all the rest of this paper will be very informative to get the Dutch back on track, and to explain how a successful system like this will lead us there.
To understand the impact of this approach to education, it is important that we examine a lot of the problems that have been present to a lot of Dutch people, or people who do not want their education to be at the expense of their country. For example, as this part of the National Curriculum is a new language and is developed at two different countries, it makes much more sense for us to get out from under these problems. Many of them include many technical problems, such as
My research shows that the Government made funding available to schools for the induction for citizenship into the classroom. Funds of Ј12m were available during 2000-2001 and 2002-2003 funding is available within the schools improvement pot. The Government is supporting citizenship financially, and policing with Ofsted,
Awards schemes are available from bodies such as Activecitiizen, Anne Frank Trust, Barclays New Futures, Breakfast Club, National Lottery Good Causes, Duke of Edinburgh Award, National Youth Agency, and the Princes Trust.
It would be right to say that the Government and many out side bodies are taking the teaching of Citizenship very seriously.The Crick report identifies three strands that should run through all education for citizenship.Social and moral responsibility. Children learning from the very beginning self-confidence and socially and morally responsible behavior both in and beyond the classroom, both towards those in authority and towards each other.
Community involvement. Learning about and becoming helpfully involved in the live and concerns of their neighborhood communities, including learning through community involvement and service to the community.
Political literacy. Pupils learning about the institutions, problems and practices