CANADIAN SOCIAL STUDIES
VOLUME 38 NUMBER 1, FALL 2003

Feature Article

The Centrality of Critical Thinking in Citizenship Education

Ian Wright

University of British Columbia

 

Introduction

The centrality of critical thinking has been impressed upon us in the social studies literature and in curriculum guides for so long that it has taken on motherhood status. The task of education in a democracy is to help students learn how to deliberate with others about the nature of the public good and how to bring these goods about. Deliberation about the good will often involve conflict, will always involve argument, and judgments about whether the predicted outcomes of acting on particular policy proposals are likely to occur, and will inevitably result in value laden conclusions.

As we want students to reason critically rather than non-critically, the teaching of critical thinking is required. However, critical thinking is also required by educators who are determining what qualifies as citizenship education. How does a critical thinker go about answering the question, "What is citizenship education?"

I will outline why this question is a worth answering and why it is a complex question. I will show that treating the question as descriptive will provide us with a variety of definitions and that treating it as conceptual/interpretative will provide some clarity. However, because citizenship education is a public educational concern, the question is ultimately normative. By treating it as such, we must follow certain guidelines so that we arrive at an educationally sound conception.

The question

What sort of question is, "What is citizenship education?" Is it an empirical/descriptive one in that we are being asked to ascertain how ordinary language users use the term? Or, is it a conceptual question in the same way that, "Is a bachelor an unmarried male?" or "What is a triangle?" are conceptual questions? Or, is it a value question in which what is being asked is, "What should be the definition of citizenship education?" and we are being asked to develop a policy statement. Or is it some other sort of question which has to do with the deep meaning of citizenship education and which will involve structural analysis, phenomenological, hermeneutic, or deconstructive research. Maybe, citizenship education is not a term that can be defined at all. Rather, it is like one of Wittgenstein's 'family resemblance' terms in which the term can be used in a number of different ways and there are no necessary and sufficient conditions that apply in all examples of its use. The point about the sort of question being asked is an important one. How we attempt to answer it will determine the sort of research procedures we will use, and, of course, the type of procedures we use will affect the answers we get.

1. Treating the question as a descriptive one.

When we are unclear about the definition of a term, we look it up in a dictionary or ask someone who we believe is a competent user of the language. So with "citizenship education," we have to ascertain how language users normally use the term. Of course, the term 'language users' is problematic, as it is all encompassing and there may well be particular definitions offered by particular groups of language users. For example, definitions are stipulated by various interest groups (Departments of Education, professional organizations). All of these will have to be considered as all of them constitute 'language users.'

To understand present definitions it is useful to look at how the term came about as this helps us understand the reasons for the original definition.¹ It is fascinating to see the old arguments of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Cicero, and Seneca being played out in contemporary circles. In terms of the early days of public schooling in Canada, citizenship education used to be about instilling loyalty and patriotism through learning about national heroes. This aim was exemplified by the Winnipeg School Board in 1913, members of which stated that citizenship education consisted of "the development of a sense of social and civic duty, [and] the stimulation of national and patriotic pride." ² Since that time, there have been various changes in how citizenship education was to be addressed in schools.³

But, "merely" finding out how people define citizenship education will not tell us how their definitions have made, or do make, a difference in their lives. Thus, other methodologies are needed to uncover what is meant by citizenship education. Here, interview, survey, and other qualitative research methods could be utilized to focus on the interpretations of those who are defining citizenship education. Researchers would let those who have a stake in the definition of citizenship education report their meanings without evaluation or analysis of these reports by the researcher. It would also be very important to ascertain what citizenship education means to people who are often marginalized. What meanings do First Nations people, minority ethnic groups, feminists,⁴ the poor, gays and lesbians, and so on, attach to citizenship education? Further, if hermeneutic methodologies are utilized, then we can ascertain how citizenship education is embedded in the personal and social practices of people, how it is related to their histories, their status in society, their beliefs, and their values. We have to research the way that meanings are embedded in their cultural contexts. Finally, we have to find how citizenship education is translated into practice and how the contexts in which it occurs, shapes that practice.

 

2. Treating the question as a conceptual interpretation one.

When we ask for a definition, we are asking for the attributes that give the term its meaning. So, a bachelor is an unmarried male. This is the archival definition, the one that is formal, context-independent, and easily memorized - it is the dictionary meaning. But, citizenship education is not the same sort of term as bachelor; it is not amenable to archival definition. It clearly does not have necessary and sufficient conditions that are unproblematic. Defining citizenship education is a framework question in which we seek to establish the contextual boundaries in which the term can be used.

Conceptual interpretation inquiry attempts to provide an adequate account of a concept so that it can be used to develop programs or assessment instruments.⁵ However, this is difficult because concepts can be usefully thought of as terrains which can be occupied by a number of shifting and conflicting points of view.⁶

We have to consider questions posed by Johnson⁷ when he was trying to define critical thinking:

2. The synonym question? This is another way of posing the scope question and asks what is the relationship, and where are the boundaries, between citizenship education, moral education, character education, civics education, etc.
The following questions may guide our thinking:

• With what terms is citizenship education synonymous?

• If character education can be classified as a kind of citizenship education, what are the similarities and differences between them?

• How does the meaning of citizenship education differ from the meaning of character education (which seems to be similar in meaning)?

3. The network question. How is citizenship education linked to identity, rights, responsibilities, community, the state, democracy, and so on?

All of these questions demand critical thought. For, if we define citizenship education in too broad a fashion, will we run the risk of creating a laundry list of skills and values, "which provide no coherent or consistent intellectual framework by which to judge what civic education is or ought to be,"¹⁰ or do we limit the notion too severely so that it becomes something akin to the old notion of civics where students leaned about government?

There have been numerous attempts made to analyze citizenship education.
The first subject to espouse citizenship as its major aim was social studies. When this was invented in 1916 in the USA, the centrepiece was a course on Problems in Democracy where students were expected to think critically about issues facing America. This rarely happened, but citizenship education continued to be the raison d'etre for social studies. Barr, Barth and Shermis¹¹ were the first scholars to categorize the various approaches to citizenship education that appeared in the social studies. They identified three: Social Studies as Citizenship Transmission, Social Studies as Social Science, and Social Studies as Reflective Inquiry.

Barr, Barth and Shermin's conceptualizations are analytic in that the authors did not survey people and determine what categories would explain the data, nor were these originally meant to be used to ascertain how many people fit a particular category. Others, however have either started with a priori conceptualizations and then determined how many people fit their categories, or have interpreted their data in the form of particular conceptualizations. For example, Theiss-Morse¹² identified four categories - elitist, pluralist, citizenship, and participatory - to design her survey questions for 403 randomly selected adults in the Twin Cities. Based on his survey data in Australia, Prior¹³ also isolates four orientations - social justice, action/participatory, civic understanding, and legalistic/obligatory. Other researchers have carried out analytical research as tools for understanding citizenship and citizenship education. Gagnon and Pagé¹⁴ divide up the citizenship pie into 4 major categories (national identity; social, cultural and supranational belonging; effective system of rights; and political and civic participation). Wilkinson and Hébert¹⁵ identify networks of citizenship values in four domains (civil/civic; political; socio-economic; and cultural). Members of the Citizenship Education Policy Study Project¹⁶ noted four dimensions - personal, social, spatial, and temporal, and stress their interconnectedness. Torney-Purta¹⁷ notes three elements- democracy (institutions and rights and responsibilities); sense of national identity; and social cohesion and diversity. Hall and Held ¹⁸ offer us, belonging to a community, rights and responsibilities, and participation in the community. Juteau¹⁹ whittles down citizenship education into two categories - equality and national identity. Marshall²⁰ in his classic work on citizenship and social class, delineated three aspects of citizenship rights which developed historically - civil, political, and social.

All of these researchers have adopted a particular framework to conduct their analyses. There have also been analyses based on political ideologies, e.g., conservative, liberal, socialist, communitarian, etc., and ones which take disciplines such as anthropology and geography as their starting points.²¹

While conceptual interpretation may give us some insights into what is citizenship education, the question cannot be answered by this methodology alone. First, because these analyses are not neutral; they are rooted in normative assumptions. Secondly, judgments have to be made about what would constitute an appropriate and justifiable analysis. We have eventually to treat the question of what is citizenship education as a normative one. This is because education is a normative concept and when talking about citizenship we are clearly talking about "good" citizenship.

3. Treating the question as a normative one.

In his categorizations of educational concepts, Scheffler²² points out that many of the terms we use in educational discourse are programmatic-- that is the term incorporates particular courses of action. Terms such as multiculturalism and critical thinking have embedded in them programs about what should be done in their names. These may well differ among users of the terms, but the important point is that citizenship education is a programmatic concept. Thus, there are a multitude of works outlining of what citizenship education should consist. Osborne²³ offers us nine goals - knowledge of Canada and the world; familiarity with current events; political literacy; commitment to internationalism and peace; commitment to social equality and justice; commitment to environmental principles; knowledge of both official languages; skills and dispositions appropriate to political/social participation; and experience in community service. In a fairly recent work²⁴ there are short pieces from various curriculum specialists (including a bank manger) stating how their subjects can lead to realizing the goals of citizenship education.

In a similar vein, Gross and Dynneson²⁵ offer us recommendations about how the social sciences can contribute to citizenship education in the schools. Pratte²⁶ argues persuasively that citizenship education is really about moral education and offers some advice about how to implement this. Similarly, Linda Farr Darling²⁷ has convincingly argued that citizenship education entails dealing with moral disagreements; ones in which the application of a moral concept is in dispute, or ones where there is a clash between two opposing principles or rules. However, her paper does not take the next step which is to suggest ways in which people can be helped to negotiate and resolve these moral disputes. Should we use the lens of an ethic of care, or one of justice? Or can we utilize both? Is a rights based morality more justified than a goal based one in a multicultural society? Is basing a society on Rawl's principle of the greatest benefit to the least advantaged justifiable?²⁸

Whatever the outcome, I agree with Heater²⁹ when he says,

The truth is that the ideal citizen must be a paragon of multiple virtues, who brings to the fore different qualities according to the circumstances. To assume, as so often happens, that certain components of civic virtue are the totality is to emasculate the word. One may realistically accept that the truly good citizen exists only as a perfect model laid up in a Platonic heaven, but one still needs a term to define the ideal.

The various ways of analyzing citizenship education and the justifications presented for accepting one sort of conception over another are what is needed in the debate about what should constitute citizenship education. The question needs to be answered on the basis of some foundational principles, for there is the practical point that citizenship education is part of the public school curriculum and decisions have to made about what all students should learn. There have to be some generalizable objectives that are acceptable in a multicultural, democratic society. How do we go about this? According to Coombs and Daniels,³⁰ there are several guidelines for helping us arrive at more fruitful definitions of educational concepts:

1. It is necessary that we be clear about what job we want the definition to do-we have to ask what problem or problems the definition should help to solve, for how we use the conception determines the nature of the conceptual reconstruction undertaken. Thus, we have to determine what the purpose(s) are for having a definition of citizenship education, and we have to ascertain whether the definition should include the subject matter, the aims, and/or the rationales for citizenship education.

2. To be useful, the definition must preserve the core meaning of the original concepts used to define the subject. It must capture what most people mean by the term. Thus, it is important to ascertain how stakeholders define the term.

3. As we are concerned with citizenship education it is important that we analyze what we are to mean by the term education. We have to determine what difference it makes to add the term citizenship to our concept of education.

4. As there are contemporary definitions, we have to assess their strengths
and weaknesses so that any new definition would have the potential to be more fruitful in guiding curricular research and program development. As Coombs and Daniels state, "It might have such potential because: it is less vague, it gives salience to a more significant range of distinctions and relationships, it does away with dichotomies that misrepresent experience (e.g. cognitive and affective), or it systematically organizes a set of concepts that were previously only loosely related" ³¹ For example, Kymlicka³² has pointed out it is hard, if not impossible to fit new theories (feminism, for example) into traditional political definitions of citizenship education.

5. The theory in which the definition is embedded has to be sound.

6. The morality of the new definition has to be considered. Does it ensure that
students are treated justly? This may seem like an odd guideline, but definitions of citizenship education that fail to mention or take into account that the subject is taught, at least in North America, in a culturally diverse, democratic society, fail to do justice to the subject and the students who take it. Further, as I have argued above, citizenship education is often a matter of trying to resolve moral disagreements and we need a moral theory in order to help students do this.

Sears³³ has convincingly argued that citizenship education is a contested concept. This implies that there is more than one reasonable definition. Gallie³⁴ puts it this way:

Recognition of a given concept as essentially contested implies recognition of rival uses of it (such as oneself repudiates) as not only logically possible and humanly 'likely', but as of permanent potential critical value to one's own use or interpretation of the concept in question; whereas to regard any rival use as anathema, perverse, bestial or lunatic means, in many cases, to submit oneself to chronic human peril of underestimating, or completely ignoring, the value of one's opponents' positions. One desirable consequence of the required recognition in any proper instance of essential contestedness might therefore be the marked raising of the level of quality of arguments in the disputes of the contestant parties. And this would mean primie facie, a justification of the continued competition for support and acknowledgment between the various contesting parties.

Rorty³⁵ also points out that the development of new and enriched vocabularies advance our thinking. By paying attention to the way citizenship education is defined, by applying critical analysis, we extend our thinking about citizenship education. It is clear that there are myriad conceptions of citizenship education and all are programmatic and stipulative Thus, we are not going to find a "real" or lexical definition. There are tensions between definitions that focus on the individual and those that focus on the collective; there are tensions between those who wish strong forms of assimilation and those who wish to honour some form of independence for minorities in a multicultural society; and there are tensions between those who want to bring about global citizenship and those who believe that citizenship only makes sense in the context of a state or nation state. Despite Mouffe's claim that, " There will always be debate over the exact nature of citizenship. No final agreement can ever be reached,"³⁶ by researching its meaning we will build new understandings and new forms of community.