Civic Education

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Civic Education (translated into German: civic education ) or Civics is an educational model developed in the Anglo-American language area with the aim of practicing democratic action and thinking through lifelong social and multicultural learning and thereby ensuring that democracy and civil society work in practice.

Civic Education (also Citizenship Education ) can be translated as “ learning for democracy and civil society ”. It is about the ability to shape society in terms of a future democratic, just and peaceful world . The National Curriculum has therefore provided the mandatory task of “Education for Citizenship” since 2002, and the European Union has also stated this in its recommendations.

On the one hand, civic education is intended to promote political commitment and social skills and, on the other hand, to help understand fundamental democratic principles and to advocate for them.

definition

Civic Education is a response to specific social problems ( immigration problems , racism , intolerance , egoism , globalization , loss of culture ) and tasks ( gender mainstreaming , ethics ) and the need for young people to actively help shape democracy and society . Communicative teaching and social learning are the focus. According to this educational method, not only tolerance should be exercised; Rather, the aim is to consciously promote pluralistic views and divergent thinking. It aims to introduce young people to the task of consciously and actively shaping society. Offers and new perspectives are intended to create a humanistic character that ultimately brings about moral courage .

Civic Education has recently expanded its content based on the latest findings in gene and brain research : Life Science and Self Science. The evolutionary epistemology (Popper / Lorenz), partly also anthroposophy (Steiner / Beuys / Krischnamurti), Erwin Ringel's theory of neuroses and Viktor Frankl's logotherapy , as well as Martin Buber's dialogue pedagogy were essential forerunners. Since it is all about fighting prejudices, clichés and illusions, the acquisition of media skills has recently become essential. Finally, civic education also means turning away from the previous dominance of milieu theory and cultural determinism .

Civic Education is based, among other things, on the educational theory of John Dewey and the philosophy of pragmatism . This places a high priority on learning action compared to the mere reception of content. Civic Education offers experience-oriented learning situations in democratic speech and the assumption of responsibility in action.

Civic education is also a reaction to the Böckenförde dictum : “ The liberal, secularized state lives from conditions that it cannot guarantee itself. That is the great risk that he took for the sake of freedom. ”If the individuals in the secular society can no longer acquire social capital from the religions , then this approach could help.

Two approaches

A distinction is made between two approaches within civic education . The first approach (after John Rawls , Ronald Dworkin , Bruce Ackerman ) emphasizes the task (of the school ) to promote the communicative competence of the citizens (pupils) and to convey non- normative guidelines for the good life.

The second approach ( Benjamin R. Barber ) emphasizes less the promotion of communicative competence than the active design of the living environment . School should convey normative virtues here and these should then be used in public to solve social problems.

Demarcation from political education

In contrast to “ political education ”, civic education claims the use of an expanded concept of democratic learning that does not only deal with politics, history, economics and law, but with the whole person and his environment, his origin and future as well as his Biology and culture.

On the part of the CE, political education is criticized for being based primarily on historical and institutional knowledge in the German-speaking area. Its goal is to improve democracy skills primarily through cognitive learning .

Civic Education goes back to Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey . Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, CE has experienced a renaissance due to a variety of social problems (everyday fascism, bullying , racism, migration problems , consumerism , ...). CE works almost fundamentally in a team and project-oriented manner. CE is an important aspect of what is known as lifelong learning . The focus is on acquiring emotional, social and democratic skills .

In the classical understanding, political education is:

  • more scientifically centered
  • more focused on knowledge and less on ability and action
  • more focused on the systematic and state level, on government and domination

From the point of view of the CE, civic education or democracy education are the umbrella term for the task associated with maintaining and renewing democracy, an overarching category to which political education, democratic upbringing and democratic action can be assigned as partial aspects. she

  • focuses more on the overarching task of upbringing
  • considers school as a whole - beyond the lessons
  • is more geared towards competence and action
  • is primarily in terms of human rights - universality applied
  • takes on the whole of culture and addresses democracy as a form of life, society and rule

criticism

Civic education and democracy education have been widely debated and also criticized in the specialist field. In essence, the criticism can be narrowed down to the following points.

  • The CE neglects cognitive learning, since complex political contents can only be sufficiently penetrated in this way. A complex such as the 2007 financial crisis and the debate about political solutions cannot be grasped solely on the basis of experience.
  • The focus on the lifeworld and thus on the social or interpersonal obstructs the view of structural power and domination relationships. The reference to the real world, which is also essential in political education, should not lead to structurally very different political levels being equated. Various studies suggest that experiences from close social areas do not guarantee the transfer of what has been learned to other political levels. Engagement in the neighborhood, such as B. in the approach of service learning, the political competence to act when dealing with larger societal issues (e.g. in the conflict over the use of nuclear power) therefore rather not.
  • The CE starts from a general interest-balancing concept of the common good, which is the goal of politics. This was partially understood as a too one-sided political term that ignores structural conflicts or understands them as destructive. This criticism is based on a conflict that was waged earlier in civic education around the concept of the common good.

In general, it can be said that CE and civic education have converged in the course of the debate. While reflection, and thus cognitive learning, gained a higher status in the practice of CE, political education was also influenced by CE. Experience-based learning and new approaches, such as considering the connection between emotions and political education, also make changes clear here.

Recent developments

Civic Education of a more modern design makes use in particular of the method of implicit social learning . a. represents the merging of various scientific disciplines and their application. Learning to learn and teaching / learning according to brain-compatible standards forms a fixed framework. In the context of school and extracurricular learning, for example, the latest findings from brain and genetic research (learning to learn, cognitive research, aggression research, language acquisition, ...) are made usable. This opens the door to a new scientific discipline that is still being developed, the social neurosciences . The team of the European Civic Education Foundation is leading in this new development within the framework of "brain compatible learning".

Methods of Civic Education

Methods of civic education include a .:

Learn by speaking

It is assumed that the ability of a person to reason , to weigh and then decide on a problem is the central virtue in maintaining or developing a democracy . For learning by speaking include:
Deliberate is rational and free speaking. The goal is a basic understanding of a problem. Deliberating does not lead to a final vote as in debating. The participants have to concentrate on the content of the discourse . The focus here is not on the form, the rhetorical skill or the quick-wittedness, but the process of communicating about a problem in order to come to creative solutions.
The participants in a discourse sit in a circle, without leadership and a fixed agenda. You can think out loud one after the other with complete freedom. The participants have to put the environment - old conflicts, power games, ... - aside in order to be able to communicate as partners.

Learn by doing

See also

literature

  • Anne Sliwka: Learning and Living Democracy: Opinions and Recommendations. Freudenberg Foundation, Weinheim 2001. (Both volumes can be requested from the Foundation free of charge)
    • Vol. 1. Problems, requirements, possibilities
    • Vol. 2. The Anglo-American Example.
  • Andrea Wolf (Ed.): The long beginning: 20 years of “political education” in schools. Special number, Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-85449-132-8 . (History of political education in Austria - Andrea Wolf, Germany - Walter Gagel, and in a European comparison - Olga Bombardelli)
  • Wolfgang Sander (Hrsg.): Handbook of political education. Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-89331-589-6 .
  • Georg Weißeno ua (Hrsg.): Dictionary political education. Wochenschau-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89974-248-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Susanne Frank: “Civic education” - what is it? In: Democracy module "Civic education - what is that?", Www.blk-demokratie.de, BLK program "Learn & Live Democracy", May 25, 2005 (pdf; 67 kB) ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Democracy Education , compilation based on Peter Fauser - University of Jena ( MS PowerPoint ; 2.4 MB)
  3. ↑ Gotthard Breit: Democracy Education and Political Didactics - Similarities and Differences . In: Georg Weißeno (Ed.): Understanding politics better . ISBN 978-3-531-14671-3 , pp. 43-61 .
  4. ↑ Sibylle Reinhardt: What does learning democracy do for political education? Are there empirical indications for the transfer of participation in the immediate area to democracy competence in the state? End of an illusion and new questions . In: Dirk Lange, Gerhard Himmelmann (ed.): Democracy Didactics - Impulses for Political Education . ISBN 978-3-531-17116-6 , pp. 125-141 .
  5. ↑ Rainer-Olaf Schultze: Common good . In: Dieter Nohlen, Florian Grotz (Hrsg.): Small Lexicon of Politics . S. 211-215 .
  6. ^ European Civic Education Foundation
  7. ↑ Anne Sliwka, Silvia Lauble, Susanne Frank: The Deliberationsforum as a new form of learning. Understand and shape knowledge, opinion and consensus building on socio-political issues. Baden-Württemberg 2006. (PDF; 621 kB ( Memento from December 18, 2007 in the Internet Archive ))