I was recently asked to provide some feedback about a program that had been developed to encourage active citizenship amongst young people in one of Australia’s state. It was an interesting experience, and afforded me the chance to reflect just how far I have come as an expert – and an opinionated one, too – in this area. This program had a lot of good parts, but it had one great failing that I’ve noticed in common with other civics and citizenship education programs that I’ve looked at: where the locus of power is situated.
I think this is an issue related to what is meant by the term active citizenship which, I admit, is being bandied about a lot at the moment, and has probably lost its original intended meaning. It’s why I much prefer the more focused ‘justice oriented citizenship’ rather than active citizenship – although even now I am not entirely happy with ‘citizenship’ as a whole, nor ‘citizenship education’ either, as I think they are limited in the way that social activism and social movements are not. But that’s perhaps a topic for another post.
Many current forms of civics and citizenship action privilege a version of activism that I think is quite limited. Certainly, in most appearances in the Australian Curriculum, the activism that young people are encouraged to plan – not even take action about – are limited to writing letters to their local members of parliament, or doing a presentation to the local council. Even more active positioning really only stop at this point – that is, students create a petition, get people to sign it, and send that off to elected members- who, at best, probably do no more than send a form letter back. I know, I’ve done this kind of thing with students before, and got those form letters back.
To my mind, this is teaching young people exactly the wrong thing about where power lies. In this conception, young people – indeed, any people – are supplicants before the powers of members of parliament. While this is an important aspect of our democratic process, it relies on a fundamental misunderstanding about the locus of power. Elected members of parliament, whether at local, state or federal levels, govern with our consent. And that consent can be withdrawn at any time. Linked to this idea is leadership – the current models fo civics and citizenship education suggest that elected parliaments act as leaders. Again, I would suggest that, for the most part, these parliaments have to be led by the concerned actions of large groups of people. The drive towards more renewable energy sources (in other countries, not Australia), changes to gun laws in the US, and action on violence against women have originated externally to parliament, not through it. We need to teach young people to see themselves as originators and leaders of public policy and debate, and not as respondents to it.