CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

Citizenship is a statutory National Curriculum subject in state maintained secondary schools and a non-statutory subject with a national framework in primary schools in England.

What is citizenship education?

Citizenship involves people acting together to address issues of common concern to maintain our democratic culture and to improve society. To achieve this goal, Citizenship education teaches knowledge, understanding about politics, the law and the economy and skills to participate effectively and responsibly in public and democratic life.

Through citizenship education, students:

• explore questions about democracy, justice, inequality, how we are governed and organized;
• learn to work together to create solutions that try to address challenges facing neighborhoods and wider communities;
• Develop political literacy to make a positive contribution to society as informed and responsible citizens.

Some things you should know about citizenship education…

• Citizenship is the only subject in the national curriculum that teaches about the way democracy, politics, the economy and the law work.
• Half a million young people have achieved a GCSE or A level qualification in citizenship to date since 2002.
• Young people have initiated over 100,000 active citizenship projects in their communities since the GCSE was introduced.
• Citizenship is not about indoctrination: teachers and local authorities are required by the Education Act 1996 to make sure that students are presented with different points of views so that they can make up their own minds.
• Citizenship education is also not only a Labour project: it was introduced as a cross-curricular theme by a Conservative government in 1990.
• It’s been in the national curriculum in secondary schools in England since 2002.
• It was a long time coming – politicians and educators alike had been lobbying for citizenship to be a fundamental part of education for 100 years.

GOOD OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

A consideration of the issues surrounding the teaching of controversial issues serves only to underline the importance of good citizenship education from an early age.
If children become accustomed to discussing their differences in a rational way in the primary years, they are more likely to accept it as normal in their adolescence.
Citizenship education helps to equip young people to deal with situations of conflict and controversy knowledgeably and tolerantly. It helps to equip them to understand the consequences of their actions, and those of the adults around them.
Pupils learn how to recognize bias, evaluate argument, weigh evidence, look for alternative interpretations, viewpoints and sources of evidence; above all to give good reasons for the things they say and do, and to expect good reasons to be given by others.

REASONS FOR TEACHING CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

The purposes of citizenship education are many and varied. They include socializing children against juvenile delinquency, disrespect for elders and all sharp practices that often metamorphose into full-blown crimes. Our youths have acquired international notoriety in such crimes as drug trafficking and addiction, child trafficking, swindling and advance free fraud. For the home-based, the contemporary social ills that plague the nation include: armed robbery, indolence, truancy, smuggling, dishonesty, sharp-practices, and most recently and dangerously kidnapping and suicide bombing. Those in higher institutions pride themselves in cultism, robbery, violence, gross indiscipline, examination mal-practice and campus unrests. There has been public out cry over unemployment against the government, but it has been observed that those who have gained one employment or the other demonstrate unprecedented truancy and ingratitude towards their government employers. The magnitude of dishonesty, embezzlement of public funds, looting government treasuries, diverting public funds and materials to private use, bribery and corruption they practise is inexplicable. Ndukwe (2013) cried out:

Two distinct challenges are insidiously eating away at whatevergains Nigeria has made in the economic arena as well as its socio-cultural stage since pursuing a pro-democratic agenda. What are they? Insecurity and Inconsistent power supply. Lawlessness is a plague that steals the light of a nation. A lawless State is rife with insecurity and its citizens are slaves to such order. Nigeria is witnessing analarming trend in lawlessness and insecurity. There is hardly any breaking news in the mainstream media without an account of some form of security challenges, acts of violence, ethno-centered strife or religious fuelled clashes. It is either Boko Haram in the Northern corridor or Kidnapping in the South-South and South East geopolitical zone. (The National Question, Monday n20 – 23 May, 2013, p.1). There is still mutual distrust among the different ethnicities in Nigeria against each other. These and other vices have for decades ravaged our nation due to very poor socialization or complete ignorant of citizenship education. The purpose of education for citizenship is to create sufficient awareness, sensitize both the old and the young to imbibe the spirit of self-reliance, good citizenship, respect for our national emblems and ethics and the desire to build a strong and reliable nation. For our purpose, this paper restricts our discussion to the under-mentioned areas, since they highlight the basic aspects of citizenship education.