Historical Approaches to Civics and Citizenship Education

There has been much written about the development of civics and citizenship education, and the different social and political influences that have informed that development—certainly more than can be canvassed in a single chapter! Instead of trying to provideproviding a comprehensive summary of these factors, this chapter instead tries to draw out some of the key themes that have emerged from the existing research. However, before doing so and with a view to understanding the emergence of these themes, it is important to recognise that education about civics and citizenship education (at least in the West) has long been entwined with the history of democracy—as far back as Ancient Greece (Pocock in The citizenship debates: A reader, UOM Press, 1998) or even before (for more discussion on this subject, see Keane in The life and death of democracy, 1st edn, W.W. Norton and Company, 2009.). Modern scholars have rightly pointed out that while participatory in nature, such early examples of democracy- and also the education provided in order to participate—were limited in who was able to participate: usually, that was only white men of a certain class. Indeed, no lesser figure than Aristotle said that, for there to be liberty, the people had ‘to rule and be ruled in turn’ (Aristotle et al. in The politics, Oxford University Press. 1995). Nevertheless, the principles espoused by Aristotle—equality, justice and participation—are recognisable to modern scholars as the ideal (if not the reality) of a democratic society. And Aristotle, too, was quick to note that people had to learn to ‘do’ democracy, advocating an experiential, hands-on approach to citizenship education: ‘For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them’ (Aristotle and Sachs in Nicomachean ethics. Focus Pub., 2022).