BACKGROUND
For some years Australian educators have pressed for citizenship education in the nation's schools. (1) Only in the wake of the debate on Republicanism, however, has national attention focussed on this important educational issue. In November 1994, the release of a Report produced by a Civics Expert Group comprising Professor Stuart McIntyre of the University of Melbourne, Ms Susan Pascoe of the Catholic Education Office in Melbourne, and Dr Ken Boston, Director General of the Department of School Education in New South Wales, drew attention to the need for well-designed civics programmes in schools throughout Australia. Almost immediately, government-appointed national and State committees and State education departments and boards began to confront the related questions, "How should citizenship education be defined?" and "What material should be included in school civics courses?"
Although the curriculum priorities of policy makers differ, almost everyone agrees about the need for more solid instruction in civics at every stage of schooling. Young people, it is widely acknowledged, know far too little about the workings of government; they are woefully ignorant of the political history and the political responsibilities of Australians; and they see no reason for becoming better-informed. (2) Many in the workplace, like their elders, are so alienated from every form of political activity, (3) so convinced that nothing they can do will make a difference to the quality of life in Australia, that they make no effort to become knowledgable about civic issues. Others, through substance abuse, theft, violence, vandalism, public brawls, and other forms of destructive behaviour, manifest a more profound civic disaffectedness which endangers both their own future prospects and the life of the community.
A 1990 Social Studies survey conducted by Peter McGregor and Malcolm Rosier with Year 10 students in government and non-government Victorian schools found that only 29 per cent could identify the two houses of Parliament; 22 per cent could name the three levels of government in Australia; 36 per cent could name three members of the Australian government; and 40 per cent could identify Australia's main trading partner. Other surveys have produced similar results. (4) In 1995, the Prime Minister, Mr Keating, stated publicly that in Australia "many people, especially young people, are alienated from their political system and their past." The need for powerful efforts to renew youthful faith in the political process, and to persuade those who are deeply demoralised that disorderly responses to frustration and disappointment solve nothing, is therefore all the more pressing.
Since civic engagement and prosperity are traditionally linked, (5) and since contemporary employment problems have created major economic and social difficulties for school leavers, even the proverbial "She'll be right, mate" no longer carries much conviction with the young. One reason for this, in addition to the obvious one that for many young people the prospect of secure, rewarding, long-term work is not good, is that in crucial respects formal schooling has failed an entire generation. (6) Another reason is that civic activity whose importance was taken for granted by earlier generations of Australians -- for example, registering to vote, reading the daily newspaper, listening to world news broadcasts, joining voluntary associations such as service clubs, political parties, trade unions, and regional organisations -- is no longer considered essential. Many young people have never been schooled in the connections between involvement in community life, effective government, and social prosperity. (7)
Attempts to rescue unemployed and alienated youth by improving TAFE courses, promoting more Skills-Share programmes, and creating fuller on-the-job training opportunities, everyone agrees, are essential to Australia's economic and civil well-being. But such efforts would be more educationally useful if, as part of accredited instructional programmes, trainees were schooled in civic concerns that bear a clear relation to visions of the future worthy of whole-hearted endorsement. For a very long time a conspicuous weakness in classrooms around the globe -- a weakness which new programmes for the post-16s should do their best to avoid -- has been intellectual poverty in curriculum areas connected with the world of work and the responsibilities of daily life. As if Gradgrind in Dickens' Hard Times had never been created, poorly trained, frustrated teachers have had to "cover" material in the social sciences willy-nilly, whether or not the content of their lessons has offered forms of direction and challenge needed by their pupils. (8)
In practice, Australian social studies programmes with civics components have been conceptually inadequate in bedrock ways. Year after year, terrain set for study has invited a belabouring of the obvious, scrappy and disorganised nods at current issues, and a commitment to sloganeering, rather than serious reflection. In typical syllabuses, pupils at every level have been asked to do units of work on subjects that require virtually no reading or thinking about anything that would extend their imaginative horizons instead of drawing wholly or primarily on obvious facets of their own, inevitably limited, experience. For instance: What do families share? What is involved in the celebration of holidays like Christmas? What rules apply at home, at school, at clubs, and on playing fields? How do people show an attachment to the land? Give examples of environmental pollution, and suggest cures. (9)
Even when well-intentioned syllabus designers have listed topics of real substance in their documents, no suitable distinctions between intellectually demanding and easily answered questions have been made, nor has there been the slightest indication that following up suggestions for study might require specified forms of preparation and elaboration. Without any procedural guidelines, injunctions to "research" such vague but complex topics as "an issue of human rights", the factors that "influence an individual's identity", "current events in the context of political or legal systems", or "the ideas, people or events which changed a society" (e.g. [sic] "democracy in ancient Greece, Florence Nightingale, gold in Australia, World Wars 1 & 2") have appeared with predictable regularity. Projects like this, which by nature are too large and complicated for experts to master without years of prior study, have been foisted on inexperienced pupils without any apparent awareness of the difficulties involved.
Typically, students doing social studies have been expected to attain representative "learning outcomes" levels by involving themselves in such ill-defined ventures as explaining "people's motives and actions from various perspectives" or investigating "how groups contribute different cultural characteristics to a society". In representative documents, such enterprises follow naturally from a focus on such vague and amorphous subject areas as "people" "cultures", and "society". Even if support materials for teachers, produced to help them to assist their students in approaching such woolly territory, contain useful ideas, the problem of conceptual inadequacy in the syllabuses themselves remains. This problem appears to be related, still, to the ubiquitous presence of poorly formulated, widely lambasted National Profiles and Statements in Social Studies which State syllabus committees are expected somehow to put to use.
Despite the volume of criticism, here and abroad, directed at outcomes-based education dependent upon loose definitions and frames of the kind which abound in the Profiles and Statements, (10) powerful moves to design civics courses in a very similar mould are currently being pressed upon State education departments and ministries. Unless we enlist the help of experts in history, political science, economics and philosophy, whose writing shows that they have a much deeper knowledge of civics, and of manageable ways of approaching it, than is present in current social studies documents, curriculum design in citizenship education will fail young people as surely as existing programmes with civics components have done. (11) The last thing we need is yet another series of draft documents with weakly defined outcomes and topic areas (see box below) and unnamed or excessively thin and biased suggestions for required and recommended reading.
A TYPICAL AHISTORICAL SYLLABUS UNIT ON CIVICS
STUDIES OF SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT 13
LEVEL 7 (Victoria)
| LEARNING OUTCOME | EXAMPLE |
| Analyse some effects of major values and beliefs on world affairs | Squatters/selectors 19thC Australia; British Imperialism; United Nations Declarations -- children, labour, privacy, religion, race, education |
| Explain why cause and consequence can vary in significance | World War 1 & 2; 1930's Depression; Australian Immigration; Vietnam war |
| Evaluate the role of planning and management in decisions that affect the environment | Albert Park redevelopment; Logging in Eastern Victoria; Wetlands reclamation |
| Research an issue of human rights to explain the different views involved | Female genital mutilation; Black deaths in custody; Euthanasia; Death penalty; Self determination in East Timor; Children's Rights |
| Analyse contemporary trends and issues and investigate their effect on a cultural group(s) | Women in the workforce; Land rights; Aboriginal sacred sites; nuclear testing; East Timor |
| Predict how an issue might develop in a community and how it might affect a group | Vietnamese refugees; Land rights; Aboriginal sacred sites; nuclear testing; East Timor |
| Analyse different views about ecological sustainability and management of natural systems and justify a position | Forestry reserves; Australia's population threshold; Agricultural practices |
| Evaluate attempts to reform legal and political systems | Gun Law reform; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional law; Bill of Rights |
One of the great virtues of civics as a distinct school subject, appropriately conceived, is that organically connected ideas which inspire political concern and involvement are at its heart. (12) As successful overseas courses have already shown, facts about real people, struggling for hundreds of years to promote civic order, can be imparted in a historical context in which serious reflection about the nature of sound government assumes centre stage. Questions raised with a class as a natural consequence of reading well-chosen, carefully specified selections from the work of great political thinkers over the centuries can encourage students not only to think seriously about their own duties as citizens, but to do further independent reading and discussing in areas that are of obvious importance to their present and future lives as citizens. Such questions, because they are intellectually cogent and challenging, clearly demonstrate that classroom activity can touch young people in ways that promote active civic engagement.
Basic to citizenship education, local and international experts in history, political science, and economics agree, is an understanding of liberal democracy: its commitment to egalitarian economic opportunity, a broad dispersion of power, pluralism and individual freedom, wide community participation in the political process, equitable provision of goods and services, appointment by merit, and the peaceful resolution of conflict. So that democratic institutions work at bedrock levels, a belief in basic human rights, the rule of law, a fair system of wages, representative government, sound judicial review, and a healthy balance between majority rule and respect for minorities is essential. (13) Good citizens of a democracy understand the importance of political and personal obligations; they are not selfishly preoccupied with their own rights; they know how to occupy themselves usefully even when jobs are scarce; and they manifest respect for, and tolerance of, others.
Sound civics courses encourage discussion of all these broad, related matters, and of such key topics under the broad heading "Governance" as basic differences between democracy and tyranny; the distinction between freedom and licence; the importance of checks and balances in basic governmental structures; common forms of political oppression; legitimate means of effecting social change; the nature of a free and stable economy; the management and conservation of resources; the need for a free and responsible press; and the maintenance of educational institutions that honour academic freedom in the pursuit of truth. From primary school onwards, in the context of the historical development of democratic ideals, the origins and the continuing role of democratic institutions and practices in Australia, and the ordinary responsibilities of citizenship in the '90s, these centrally important concerns, and related ones, can and must be thoroughly sifted and understood.
CIVIC ISSUES OVER TIME
So much fascinating material is available for pupils at every level of schooling that it is impossible to prescribe a single definitive reading list for everyone. Yet there are thinkers whose reflections on civic virtue have, understandably, been so influential across the globe that few students could fail to profit from a close acquaintance with them. Over hundreds of years, lively analyses of political principles, vivid descriptions of the lives of major public figures, and compelling accounts of struggles over leadership and power have helped ordinary people to appreciate more fully, and to care much more about, their civic responsibilities. Reflections on the exercise of authority, especially in areas of conflict, not only have universal imaginative and intellectual appeal: they matter enormously in daily life, and virtually everybody who thinks seriously about the duties of adulthood knows this.
It is a rare teacher, knowledgeable about the nature of governance, who is unable to interest students in this subject. With a proper focus, citizenship education has inherent appeal. On the issue of ruling and being ruled, which is central to civics work, gifted political philosophers have never ceased to ponder; and because all of us are subject to authority, exercised in every institution known to us (first of all, obviously, in the family), interest in the ideas which govern its use is as basic as the desire of babies and toddlers to understand spoken language. If we are confused or unhappy about our treatment at the hands of those who have authority over us, we naturally start thinking about the principles behind social organisation. Once we discover that discussions of civic order and disorder in the writings of great thinkers illuminate our own situation, we are automatically drawn to them.
Excerpts from Pericles' Funeral Oration from the Penguin The Peloponnesian War Our system of government is a model to others. When it is a question of putting one person before another in positions of public responsibility, what counts is not membership of a particular class, but the actual ability which the man possesses. No one, so long as he has it in him to be of service to the state, is kept in political obscurity because of poverty. We give our obedience to those whom we put in positions of authority, and we obey the laws themselves, especially those which are for the protection of the oppressed, and those unwritten laws which it is an acknowledged shame to break. Our city is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportations in order to prevent people observing or finding out secrets which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. Our love of what is beautiful does not lead to extravagance; our love of the things of the mind does not make us soft. We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. Each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well. We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all. We are capable at the same time of taking risks and of estimating them beforehand. Others are brave out of ignorance; and, when they stop to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and of what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come. |
In the ancient world, immediate and suitably varied reflections on the exercise of authority and the use and abuse of goods and services abound. In one of the greatest defences of civic virtue ever written, Pericles' Funeral Oration, Thucydides (460-400 BC) extols such staples of democratic practice as equality before the law in the settling of disputes; daily tolerance of one's neighbours; protection of the oppressed; a courageous willingness to do battle, unaided, on foreign soil; a lively and informed involvement in affairs of state; and a capacity to endure terrible risks and hardship for the sake of service to the "commonwealth" (see box). Soon afterwards, Plato (427-347 BC) in The Republic and Aristotle (384-322 BC) in the Politics and Ethics explore such essential issues as the nature of justice, the more striking qualities of men of action, the effects of civic activity on the individual soul, the obligations of political leaders, and the relative advantages of different kinds of regimes (for example, monarchy, oligarchy, polity).
Although relatively few people would share the view of Parliamentary clerk Harry Evans that the History of Rome offers the best companionship on a desert island available anywhere, Livy's observations in this great work and in others about such perennial civic concerns as the conditions that allow a state to flourish, the nature of republican virtue in principle and in action, and typical threats to order and harmony in the world of international politics serve as an excellent follow-up to these earlier writers. (14) His vivid accounts of heroic behaviour in such celebrated figures as Horatio (at the bridge), Cincinnatus, and the vestal virgin Postumia (15) excite immediate interest, as do his descriptions of more notorious acts committed by villains such as Tarquin or Hannibal. Senior students want to know what historians of the calibre of Livy (59 BC-17 AD) think about political issues which have an unmistakable relevance to the present despite changes in social organisation.
In the pre-Christian era alone, there is a treasurehouse of writing suited to pupils eager to experience first-rate ideas. One immediate and memorable source of interest to senior students is Plutarch's Lives: in particular -- as John Carroll has observed -- the narrative which records the fortunes of the Greek orator, general, and civic leader, Phocion. Plutarch's style, even in translation, is compelling. Here, on the willingness of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian) to take a political enemy (an Athenian) seriously, is a typical example:
Alexander not only consented to receive Phocion and hear his petition, but he actually listened to his advice, which was as follows. If it was peace that Alexander wanted above all, then he should make an end to fighting, but if it was glory, then he should transfer the theatre of the war and turn his arms away from Greece against the barbarians. Phocion spoke at length and his words were well chosen to fit Alexander's character and aspirations, with the result that he quite transformed the king's mood and allayed his resentment against the Athenians. In this frame of mind, Alexander told Phocion that the Athenians ought to watch the course of events with great care, since if anything happened to him, they were the people who should become the leaders of Greece. In private too he welcomed Phocion as his friend and guest and treated him with greater honour than even most of his closest friends enjoyed.
Later, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, comparably inviting material invites thorough classroom study. Drawing on virtually all of the major religious and secular thinkers who preceded him, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) analyses the legal system -- elaborating, for instance, on the need for restraint in those who rule, the importance of the consent of the governed, and manifestations of injustice in the ordinary exercise of practical judgment. (16) Two centuries later, Machiavelli (1469-1527) discusses such modern political phenomena as popular elections, strategies for remaining in office, the manipulation of information given to the populace, and the relative merits of cruelty and clemency in those who rule. Shakespeare, especially in his Histories, dramatises the effects of differences in ruling principles. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) describes in detail the political means of protecting people from one another. In the Areopagitica, Milton (1608-1674) provides one of the strongest cases against censorship available in English.
In the succeeding century and a half, related concepts which are of basic relevance to future citizens are explored. John Locke (1632-1704) elaborates on the importance of freedom from unjust authority. Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755) provides seminal reflections on the differing functions of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) denounces arbitrary authority, attacks slavery, and utters impassioned defences of the rights of the weak against the strong. Edmund Burke (1729-1797) inveighs against the dangers of attacking long-valued institutions without having workable replacements for them. And John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) discusses the fundamental requirements of liberty, the importance of carefully regulating private life and opinions, the basic features of sound political argument, and the necessity of equal rights for all (for example, women).
An Excerpt from John Locke's The Second Treatise of Government How could anyone ever come to own anything, that is, have property? I will try to show that property can emerge out of what God gave everyone in common. God gave the world to all people. He has also given us reason and thought to make use of the things in the world to stay alive and even improve our lives. The earth and everything on it was first given to us for our support and comfort. No one had a private rule or right over anything in the original natural state of human beings. Yet fruits and animals are on the earth for our use. There must therefore be a way that a particular person can rightly acquire some fruit or animals in order actually to use them for his benefit. Each person owns himself. No one has a right to his person but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands are therefore also properly his. Whatever he himself removes from nature has thereby been mixed with his own labour. He joined to it something which was already his own and made what he removed his property. By his labour he joined to rhe fruit something which excludes everyone else. A person's labour is without question his own property. No one but he can have a right to what it is joined to. This is true where there is still enough fruit left for others to use. A person who picks apples from a tree in the woods which no one owns and eats them has certainly made them his own. But when did the apples begin to be his? When he ate them or digested them or when he brought them home? It's plain that if the first gathering of the apples didn't make them his, nothing else could. His labour made those apples different from all others. He added to those apples something more than nature had done. They then became his property. |
Particularly encouraging is the fact that translations and emendations from the work of many of these political thinkers, chronologically linked, can be handled by pupils of almost every age, beginning in upper primary school. Excerpts from essays long recommended by teachers working with staff from the Encyclopedia Britannica -- in, for example, texts like Touchstones (see the box above on property) -- have been in circulation for over a decade, as have lengthy reading lists which include titles from longer works suitable for Years 5-12. (17) Working with ten-year-olds, I have successfully discussed the essential qualities of rulers in passages taken from Augustine's City of God and Machiavelli's Prince; and in the late '80s, on successive visits to ghetto schools in Chicago, Dame Leonie Kramer witnessed first-rate Socratic seminars for Year 5 and 6 pupils on such key subjects as whether an individual should break an unjust law and what is required of fair-minded adults who are responsible for altering the behaviour of a difficult child.
In the hands of able teachers, children and youth respond with contagious eagerness to the energetic analysis of political ideas. On, for instance, the duties of community leaders, the fundamental structure of local, State, and federal governmental bodies, and the importance of grass roots civic activity, upper primary pupils who are appropriately guided exhibit a spontaneous curiosity about the observations of great thinkers of the past, and an equally spontaneous desire to learn more about how their ideas are related to the present. As a matter of course, young minds that are habitually exposed to sound philosophical reflections on political issues show a responsiveness to methods of argument which are pertinent to every area of schooling and to ordinary human existence more broadly. They also reveal a keen interest in the essential traits of character of figures active in public life. Concepts like Stoicism or Fortitude, which at first may appear too sophisticated for them, are in practice perfectly manageable so long as they are clearly related to concrete events in daily life.
Other educational benefits too, of broad applicability, can be conferred in well-run civics classes. By reading Platonic dialogues, even Year 5 pupils are able to see how much is involved in the art of questioning. In the writing of Thomas Aquinas, older students can recognise the central importance of an educational recommendation made centuries later by J.S. Mill: the need to counter, in writing and in speech, the very best arguments that can be raised against the position one wishes to adopt. In the essays of thinkers as different as Jefferson and de Tocqueville, Hume and Thoreau, elaborations of issues discussed in the writings of the ancients help young people to appreciate the emotional significance of continuities present over the whole of human history. This process also implants basic analytical skills: the ability to distinguish between fact and hypothesis, the general and the particular, the trivial and the consequential. The last thing promoted by intelligent citizenship education is that dreaded classroom phenomenon, boredom.
Of course there are matters of a general nature which are not treated in documents harking back 2,000 years. The forms taken by political operations change, even if the values underlying them are constant. In the last two centuries alone, thinkers from many parts of the world have found young audiences willing and eager to accept their broad political advice. Obvious examples, early on, of figures who have played a role in practical politics with inherent appeal for the young include the former slave Frederick Douglass, the suffragette Elizabeth Stanton, the campaigner for women's rights Harriet Martineau, and such national leaders as Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi, and Menzies -- all of whom have written engagingly about civic issues. More recently, the political reflections of such celebrated figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa, and Vaclav Havel have attracted similarly enthusiastic, worldwide notice.
In instructive modern essays -- for example, the Iraqi poet Janabi's description of the political torture he himself endured because of his views, the Nigerian Nobel Prize winner Vole Soyinka's discussion of dangerous "revisionist" thought, or Salman Rushdie's defence of his novel Satanic Verses -- brave responses to violations of basic human rights are outlined in powerful detail. In stories by such well-known inmates of concentration camps as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, or lesser-known survivors of solitary confinement like Australia's Vo Dai Ton, (18) there are nitty-gritty examples of fortitude which have a similarly inspiring effect on young people. If a wider exposure to such powerful defenders of freedom were commonplace in schools, the frequently heard contemporary cry that our graduates lack heroic role models (19) would disappear.
AUSTRALIAN PRACTICE
Over time, but especially during the last three decades, Australia has moved from relative homogeneity to ethnic diversity. In our early years our ties with England were so marked that for decades afterwards our passports indicated that their bearers were Australian citizens and British subjects. Yet from the start, early migrants from less favoured countries of origin -- notably, Ireland and Scotland -- were so thoroughly integrated into Australian society that older generations of Australians became known as Anglo-Celts rather than Anglo-Saxons. Moreover, the pattern of assimilation which characterised the earliest immigrant movements, namely, rapid dispersion into mainstream life following early concentration within ethnic neighbourhoods, has continued. (20) Although there are urban areas known for their distinctive ethnic character -- for example, Cabramatta in Sydney's Western region -- the great majority of new arrivals adopt a lingua franca, live and work among seasoned Aussies, and rapidly embrace native customs as their own.
As a general rule, Australian migrants accept our cultural norms -- but without surrendering loyalty to valued manners and mores in their countries of origin. As a result, such widely appreciated attractions of cosmopolitan life as a huge variety of restaurants, supermarket delicacies originating in Europe and Asia, the ubiquitous presence in local parks of youngsters engaged in internationally popular sports once regarded as grossly inferior to Rugby League and Australian Rules (for example, baseball, soccer, and basketball), and popular clubs which encourage such ethnic activity as traditional folk dancing and music making are now cornmonplace. In the wake of the collapse of the White Australia policy in the '60s, the look and feel of life in Australian cities has changed significantly.
Among the more obvious accompaniments to greater ethnic diversity in contemporary Australia is an increased government emphasis on the need for all new arrivals to understand the nature and origins of democratic practice in this country. (21) National policy groups -- for example, Federal Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Migration, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET), and the Australian Electoral Office -- have either established Civics Education sections or begun producing booklets and other materials designed to increase public awareness of the nature of cohesive and just societies. At the same time, educators with a strong interest in citizenship education (22) have investigated course possibilities for adults and young people currently being pursued overseas.
In addition, national and State steering committees have been appointed to discuss such broad matters as effective means of disseminating infbrmation about the responsibilities of citizenship, the role of the media in increasing public awareness of civic issues, and the general educational needs of students. Unlike their overseas counterparts, however, which are composed entirely of academics and teachers with long expertise in the Social Sciences, these committees have included in their membership well-known figures better known for their contributions to Australian cultural life than for their knowledge of education (for example, Robyn Archer or the Executive Officer of the Australian Foundation for Culture and the Humanities Craddock Morton). This selection principle has created obvious difficulties in the broad area of curriculum design.
Among the advantages of professional expertise in history, political science, economics, and philosophy, brought to bear on the work of national "steering committees" on civics, is pears of familiarity with books and materials suitable for classroom study. A major reason for the acclaim given to the History programme developed by Professor Charlotte Crabtree, Professor Diane Ravitch, and the eminent scholars and teachers working with them in the late '80s at the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA (23) was its intellectual rigour and imaginativeness. Without long and successful teaching experience, policy makers and curriculum designers cannot sift through a wide range of materials, assimilate their key ideas, evaluate course proposals by making rigorous comparisons with rival submissions, and defend their ultimate choices persuasively, as this talented group of educators at the University of California was able to do.
Well-meaning activists, however admirable their motives, lack the knowledge which is the defining possession of scholars. Such knowledge takes years to acquire. The essential reason for the continuing influence of de Tocqueville's two-volume classic Democracy in America (1835-1840) is that its observations about such seminal matters as the connection between civic engagement and effective governance, the disadvantages of over-governing, and the danger of mediocrity in egalitarian political structures possess a cogency born of years of reading and reflection. Like every major thinker, Tocqueville brings his vast understanding of the past to bear on those features of the civic life of his own time which demand thorough re-examination. What he knows has a practical value inseparable from its rigorous theoretical underpinnings.
One of the more important features of John Carroll's essay "Democracy" (Quadrant, April 1995) is the assumption it makes about the reading that needs to be done before modern democratic needs and practices, and such culturally significant events as the union of nihilism with radical liberalism over the last century and a half, can be sensibly discussed and evaluated. Similarly, the historical role of voluntary civic organisations in promoting what Robert Putnam has called "horizontal collaboration between equals" (24) and in guarding against totalitarian take-overs of the kind dramatised in the modern history of Eastern Europe, the related role of conscience building in the young so that excessive individualism on the one hand and despotism in central governments on the other can be effectively countered, cannot be properly appreciated without a great deal of background knowledge.
One reason for the obvious relevance of older works on civics to the present is their fidelity to truths which do not date. Although it is obvious from the work of Carroll and other widely respected Australian intellectuals that requirements in citizenship education include the study of curriculum areas that are unique to Australia -- for instance, our indebtedness to aspects of the Westminster System developed in Great Britain, our continuing need to ensure that Aborigines are treated justly, and our obligation to play a role in the Pacific which, by virtue of our European heritage, differs from the role of Asian nations -- it is also clear that our proposed programmes of study will have to set texts which manifest a balanced concentration on timeless, precisely defined, global and local issues.
Within Australian schools themselves, the importance of voluntary civic activity can be dramatised by encouraging pupils to assume responsibility for extra-curricular functions from which they benefit directly, or by involving them in public services from which the community benefits in ways that they can readily appreciate. In Japanese schools, and also in many American ones that belong to the Essential Schools Coalition, students successfully perform cafeteria duties which were once the responsibility of hired staff. In many of our own schools, pupils are introduced to the ordinary operations of such voluntary service organisations as Meals on Wheels and encouraged to work with staff at school functions by, for instance, directing visitors to specific locations and answering the questions of guests. In this way, children and youth develop a much more concrete understanding of a spirit of service that can be readily emulated.
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Today few teachers here or overseas would differ with Tocqueville and his intellectual heirs about the importance of an active culture of voluntary political engagement. But many would elaborate on his ideas about community life or make additional suggestions suited to the world of the 1990s.
E.D. Hirsch, for example, in Cultural Literacy, has said that shared cultural information about civic matters is crucial for pupils whose technological sophistication has brought home to them the relevance of Marshall McLuhan's term "global village". So that the significance of a "network of civic associations" is understood in its broadest sense, young people need to know about the rules and procedures, the ideas and philosophies, which have shaped theattitudes and behaviour of civilised nations. Otherwise, they will lack the essential frame of cultural reference which allows people to communicate effectively with one another. In the UK, the British National Curriculum Council's Approaches to Civics Education (1990) similarly focuses attention on large global issues which promote attachment on the part of geographically remote populations: most crucially, perhaps, individual devotion to such strong personal values as respect for the legitimate interests of others, which are anchored in a centuries-old awareness of the meaning of the common good.
The designers of the Social Science Framework which was adopted in California in 1987, and which incorporates citizenship education, likewise recommends that children should be well schooled in such stabilising values as the limitations of state power, freedom of speech and association, and trial by jury, and in such essential character traits as individual responsibility, fair play, personal honesty, and tolerance. Echoing them, the authors of a detailed 142-page document published in 1994 by the Center for Civic Education in Calabas, California, National Standards for Civics and Government, have elaborated on topics that should be familiar to all pupils, K-12 (for example, Constitutional principles embodied in government structures, the relationship of national politics to world affairs), and indicated in specific terms the roles of individuals in civic life (see the accompanying box of suggestions for pupils in Years 5-8). The significant question for Australia is precisely how ideas of this kind will find their way into our school programmes.
The Purposes of Politics and Government for Students in years 5-8 Students should be able to:
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At the national level, the Curriculum Corporation in Melbourne, which has been criticised in the past for erratic performance (that is, excellent and not-so-excellent school resources), has been awarded a reported $20 million to develop kits and other materials for use in ordinary school classrooms. (25) At the State level, curriculum work in citizenship education has been proceeding for the last twelve months, but without obvious recourse to excellent overseas materials like those produced in Calabas. Although Professor Ken Eltis's 1995 report, "Focusing on Learning: Report of the Review of Outcomes and Profiles in New South Wales Schooling" (August 1995), has recommended that the integration of citizenship education be considered as part of developmental work in social studies, excellent overseas material brought to Australia by the President of the New South Wales Board of Studies has not yet been included in draft syllabuses. (26)
The key question at present is therefore whether the centrally important work remaining to be done in civics will avoid the errors besetting existing social studies syllabus documents. Among the more valuable projects underway in Victoria in 1995 at the behest of State curriculum consultant Dr Kevin Donnelly was the design of a civics component in the Study of Australia Project by such experts as Professors John Hirst, Helen Hughes, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and Hugh Emy. If the former habit in Australia of involving scholars of their calibre in syllabus design were more widely re-introduced, confusion and woolliness about the defining concerns of civics -- that is, "legal", "political", and "cultural" matters -- could disappear overnight.
Under virtually every large heading whose importance is appreciated by experts from around the world there are topics of compelling interest to include in civics work. One immediate example is "the rule of law". Many teenagers in disadvantaged urban regions, particularly those who regard the police with blatant hostility, believe that it is right to avenge personal injuries by means of "rough justice". In response to the theft of valued possessions, insults to friends and family, or verbal and physical assault directed at innocent persons, young Australian males regularly take the law into their own hands, particularly if they have been drinking. Typically no informed adult, let alone a social studies teacher, ever challenges their assumptions about what it is legitimate to do in highly charged situations of this kind.
The large issue of how ordinary conflict should be resolved when the parties to a disturbance behave unjustly is rarely tackled with suitable thoroughness and rigour in school classrooms is one current issue, among many, which has an obvious place in the '90s classroom. In a recent article on the subject of justice and order as they emerge in the classroom itself, "Commitment to Violence among Teenagers in Poverty", Martin Haberman and Vicky Schreiber Dill are helpful on both the motives behind violent behaviour in adolescents, and on what can be done to defuse eruptions in schoolrooms which bear an immediate relation to daily civic battles outside school walls. Through excerpts from conversations that have taken place in ordinary classes, they contrast effective and ineffective methods of meeting threats to civil harmony, and they offer teachers sensible advice about the exercise of reason in conflicts threatening to get out of hand. (27)
One of Haberman and Dill's convictions, widely shared by other successful educators, is that adults who possess genuine authority speak to difficult pupils with a healthy blend of concern, reasonableness, and firmness. If an adolescent is provocative in the classroom, prudent teachers try first of all to find out whether an obvious problem -- illness, hunger caused by lack of food all day, a recent fight with a near neighbour or relative -- is to blame. If not, instead of escalating conflict or evading the issue at hand by forbidding any discussion at all -- for example, sending the disruptive pupil to the school principal after saying angrily, "You don't talk to me that way" -- they address the offender calmly, remind him of his obligations to the rest of the group, and involve him as quickly as possible in scheduled activity by making it clear that if he does not exercise his free choice by ceasing to disrupt the class, the only alternative will be identical work after school.
In a world in which mature demands are flagrantly ignored because irrational expressions of individual will have replaced sound awareness of the common good to such a degree that all authority is under siege, it is particularly important for pupils to witness rational, objective behaviour in their teachers. Words and actions designed to promote sound attitudinal and behavioural choice, not passive compliance, provide young people with exemplary instruction on the requirements of order in every setting. On such commonplace affronts to justice in schools as bullying, taunts, violent revenge, or anger directed at the wrong person students can receive genuine and effective teaching. (28) When children see that upsets close to home bear an unmistakable relation to disruptions in the social and political worlds more broadly, their interest in what can be done to set things right becomes very marked.
Two years ago the principal of the Queenwood School, Judith Wheeldon, wrote an article in an issue of an overseas journal devoted to Australia on the discipline policy instituted by her when she took over as school Head. (29) This policy, which is very simple, has worked beautifully for close to a decade -- chiefly, she herself thinks, because it is informed by a conception of justice basic to all of life, not just to the running of a school, and because its components are so easy to remember. It depends for its success on three questions which all students are expected to aik about any proposed course of action: Is it safe for everyone who would be affected? Is it considerate of everyone? Does it reflect well on yourself, your family, and your school? If more schools were prepared to adopt such a policy, the beginnings of an understanding of the foundations of civic order with the potential to serve the young for the whole of their lives could be set firmly in place.
Of course the effective government of nations requires more than a concern for safety, consideration of others, and acts that reflect well on those who perform them. But by making pupils aware of fundamental operations responsible for the just and orderly functioning of institutions close to home, teachers -- and, in particular, those involved in citizenship education -- can encourage serious thought about other features of democracy which are basic to its survival. At the very least, in responsible school programmes, cart-before-horse smorgasbords which approach civics through vague injunctions like "Evaluate attempts to reform legal and political systems", accompanied by unbalanced and arbitrary suggestions for implementation via "Gun law reform; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traditional law; Bill of Rights", (30) must be replaced. Glib scatter-gun suggestions of this type mock the entire idea of sound teaching and learning.
In addition to specifying large subject headings for study (for example, basic human rights) and appropriate topics to be explored (for example, differences between democratic and totalitarian rule), citizenship education syllabuses will have to include reading lists compiled by experts. Additional support documents containing material suitable for study, including anthologies and kits prepared with the help of recognised specialists in history, political science, and economics, will be essential as well. Patchwork quilts, however enticing, are no substitute for meticulously organised, balanced programmes of study anchored in a deep recognition of the role of the past in shaping the present.
One of the more vital services performed by the UCLA Center for the Study of History in 1987 was its commentary on the importance of historical knowledge, chronologically and systematically acquired, in an active citizenry. In a citation from the New York Chinatown History Project, Charlotte Crabtree and her team make the point that although "history cannot satisfy our appetite when we are hungry, nor keep us warm when the cold wind blows", if younger generations "do not understand the hardships and triumphs of their elders, then we will be a people without a past. As such, we will be like water without a source, a tree without roots." Shortly afterwards they add that, "unfurnished with historical knowledge, we remain prisoners of our milieu", ignorant of the concerns of a "shared humanity with common problems".
Bearing this in mind, and bearing also in mind the "centrality" of history to "citizenship and personal life", the authors of Lessons from History remind teachers and parents that the quicker the pace of change and the higher the flood of "information", the more essential history's role is in preparing people for "private life and public action". Without knowing the British antecedents of representative self-government in countries like the US and Australia, and without learning about major European influences on civil life, students respond to facts about the principles of democratic government as if they were abstractions "floating free of source, drama, and meaning". To appreciate current reform efforts, young people need to understand the concrete historical forces that have supported or obstructed and destroyed democratic practices around the world.
Democratic citizens, the Bradley Commission on History declared (and Lessons from History repeats), must grasp three kinds of historical reality: their own national past, to tell them "who they are, what they have done, and who they are becoming"; key moments in the European past, so that they understand "the causes of advances and failure" in their "moral and political heritage"; and major events in the history of non-European civilisations, to know "the nations and people with whom they shall live out a common destiny". Each of the three "tells them things they must know that the other two cannot". None is "sufficient by itself." (31) When students are suitably immersed in these realities in rigorously conceived programmes of study, they develop a stronger sympathy for ideas and conditions different from their own at the same time that they come to understand more about their own distinctive customs and traditions.
Even more important: so that young people realise the importance of human agency, individual and corporate, they need to recognise that although there are historical reasons for the ways in which events turn out, history is contingent, influences change, and the relative strength of particular influences varies according to the choices made by each and every person with a voice and a vote. To create the civic pride so important to the great leaders of the past going back to Pericles, the courses in citizenship education yet to be written must help students to appreciate the complexity of causality. The more time pupils spend in the company of writers who understand the mix of chance and design in ordinary human events and "the tangle of purpose and process" (32) fundamental to history, the more likely it is that they will care about public life in ways that satisfy their own sense of life's promise.
ENDNOTES
1. See, for example, Wood's Educating Australians (1992), pages 51-53.
2. On the poor general knowledge in civics of Australian students, see Educating Australians, pages 51-52 and 57-58. See also, on comparable failure overseas, Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn's What Do Ozrr 17-Year-Olds Know? (1987) and the US National Education Goals Report, Building a Nation of Learners (1993).
3. On the decrease in adult involvement in civic activity in Australia, reflected in significantly declining membership in voluntary civic associations such as political parties, regional organisations like the Country Women's Association, trade unions, and service clubs, see Review, Vol. 48, No. 2.
4. Among the more well-publicised studies covering events and persons well-known to an educated public are a survey conducted by The Australian in 1990 and one conducted by Donald Horne in February 1992 to mark Ideas for Australia Week. In The Australian's survey, fewer than 20 per cent of 14-year-olds could identify the two men who immediately preceded Bob Hawke as Prime Minister.
5. Over the centuries, beginning with the Greeks, political analysts have agreed about this linkage. An influential thinker on this subject, referred to later in our Civics chapter, is Harvard's Robert Putnam in Making Democracy Work: Civic Tradition in Modern Italy (1993). Closer to home, John Carroll ("Democracy", Quadrant, April 1995), Ken Baker (in "The Plight of Voluntary Associations" and "Associations at the Crossroads", Review, Vol. 48, No. 2), and John Hyde (The Australian, column on 27 October 1995) have echoed Putnarn.
6. On the reasons for this failure, see Educating Australians. See, too, my recent discussion of major difficulties in the Humanities, "Home Truths: A Reflection on the Demidenko Affair", in Quadrant (October 1995).
7. Numerous widely reported surveys on demoralisation in young people -- the Victorian, Eckersley's, in the Autumn 1995 Youth Studies, Digby and Mackay in New South Wales, Noel Wilson in South Australia -- have cited as causes the following: unemployment, fears of redundancy in the workplace more generally, moral confusion, social disengagement, cynicism, and lack of vision for the future. The Australian's Higher Education Supplement columnist Margot Prior, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia, has reported on these surveys and on the general condition of Australian youth (see, for example, her column "Youth Must Be Taken Seriously" in the 25 October 1995 Higher Education Supplement).
8. On large inadequacies in teacher training, see Educating Australians, pages 7-27.
9. On all of these subjects, excellent books are available which never find their way into school classrooms. For instance: on pollution, the fine series recently published by Cambridge University Press, "Science and Our Future", edited by Beryl Morris and Mitch O'Toole, is very helpful. See Craig Smith's review on the latest addition to the series, Water, in Education Monitor, Vol. 6, No. 1.
10. Recent criticisms can be found in the Eltis Report, "Focus on Learning: Report of the Review of Outcomes and Profiles in New South Wales Schooling", released in August 1995. Among the earlier publications on this subject which have drawn on a wide variety of expert criticism of outcomes-based education Profiles is the Vol. 4, No. 2 issue of Education Monitor.
11. Earlier in this century and in its second half, syllabus documents were prepared by academic experts and teachers working together. Recently, however, influential groups of curriculum designers have excluded the finest Australian scholars on Politically Correct grounds, or given them a peripheral role.
12. The importance of such ideas -- in particular, at present, ideas about republicanism -- to sound political functioning is discussed by Sir Zelman Cowen in Quadrant (December 1994).
13. For their discussion of many of the large issues just named, I am indebted to the editors of an excellent text for senior students, The Democracy Reader (Harper Collins, 1992), Diane Ravitch and Abigail Thernstrom.
14. See Harry Evans, "Lessons from Livy", Quadrant (October 1995).
15. The fate of this spirited young woman is described in A.D. Hope's poem, "Advice to Young Ladies" (in his Collected Poems, 1930-1965).
16. Using Aquinas's observations about typical instances of unsound judgment, which were more helpful to me than anyone else's, I wrote an Observation on Justice in typical school contexts in Education Monitor, Vol. 3, No. 1. Among the common injuries, resulting from errors of judgment, there described were these: having one's goodness doubted on scanty evidence; being ignored, neglected, underestimated, patronised, or by-passed; being taunted, humiliated, branded, physically molested, and bullied; becoming the subject of malicious gossip; and being slandered without the right of reply.
17. See, for instance, Patricia Weiss's and Mortimer Adler's Great Ideas: a Program Guide, Encyclopzdia Britannica, 1987.
18. The story of Vo Dai Ton's ten years of solitary confinement during the Vietnam War is recounted in his autobiographical reminiscence, The Bamboo Gulag, which will soon be available to the public in an English translation.
19. See, for example, the introductory remarks in William J. Bennett's The Book of Virtues.
20. The ideas summarised in this paragraph come from Jeffrey Babb's submission to the Civics Expert Group early in 1995.
21. See further, on the need for teaching new arrivals about the nature and origins of Australian democratic practice, and for testing their basic knowledge before awarding them Citizenship status, "Citizenship: Its Meaning, Privileges and Obligations", A Stitch in Time: Repairing the Social Fabric (1995).
22. Among these educators are Dr Harry Phillips of Edith Cowan University, Ray Nichol of the School of Education at La Trobe University in Bendigo, and Sam Weller, the President of the New South Wales Board of Studies.
23. Through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of California, Professors Ravitch and Crabtree led a team of scholars which produced the widely praised book on civics for primary and secondary school pupils, Lessons from History (1992), discussed in the concluding section of this chapter.
24. Putnam's book-length discussion of this subject, undertaken with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Nanett, is Making Democracy Work, op. cit. in footnote 5.
25. Reports of the exact sum awarded vary between $10 and $25 million, but $20 million is the more commonly cited figure.
26. See especially pages 89-90 of the Eltis Report.
27. This article appears in the Summer 1995 issue of Kappa Delta Pi Record.
28. See further, on typical forms of injustice found in schools and sound methods of correcting them, "Justice for All", Education Monitor, Vol. 3, No. 1.
29. See "Queenwood: The School With No Rules", Kappa Delta Pi Record (Fall 1992).
30. Taken from Victorian Studies of Society and the Environment, the Unit on "Civics and Citizenship Education", Level 7, Strand NSS.
31. In the quotations from Lessons from History (page 13) in this paragraph, for the sake of flow, I have changed first person references in the Bradley Commission on History declaration to third person references.
32. This phrase is the historian William McNeill's. It is cited by Crabtree et al. in "The Case for History in Our Schools", Lessons from History, page 14.
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