Education for Citizenship: The Citizenship Order

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 55, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 488-504+i

  Crick, Bernard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 10744226034     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/parlij/55.3.488     Document Type: Review

References (22)

1. Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, DfEE & QCA, 1998.
2. C. McIlwain in his Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern, Cornell University Press, 1947, pp. 100-1 shows in a dialogue between Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and Bishop Gardiner how early the British crown, or say executive could realise that Parliament need be no threat to its authority, even a means of enhancing it - what Samuel Beer has called 'mobilising consent'.
3. See B. Crick (ed.), Citizens: Towards a Citizen Culture, Blackwell & Political Quarterly, 2001.
4. D. Heater (ed.), The Teaching of Politics, Methuen Educational, 1969.
5. Ibid, pp. viii-ix.
6. Ibid, p. 1. If my comment here seems just as a gloss on my In Defence of Politics, it is. I simply applied the ideas to the aims of education. And there was a philosophy behind the 1998 report, indeed some of the language of the first three sections came from the same sound source, but nobody noticed.
7. B. Crick and A. Porter, Political Education and Political Literacy: The Report and Papers of and the Evidence Submitted to the Working Party of the Hansard Society's Programme for Political Education, Longman, 1978.
8. Ibid, p. 31.
9. D. Blunkett and B. Crick, The Labour Party's Aims and Values: An Unofficial Statement, Nottingham, Spokesman pamphlet, 1988.
10. B. Jones and L. Robins (eds), Two Decades in British Politics: Essays to Mark Twenty-One Years of the Politics Association, Manchester University Press, 1992. It was remarkable that of 20 essays, 16 were about British government and policy processes, only four about citizenship or political education in schools. Similarly, the Association's journal had recently changed its name from Teaching Politics to Talking Politics to signal a shift from pedagogic articles and notes on teaching methods and good practice to substantive articles on political institutions and processes useful to sixth-form students and teachers for examination purposes.
11. For detailed references see Derek Heater's excellent 'Citizenship: A Remarkable Case of Sudden Interest', Parliamentary Affairs, April 1991.
12. I had to invoke the authority the Secretary of State to get the QCA finance office to meet my bill for two good lunches. They were not used to such political ways of working.
13. We were able to move quickly by, after the first meeting, putting a continuous series of drafts in front of the group for revision, instead of open-ended discussions on themes.
14. Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, op. cit., pp. 7-8. This has been called the 'mission statement' or 'the noble paragraph', or by Chris Woodhead at a QCA committee meeting 'dangerous waffle'.
15. This was of more than symbolic importance. For the Speaker to be patron (which she was eager to be), the government had to get the agreement of the Leader of the Opposition, which William Hague gave readily. Otherwise it is at least possible that some of the maverick backbencher's of the time would have denounced any kind of citizenship education as indoctrination at worst, unnecessary at best. Only Melanie Phillips in the Sunday Times and Claire Fox of the Institute of Ideas (of a certain kind) tried to stir public trouble, with surprisingly few takers. Behind the scenes Chris Woodhead opposed it fiercely but was seen off by personal interventions by David Blunkett. Immediately after his fall, Ofsted produced excellent guidance notes on citizenship for their inspectors.
16. See 'The Decline of Political Thinking' in B. Crick, Essays on Citizenship, Continuum, 2000.
17. Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, pp. 11-13.
18. Citizenship: The National Curriculum for England, DfEE 7 QCA, 1999.
19. Ibid, pp. 14-16 but note that the actual statutory order is set down in only two and a quarter pages; most of thirty pages are material generic to the National Curriculum as a whole.
20. D. Blunkett, Politics and Progress: Renewing Democracy and Civil Society, Demos & Politico's Publishing, 2001.
21. Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, p. 9.
22. R. Hoggart, First and Last Things, Aurum Press, 1999, p. 58.