Building civic capacity for a new century: Engaging young people in civic institutions and civil society

In a democratic society, citizens will be confronted with decision-making options that require them to be discerning about the changes that are proposed, to evaluate alternative courses of action, to develop strategies that will advance their cause and to take appropriate action. These processes are the basis for developing civic capacity. This paper explores drivers of civic capacity, including civic virtues and civic values, in order to see how civic capacity can best be developed in the nations of the Asia-Pacific region. Of particular interest is whether ”Asian values” are necessarily at odds with the underlying values of liberal democracy. Civic capacity is needed at a time of great change throughout the region, because change, and possibly even turbulence, will in all likelihood characterize the region in the future. Our future will depend on creating a civic capacity that will enable active and informed citizens to exercise agency over their social, political and economic lives. Editor’s note Address presented at the First International Conference of the Institute for Asian-Pacific Educational Development,Reflections and Explorations for Educational Development in the 21st Century: The Search for Asian Identities and Perspectives,Seoul National University, 9–10 November 2000.     

现代社会、现代性与公民教育

现代社会的特征决定了它必然是一个公民社会,在其中,公民是独立、自由而又主动的社会参与者。但是,现代社会又必然产生现代性问题,因为现代性使人们远离公共领域而活在自我的空间内,使现代社会失去公民社会的真义。因此,现代性本身又是颠覆现代社会的,这就需要通过公民教育来保卫公共性、捍卫公共价值并引导人体认自身的公民身份,以弥合现代性问题给现代社会造成的断裂。中国公民教育存在的问题是:在集体主义与个人主义两方面的影响下产生权利与义务的分离。为了抵制这种分离给公民社会所带来的现代性断裂,亟需通过公民教育引导学生从社会层面来理解权利与义务,以培养拥有健全而统一的权利和义务观的现代公民。     

Teacher education for a democratic society in England and South Africa

This paper considers the role of teacher education in England and South Africa in relation to education for democratic citizenship. It argues that teacher education should play a positive role in this respect but there has often been a contradiction between the structures and practices of teacher education and democratic forms of education. The paper analyses teacher education policy in both countries in the light of these arguments. It then goes on to discuss the practice of teacher education in both countries in relation to existing literature and evidence and interviews with student teachers at two universities in England and two in South Africa.     

Hopes and challenges for the new civic education in Mexico: toward a democratic citizen without adjectives

This paper presents the main goals and themes, as well as a critical analysis, of an ambitious new reform of Mexico’s secondary-level program for civic education. It begins with a brief historical review of the modern Mexican secondary school, as well as a thematic analysis of the new published curriculum and study program, which puts heavy emphasis on the development of democratic citizenship skills and habits. The paper then draws on interview research to highlight some of the challenges that national and local actors have identified for the program’s successful implementation. Because the new program espouses a progressive democratic pedagogy in the absence of a supportive democratic political culture, an appropriate structure of school governance, or adequate training for in-service teachers, many actors expressed skepticism about whether the reform could meaningfully take hold.     

The values and virtues promoted in the proposed seventh course of study in civic education: implications for democratic citizenship and democratic citizenship education in Korea

Citizenship education in South Korea has entered a new era in terms of the course of study. The seventh course of study in civic education introduces the conception of civic virtue for school education. The identification of the ten civic virtues is a remarkable first attempt in the history of the course of study. This study, which assumes that civic virtue must be a key concept in civic education, welcomes the idea of civic virtue, since it can act as a solvent on the citizen knowledge-oriented approach of citizenship education. Nevertheless, there are some problems with the identification of the civic values and virtues, and this study argues that those civic virtues selected for the school curriculum are mostly not civic, nor clearly vital to a liberal democracy.     

对民主型公民文化的认识

在小农自然经济和封建宗法条件下，弥漫于传统中国的必然是个体消融于整体的封建臣民化。而在现代市场经济和发达的公民社会条件下，如果再用依附型的臣民化来作为中国建设的化模式，那终究是行不通的。这就需要一种新的化模式，即具有中国特色民主型的公民化。展望二十一世纪，有中国特色民主型的公民化的构建必将成为时代的化主题。     

构建社会主义和谐社会对公民教育的诉求

十六大提出了构建社会主义和谐社会的科学论断。这要求我们必须大力发展符合构建社会主义和谐社会要求的公民教育,在坚持社会主义核心价值体系指导下,以人的全面和谐发展为方向,积极构建适合社会主义和谐社会需要的公民教育体系。     

The politics of adult education: state,economy and civil society

There has been a recent general resurgence of interest in civil society, a resurgence that is also found in adult education. Radical adult educators, in particular, view civil society as the privileged sphere of radical learning and social change. It is seen as the site to engage in democratic struggle, social movements and political change. This new elevation of civil society is tied into a wider crisis on the political left ? the crisis of socialism. This crisis is reflected in the wider debates on the politics of civil society, a debate centred on the differences between Marxist and post-Marxist definitions of civil society. The purpose of this paper is to clarify this debate, and outline its implications for adult education theory and practice. To this end, the paper examines the history of the civil society idea, a history demonstrating that analyses of civil society need to be placed alongside understandings of the state and the market. These understandings of political and economic society provide the bases for two very different political agendas - socialism and radical democracy. The paper discusses how these two agendas impact on adult education, in particular how different analyses of the state/economy/civil society relationship suggest divergent conceptions of social conflict.     

Global justice,national education and local realities in Myanmar: a civil society perspective

Asia Pacific Education Review - This paper examines social justice in relation to the Myanmar education system, from the perspective of participation in decision-making; the social background of...     

中国民主政治进程中动态多元公民社会之构建与作用

在理论与实践中,民主发展都已突显其重要地位。民主政治发展是一国政治现代化进程中的核心内容之一,在多个影响民主的客体中,文化作为重要变量推动或阻碍着民主的发展。民主与文化的复合决定着公民文化的形成,公民社会与民主政治是双向影响的,这对于发展中的中国来说,便意味着动态多元社会建立的必要性。     

The impact of Nordic adult education ideas on the development of a democratic society in Lithuania

This article analyses the role of the cooperation with and the influence of the Nordic countries on the development of a democratic society in Lithuania through adult education since the reinstatement of its independence from Soviet regime in March 1990 to the present. The authors focus on three main areas: (1) the training of Lithuanian adult educators; (2) the establishment and development of NGOs; and (3) the implications for a Lithuanian policy of adult education. Within the framework of Nordic-Baltic cooperation established among five Nordic and three Baltic countries (NB8) in 1992, Lithuanian adult educators seized the opportunity to visit Scandinavian institutions and projects. Experiencing Nordic adult education ideas has resulted in a marked shift in Lithuanian adult educators’ values, methodology and careers; and in the establishment of a series of very influential umbrella associations as well as hundreds of NGOs in Lithuania which work with adults and support functioning democratic values in society. This shift is related to the civic responsibility and active participation growing out of the bottom-up approaches of group work, cooperation, discussions and learning circles which are so inherent in the Nordic tradition of adult education. The internalisation of new democratic values was more complicated than expected for many Lithuanian politicians, adult educators and NGO leaders in terms of how political decisions were perceived and implemented. Furthermore, the influence of the Nordic-Baltic cooperation in adult education may also be traced in adult education policy implications in Lithuania. Some changes in the policies of contemporary Lithuania have not been successful and even failed to promote a democratic society.     

The case of Palestinian civil society in Israel: Islam,civil society,and educational activism

This article examines the educational activism of two Arab civil organizations in Israel: the Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education (FUCAE) and the Eqraa Association (Eqraa). On the one hand, it explores the possibilities and limitations of the involvement of the FUCAE in the state’s Arab education system, as a secular organization that is heavily engaged in the contentious identity politics of the Arab minority in Israel. On the other hand, it reflects on the competing yet complementary roles played by Eqraa vis-à-vis the state in the field of education, as a faith-based organization that has been operating its own independent successful initiatives in education. More specifically, this article compares the goals, strategies, activities, and sources of funding of these two organizations, thus providing insights on the role of civil society organizations, either secular or religious, on Palestinian identity formation and political mobilization in Israel. Additionally, it clarifies the meaning and characteristics of Islamic entrepreneurship and activism in education.     

Remaking public spaces for civil society

The relationships between disciplines and the institutions within which they are situated is a fertile area for researching the shaping of sociological knowledge. Applying theoretical insights from the sociology of knowledge, this article draws on an empirical study of research publications in the sociology of health and medicine to show which institutions in the Australian context are most likely to use sociological theory. When the institutions are positioned within the global university ranking system, an inverse association between sociological theory and the relative wealth and prestige of the originating institution becomes evident. Some of the implications of this finding are discussed with reference to the on-going viability of disciplines.     

The core as an education for a democratic citizenry

J. Rufus Fears is professor of classics, chairman of the Department of Classical Studies, and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Boston University, Boston, MA 02215. He is also director of the Boston University Humanities Foundation.     

Against democratic education

This is the fourth of five commentaries discussing Zongjie Wu’s essay, ‘Interpretation, autonomy, and transformation’. It argues that he may have committed two methodological mistakes in his contrast between traditional Chinese education and contemporary Chinese (and Western) education: reverse-Orientalism and a form of fundamentalism. It will then argue that the distinction Wu’s essay correctly reveals is not between China and the West, but between forms of a philosophical education and those of the mass education. In contemporary Western democratic education, the philosophical, political, and mass forms of education are collapsed into one, mass education, and by arguing for preservation of philosophical education on a mass level, Wu also implicitly adopts this conflation position. However, this commentary will argue that this conflation needs to be corrected, and the traditional Confucian education actually tries to strike a middle way between, and to correct, the forms of pre-democratic Western education and democratic education.