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Citizenship and Political Action in Formal and Non-formal Learning Contexts in Germany

Citizenship
Critical Theory
Education
Alexander Wohnig
University of Siegen
Alexander Wohnig
University of Siegen

Abstract

A lot of authors of political theory and theory of democracy, like Kant, Durkheim, and Dewey, have established a mutual condition between the republican form of the state and education. This condition is defined by the need of democracy to produce the moral and cultural premises of their existence through educational processes. There are at least two reasons for this: firstly, people need democratic education to take part in democratic self-government. Secondly, only autonomous citizens are able to institutionalize an education of democratic maturity. This complementarity of good education and the republican form of the state is held together by the idea of the ‘good citizen’, a normative concept which is defined by certain properties and competences to act in democratic societies. In this context citizenship education is understood as teaching democracy. In formal and non-formal education, pupils should learn democratic skills to take part in society as democratic citizens. For this reason, learning about political participation as a main competence of the ‘good citizen’ is part of citizenship education. There are a lot of school projects which want to support young people to engage in a political way. In a study of the author in Germany, it has been shown that these projects often stop at social learning and action (e.g. service-learning projects, social commitment etc.), while the transfer to political learning and action is neglected. While on the one hand social engagement becomes part of learning processes and young people internalize this as an option to act on social and political problems, on the other hand political participation as a possibility to make change is excluded. Another obstacle to political participation by young people in educational contexts might be the widespread view in Germany that citizenship education should be propaedeutics to real political action, and not political participation itself. Recently there are a few efforts – mostly of actors in non-formal education – to stimulate learning processes which could lead to political participation of young people. First of all, I discuss the theoretical condition between the republican form of the state and education. Second, I present the German debate about the importance of ‘political participation’ as a goal of citizenship education. Third, I introduce a project of formal and non-formal education, which gives young people the opportunity to participate in society in a political way.