Abstract
Can active citizenship be learned? In recent years, teaching citizenship issues are becoming popular in schools across various parts of the world. This paper makes reference to India as an example. It argues the need for a pedagogical debate on what makes an active citizen. The complex questions it begins to address are these: who is a citizen?; what does it mean to be an active citizen?; and under what social, political or educational scenario does a person become a citizen? Surely, the question is not just about learning citizenship but also in taking action as a citizen that education within schools needs to address. Based on a published book, this paper makes an eclectic enquiry into the example of the intercultural thinkers Mahatma Gandhi of India and his Japanese contemporary, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who had both contributed to lead their respective societies into a new trajectory of change. Secondly, this paper discusses innovative methods and activities in teaching citizenship education and the current use of this published research in a post-graduate certificate course in the UK. In addition, this paper argues that there is still a paucity of literature, which develops a broader understanding of thinkers from the East.
Introduction
This paper develops and broadens the arguments made by my previous studies. The first part takes excerpts from a recent article in which I have argued the case of whether, and if so how, can we foster active citizenship within the classrooms of most modern democratic nation states (Sharma, 2012). In that publication, I highlighted the contributions that liberal arts colleges can make to develop critical understandings and other necessary attributes and skills for active citizenship in the 21st-century. This develops such arguments, while reflecting on the teaching contents and methods that can be used within citizenship education, with reference to a module that I designed for a post-graduate certificate course at the University of Nottingham in the UK.
The module combines reading material and activities for reflective learning on citizenship education, taking examples of Asian dissidents of the 21st-century, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Daisaku Ikeda (1928–). I selected the examples of these thinkers because they were influenced by both the East and the West, and a study of their educational ideas can offer a multicultural perspective in citizenship education. Further, as argued in an earlier writing, there is a lack of research that compares the East to the East (Gundara and Sharma, 2008: 70): … whilst extensive comparative research has been undertaken in the East and West, there is still a dearth of research and literature which develops a broader understanding and compares East with East. This is especially the case within debates on citizenship and inter-cultural education where the educational policies in the West have not engaged with the practices in the East.
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However, in many Asian countries, including India, for more than a century there has been a heavy influence of Western authors on citizenship issues. Alston (1910); Gupta (1990) … One of the main reasons for this has been the paucity of research methodology to analyse and grasp the several indigenous ideas and practices on political or citizenship education which are accessible to scholars at the universal level.
My previous study on ‘Makiguchi and Gandhi’ developed an inter-disciplinary method to make comparisons (Sharma, 2008). The historical-comparative study of the two thinkers had been concerned to address sociological, pedagogical and political issues. This long-term study culminated into a book, and is the outcome of research work done for more than a decade, in Japan, India, Hawaii and the UK.
Before moving on, let me take the example of some developments on teaching issues on citizenship in India with reference to the use of Gandhi and his values, especially since this is a special issue of Policy Futures in Education on Indian education. The Indian example also highlights the necessity to re-engage with citizenship education across modern, democratic nation states, as will be argued in this paper.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that since the independence of India in 1947, educational policies and aims have moved away significantly from Gandhi’s education. At the same time, Western education and research has continued to influence Indian education. In the 21st-century, as citizenship education has become a prominent issue in the educational debates across the world, in India, as well, attempts have been made (without relevant success) to include citizenship education within the diverse school curriculums.
The following was argued earlier (Sharma, 2008, p. 132): A review of the Consultation Paper on Effectuation of Fundamental Duties of Citizens by The National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution (Advisory Panel, 2001) published in 2003 shows that the discussion on citizenship values is part of the all too often lack of scholarly use of concepts from ancient Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts that are given no translation or practical use within the existing political structure or the educational systems. Interestingly the above document on citizenship education highlights the need for Gandhi’s ideas and values. It is the only relevant discussion in education on ‘redeeming’ Gandhi.
However, the socio-political structure in which the attempt is made to bring back Gandhi is different from that suggested by him. The key Gandhian concept invoked in this document is duty bound rights’, that is, rights must evolve from carrying out one’s duty. The Indian constitution however views duties and rights separately – article 51 A deals with the fundamental duties and articles 12 to 35 of part III of the preamble to the constitution of India contain the fundamental rights of an Indian citizen. The consequence of this paradoxical situation, it can be hypothesised, will end up with one of the following options being exercised in the ongoing discussions on citizenship: the futile attempt to invoke Gandhi will be abandoned, or an attempt will be made to address his ideas and values through citizenship education ( … in which these values are largely estranged), or as has been till now, discussions and debates on citizenship education will take place outside the curriculum, while instead schools continue to run classes on ‘civic education’ in which students are provided a general and theoretical understanding of the constitution and political structure of India.
It must also be pointed out that in spite of the chaos and corruption of Indian democracy, Gandhi’s aspiration for an active civic participation has been realized in many ways. Also, the engagement with Gandhi, as with other such dissident thinkers in education, can be useful to ameliorate the role of knowledge and values in politics, and allow us to rethink what can be achieved through ‘citizenship education’ as this paper suggests.
Furthermore, since the writing of my above-cited work in this field, there has been some developments in terms of a new policy framework that engages with citizenship education in teacher’s education, including the national curriculum framework for teacher education 2009 with the final text released in March 2010. As Cappelle et al. (2011) explain, with regard to citizenship education the new framework emphasizes the need to:
re-conceptualize citizenship training in terms of human rights and approaches of critical pedagogy; emphasize environment and its protection, living in harmony, with oneself and with natural and social environment; promote peace and a democratic way of life; and create respect for the constitutional values of equality, justice, liberty, fraternity, tolerance, secularism and empathy. In order to develop citizens who promote equitable and sustainable development for all, it is necessary that teachers be educated in the training to understand local cultures, cultural-specific and multicultural situations and in national and international systems and contexts. Teachers, it is stated, need to know more about the exclusion of children who come from socially and economically deprived backgrounds (castes, tribes, etc.) and from minority communities. There is also a need to equip teachers to overcome their own preconceived ideas about these issues and to handle such difficult issues in a positive and even-handed way. (Cappelle et al., 2011: 11)
The above study also refers to a post-graduate degree currently offered at the University of Pune to teacher education students who engage with the Indian thinkers, Gandhi and Tagore in a course titled, ‘Education for Globalization’ (Cappelle et al., 2011: 11–12).
Returning to our engagement with the two thinkers in this paper, the first part of this paper will introduce Makiguchi and Gandhi, who shared many common views, but had a dissimilar fate after their death. Makiguchi was a teacher and school principal who died largely unknown in prison, but today his ideas have influenced the politics and education in Japan through his successors, in particular, the Japanese thinker, Daisaku Ikeda. On the other hand, Gandhi, who is better known worldwide than Makiguchi, was a political leader whose movement made a significant impact within the Indian politics and society in this own time. Gandhi, as Makiguchi, had also developed his own indigenous views on education. In addition, like Makiguchi, Gandhi met an untimely death. However, unlike Makiguchi, Gandhi’s influence in his country diminished soon after his death. This was while abroad several non-violent social movements continued to be inspired by Gandhi, such as, the civil rights movement in the US and the freedom movement in South Africa.
The ensuing section briefly describes the two thinkers and raises issues that, as argued, should be considered key to citizenship education. Arguments made in this section also appeared in a recent publication (Sharma, 2012).2,3
Dissidents and their movements
I begin with the premise that education can enable young people to understand their rights, obligations and responsibilities as active citizens within most complex democratic societies.
However, we are aware that learning in the classrooms alone does not necessarily lead to developing students as active participants in their local communities or enable them to think as global citizens.
In fact, good examples of citizenship can sometimes be found through civil movements of engaged citizens who have simply arisen to the occasion to fight for justice and human rights because of their particular grievance. Such as, the case of the African–American civil rights movement in the US, or the Chipko movement in India, during which ordinary people embraced trees to shield them from being cut down.
The complex questions this paper raises are these: who is a citizen?; what does it mean to be an active citizen?; and under what social, political or educational scenario does a person become a citizen?
So, who is a citizen? A general agreement that we can reach given the various substitutes for this term within different cultural contexts is that in modern democratic nation states a citizen is a resident with legal and political rights, including the right to vote. I must acknowledge here that there are several debates in policy and practice around the terms ‘citizenship education’ and ‘global citizenship education’, which has been a topic of consideration in an earlier paper (Sharma, 2011). This paper makes itself relevant to curricular efforts being made to introduce citizenship education as a taught subject within the classrooms of many democratic nation states. Towards this end, an eclectic enquiry is made here into the example of two intercultural thinkers who as subjects in their respective countries constructed communities of ‘development and hope’ (using Judith Green’s (1999: 431) words).
Within the widening debates on teaching and learning in citizenship education, some have looked at engaging with examples of people who have contributed to their community, such as, Nelson Mandela and Eleanor Roosevelt. In similar terms, should we be concerned with other citizens – like Makiguchi and Gandhi? What do they have to offer?
Gandhi, King, Mandela and Makiguchi who are today seen as global citizens were (actually) troublemakers for their own governments. This paradox makes us rethink key questions in relation to citizenship education. Such as, under what socio-political context is a person driven to take action as a citizen? These examples are of people who were working in the context of authoritarianism.
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi was a Japanese educator who developed his own theory of value creation education through his 30 years of teaching practice (see Bethel (1989)). In spite of gaining some recognition by leading educationalists of his time, Makiguchi’s ideas on a ‘child-centered education’ failed to make an impact due to the militarization of Japanese education in early 20th-century. In this period, liberal views in education gave way to an authoritarian regime in which youth were instructed to participate in the World Wars.
In 1928, Makiguchi encountered Buddhism and in it he found a deep resonance to his own educational ideas that he had developed for the happiness of children. In 1930, Makiguchi along with a fellow teacher Josei Toda (1900–1958), established an educators’ forum comprising of lay Buddhist members called the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, which is now known as the Soka Gakkai International. In 1943, due to his opposition to the Japanese nationalistic state, Makiguchi and Toda were imprisoned and Makiguchi consequently died of old age and malnutrition. His successor, Toda, reconstructed the Soka Gakkai in the post-war years and in the last century under the third president Daisaku Ikeda; this movement has developed as the largest lay Buddhist organisation in Japan contributing to peace, culture and education. Ikeda has been conducting dialogues with several world leaders and thinkers and has received honorary doctorates and citizenship from hundreds of universities and nations, including Glasgow University and Queens University in the UK.
The belief of Soka Gakkai members in Japan to create a peaceful society has enthused them to be involved in Japanese politics. Soka Gakkai in Japan presently provides political endorsement to the Komeito Party, which, in the recent past, has been in ruling coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). This is a bold step given the fact that the LDP has been the only political party in power since the end of American occupation after the Second World War. In addition, the social and welfare policies of Komeito have shown to be progressive in modern day Japan (Fisker-Nielsen, 2005a).
However, for the members of the Soka Gakkai in Japan, entering real world politics have brought with it certain contradictions and dilemmas. For example, at the offset of America’s launch on the war on terror in the beginning of this decade, the support given by the Japanese government to America’s war efforts challenged the Soka Gakkai members and their belief in peace through peaceful means (Fisker-Nielsen, 2005a).
Similarly, Gandhi had to deal with the contending interests of leaders of religious and political communities within India. He was sometimes successful in his role as peacemaker, but often he was caught in contradictions and simply misunderstood by various groups including his own Hindu community and was eventually shot to his death in 1948. (I will discuss some of his key ideas later in this paper.)
One of the outcomes of my previous study on these leaders and their movements shows that there are contradictions that are likely to occur when we place values in the real world context (Sharma, 2008). In similar terms, Richard Rorty (1998) in his work Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America favours small campaigns over larger movements particularly because he claims ‘ … movements are dangerous to their partisans, ineffective in achieving concrete forms, and performatively self-contradictory over the long term’ (Green, 2004: 64).
However, although I agree that contradictions are likely to occur within movements, I argue that two important aspects need consideration. The first is this: although movements, such as, the Soka Gakkai may seem idealistic or naïve in the face of the given political realities, it has arguably also led to the education of its members. The benefit of such ideals for the members (of working for peace or liberty), is not as much in the realization of the goal (because society moves according to the dictates of other factors), but that in the process of working on their ideals, the body politic obtain political awareness, that is, they are ‘educated’ in the broader sense of the term, such as, the Soka Gakkai members’ engagement in Japanese society and politics. As Bethel (1973: 143) analyses in his work Makiguchi the Value Creator – Revolutionary Japanese Educator and Founder of Soka Gakkai: In Soka Gakkai, under Ikeda’s leadership, intellect is not pressed into the service of the movement, but rather is aimed at transforming the quality of mind of the entire population, equipping that population to judge the movement and to hold both it and its competitors accountable … Soka Gakkai may well be breaking open new frontiers in this respect.
On similar lines, Dobblelaere and Wilson’s (1994) study suggests that the members of the Soka Gakkai International in the UK show a greater degree of involvement in socio-political affairs than the sample taken from the general the UK population.
The second claim my study makes is that an examination of the personal histories and political movements of thinkers like Makiguchi and Gandhi are useful to ameliorate the role of knowledge and values in citizenship education. I will elaborate this point through the rest of this paper.
Let us take the example of Gandhi to elucidate some of these issues. My study finds that Gandhi as an active citizen displayed two key aspects (Sharma, 2008). The first was Gandhi the person for whom truth and non-violence was his creed. These normative values were key to the success of his movement known as Satyagraha. 4 There has been an attempt to engage with this aspect of Gandhi in Indian education. However, this has been problematic. For instance, in 2001, within the controversial re-writing of history textbooks, Gandhi’s non-violence was portrayed as a ‘weakness’ by fundamentalists. This was eventually challenged and overturned by leading historians (Delhi Historians’ Group, 2001: 24), although admittedly there is still no significant engagement with Gandhi in any of the national curriculums in India.
Then, there was the second Gandhi, the great soul or Mahatma, the moral leader and a nationalist, who had to work through the problematic intercultural issues. For example, the tensions between the Hindu and Muslim political groups, and the caste system within the Hindu society. How do we teach this aspect of Gandhi? Can we enable students to learn to become active citizens who can work through complex social problems? One conclusion my study arrived at is that instead of assimilating Gandhi’s ideas and distilling it in the classroom, we need to learn from his radical thinking. My work sheds light on Gandhi’s strategies, behaviours and beliefs as a citizen. Makiguchi and Gandhi did not provide a single, linear and reductive prescription for the needs of their respective societies, but instead, contended with the complexity of their respective social and educational contexts. Therefore, it must be argued that contradictions and dilemmas unlike what Rorty (1998) suggests are necessary to learn from their examples. The module on citizenship education discussed in the next section allows learners to review and reflect on these contradictions and paradoxes through studying the lives of dissident thinkers.
The various reading assignments in the module enable teachers to understand the personal values that influenced both these thinkers to become socially responsible. As pointed out earlier, both Makiguchi and Gandhi were influenced by thinkers from the East and the West. A study of these different perspectives provides a multicultural learning content in the module.
As argued in an earlier writing (Gundara and Sharma, 2008: 74), Both Makiguchi and Gandhi aspired to transform their respective societies and education played an important role in this transformation. Makiguchi hoped to contribute to this transformation through his education and practice, whereas Gandhi was able to make a major political impact within Indian society through the Satyagraha movement or movement based on the force of ‘truth’ and through the use of media to disseminate his ideas. Common to both thinkers was the normative aspect of their ideas, their reliance on ‘truth’ as the law of the universe and their perceived interdependence of human life. Makiguchi’s theory of education known as the value creating theory and Gandhi’s political philosophy at the individual level aimed to make citizens more socially responsible.
According to Makiguchi’s ‘value creating theory’, individual happiness is a state in which one lives ‘contributively’, i.e. through creating value for individual benefit as well as the good of society. His successor, Ikeda too advocates a deep ‘people-centric’ approach that aims to bring forth the capabilities and potentials of children, teachers, parents and the community itself. His pedagogy values the development of wisdom over the mere accumulation of knowledge, and compassionate concern for the wellbeing of the world over a narrow focus on personal gain alone.
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In a speech delivered at Columbia University, Ikeda (1996) outlined the ‘essential elements of global citizenship’ as:
the wisdom to perceive the interconnectedness of all life and living; the courage not to fear or deny difference, but to respect and strive to understand people of different cultures, and to grow from such encounters with them; and the compassion to maintain an imaginative empathy that reaches beyond one’s immediate surroundings and extends to those suffering in distant places.
One of the powerful contributions these values make within the Soka schools, established by Ikeda in Japan, is the sense of mission for world peace and trust that students experience within these institutions (Sharma, 2008). Ikeda stresses the importance of trust between teacher and student, noting the breakdown of this trust as a significant factor in the violence evident in contemporary Japanese schools. Trust cannot be exacted from another person it must be demonstrated first by oneself towards the other. Ikeda’s efforts to interact personally with students of the Soka schools are an example of the spirit of this approach.
Makiguchi and Ikeda, as well as Gandhi, had similar understandings of the notions of ‘truth’ and ‘value’ (Sharma, 1999). Although their personal values were influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism respectively, both Eastern philosophies are essentially based on an interdependent view of human life and the universe. As Ikeda (1991: 4) explains from a Buddhist viewpoint: One of the most important Buddhist concepts, ‘dependent origination’ holds that all beings and phenomena exist or occur in relation to other beings or phenomena. Everything is linked to an intricate web of causation and connection – and nothing – whether in the realm of human affairs or of natural phenomena – can exist or occur solely of its own accord. In this view, a greater emphasis is placed on the interdependent relationships between individuals than on the individual in isolation.
As I argued previously (Sharma, 2011: 9): Although Western observers such as Henri Bergson and Alfred Whitehead have noted the interrelatedness, Ikeda states that, ‘The deeper essence of Buddhism, however, goes beyond this to offer a view of interrelatedness that is uniquely dynamic, holistic, and inner-generated’ (Ikeda, 1991: 4). This concept of interrelatedness, as Ikeda emphasises, does not take away from the individual identity. ‘The “greater self” elucidated in Mahayana Buddhism is another expression for the kind of openness and expansiveness of character that embraces the sufferings of all people as one’s own, always seeking amidst the realities of human society ways of alleviating pain, and augmenting the happiness of others’ (Ikeda, 1993: 6).
Both Makiguchi and Gandhi believed that individual transformation leads to a social one. In education, therefore, their focus was on the role of the teacher, that is, the character and intellect of the teacher in developing people of talent who can contribute to society.
It must be added here that authors like Parekh have argued that in the case of Gandhi, his Hindu beliefs influenced his political understanding and action, which as Parekh argues, is different from Western political philosophies, and provides a new perspective on rights, duties, claims, interests and obligations for citizenship education (see Parekh (1989)). Parekh (1997, pp. 39–40) states: ‘that human beings were necessarily interdependent and formed an organic whole was another “basic” truth about them according to Gandhi’. Further Parekh (1997: 41) adds that since human beings were necessarily interdependent, they ‘could not degrade or brutalise others without also degrading and brutalizing themselves, or inflict psychic and moral damage on others without inflicting it on themselves as well’ (see Sharma (2008: 63–72)).
So to address the second question raised earlier: ‘what does it mean to be an active citizen?’, it can be said that apart from the attitude of a ‘can do’ spirit of taking active engagement in one’s community, the lives of Makiguchi and Gandhi suggests that an active citizen has a strong normative position which propels individual self-reflection and the propensity to effect a social change.
Taking political action based on one’s beliefs also means that more often than not contradictions are likely to occur when personal values are placed in the real world politics. Future research on other such thinkers, who were interested in the transformation of their own societies, should question the key contradictions and paradoxes that can be identified in a grounded or ‘situated’ analysis of their respective ideas and value systems. During my work as a researcher at the University of Nottingham, I tutored a module on critical and biographical analysis of texts in a master’s in higher education course. Students undertaking project work on this module were concerned with a similar inquiry on the relevance of other thinkers like Paulo Friere and Immanuel Kant exploring key questions, such as: what were their personal histories?; who were they influenced by?; and in what context did they frame their ideas? These questions allow students to understand the context in which radical thinkers developed their ideas for action. Instead of teaching students that there is a single ‘correct way’ or linear solution to combat social or political issues, these questions stimulate enquiry and imagination to understand the complexities involved in taking political action. In modern day India, often Gandhi is blamed for being a ‘hypocrite’ (especially by those that have not even studied his work). Similarly, Makiguchi and his successors in Japan have sometimes encountered accusations, for instance, by ‘yellow journalism’. This is a failure in part due to a lack of understanding of the fact that contradictions and paradoxes are inevitable when values engage with real world politics. Therefore, a study of the lives of thinkers who were involved in their politics can enable readers to acquire critical understandings in the field of politics and the complexities of political processes in contemporary societies. This is necessary so that citizens can make a sound judgment and decisive action as political actors.
As an outcome of my research and teaching on issues related to citizenship education, I developed a module for teachers as part of a post-graduate programme, which continues to be run at the University of Nottingham. The rest of this paper describes the learning content and activities that have emerged from this work.
Module on citizenship education
As part of the post-graduate certificate (international) (PGCE(I)) course, at the University of Nottingham, the teaching unit, called ‘Makiguchi and Gandhi’ was developed and has been available online since the beginning of 2011. The PGCE(I) course itself has around 250 registered students at any one time from Nigeria, Spain, UAE, Thailand, China, India and Malaysia. Expansion is likely soon in east Africa.
The module is directed for teacher’s education. The ‘intended learning outcomes’ are for the teachers to gain an awareness of the following:
the educational ideas of two non-Western thinkers, Makiguchi and Gandhi; how Makiguchi and Ikeda’s ‘value creation education’ can offer benefit in the context of the teacher’s own classroom; the issues that arise in the teaching of values, such as, Gandhi’s non-violence; and a discussion on a qualitative approach to knowledge and values in citizenship education.
In this module, the students (who are classroom teachers) engage with the original writings of Makiguchi and Gandhi, and activities allow them to develop their critical thinking and evaluate how the thinker’s ideas can influence their own classroom practice. For some activities, videos are used from worldwide examples of teaching complex issues within citizenship education.
In the first few sections, the learners are encouraged to read the life history of the thinkers, their educational theories, and the use of their ideas within selected schools. Through the step-by-step learning process, writing assignments are given to facilitate the learners to reflect on how this study could impact upon their own classroom practice.
The learning content and activities within the module has been stylistically framed for students to use a comparative approach to study the ideas, practices and influences of Makiguchi and Gandhi. This is with the aim to allow learners to note the similarities in Makiguchi and Gandhi’s notions of ‘truth’ and ‘value’, and also identify similar aspects in their political movements and life history as dissident thinkers. For example, across time and cultural contexts, paradoxes emerge when personal values interact with real world politics, as seen through the example of these thinkers and their successors.
The creativity of both thinkers is analysed by contextualizing their contributions from their respective historical locales. The readings and activities review their specific influence on civic movements both at home and abroad, and the module concludes by discussing issues related to political or citizenship education for the 21st-century.
To re-capitulate, some of the key points raised in this paper that this module discusses are as follows:
The module allows learners to review and reflect on the contradictions and paradoxes that arise in taking action as a citizen through studying the lives of dissident thinkers. This study is designed for teachers to have a critical and comprehensive understanding of how to teach related topics in the classroom. For instance, taking Gandhi’s non-violent political action as an example, and with ample reading, teachers are asked to address the question, as to how and to what extent can the principles of non-violence be taught within their classroom. Through the selection of videos on best practices, teachers are also shown examples of teaching complex issues in citizenship education that can be relevant for classrooms across modern democratic nation states. For example, an example is given from teachers in a selected school in the UK who share their challenges and experiences of teaching certain issues on human rights within Personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE).
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Teachers are introduced to Makiguchi’s ‘value creating theory’ that aimed at fostering people of creative talent who can contribute to personal and social good, as well as his proposals for teacher education. Assignments include discussion and reflection by teachers of any ‘good/successful teaching practice’ which either they have adopted or could adopt in relation to enabling students to become more aware of local, social or global issues. For teachers to be better prepared to teach in a multicultural classroom context, this module offers a study of less widely known educational theories through a study of these selected Asian thinkers. (Other modules in the course engage with Western educational theorists – similar to many teachers’ education courses worldwide.) In this module, teachers learn about Eastern theories of interdependence that Makiguchi, Ikeda and Gandhi subscribed to and its impact on their respective education and politics (as mentioned earlier in this article). The final section of this module revisits the role of knowledge and values in citizenship education. This is based on the arguments made in a recent paper on examining the concept of dialogue in teaching global citizenship education (Sharma, 2011). In that paper, as in the module, the ontological paradigm underlying the perspective of the ‘self’ and ‘other’ is explored in key policy documents in the UK (Crick, 2000a, 2000b; Department for Education and Skills (DfES), 2007) and within some of the debates on citizenship education in general . As found, often the argument made is that the ‘self’ and ‘other’ have scarce understanding of one another’s knowledge and values. Hence, various policies and documents suggest the need for more knowledge of the ‘other’. The rationale behind it seems to be that if we know more about the other person, community or society, we are likely to empathize more with them. However, as I demonstrate through examples, this may be a limited approach. In particular, because there are memories and politics associated with people and events even within contemporary politics, and just ‘knowing’ about something does not enable us truly to understand a different perspective. An innovative approach, as my above research and the final section of this module explores, is to take a qualitative and heuristic approach to knowledge and values. Such as, found within Ikeda’s philosophy of dialogue. The module emphasizes the need for an intervention that can bring together the ‘self’ and ‘other’ in dialogue to facilitate the individual self’s growth and development within such interactions. In relation to this key concepts in Ikeda’s writings are studied, including, ‘the oneness of self and environment’ (esho funi), and ‘human revolution’ (or individual change).
The relationship between the individual and her/his environment in Buddhism can be explained through the concept of esho funi in which the word funi essentially means ‘two but not two’. This signifies the oneness or interdependence of the individual and the environment. 7 According to the Buddhist view, that Makiguchi and Ikeda subscribed to, not only is the individual influenced and shaped by the environment, but they also impact upon it. Buddhism advocates taking positive action in one’s daily life preceded by a behavioural change in the individual, which Makiguchi’s successors Toda and Ikeda describe as ‘human revolution’. 8 As also shown in the module, this is similar to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) goal of ‘learning to be’ as one of the pillars of the Jacques Delor’s (1996) report of Learning the Treasure Within: Report to UNESCO of the International Commission for Education for the Twenty First Century. 9
Practical activities related to this study include an assignment in which teachers are asked to share their views on how their classroom teaching can create better awareness of the individual learner’s own environment and build responsibility. In another assignment, teachers are shown a video on teaching citizenship education in a classroom in the US post 9-11. Based on this and the above theories, teachers are asked to think of practical lessons to make their teaching heuristic.
A qualitative approach to knowledge and values also means that instead of merely teaching values, institutions themselves should become models of change. The example is given of the Soka institutions in Japan that have been founded by Ikeda, as well as other successful examples of change made within the ‘hidden curriculum’ of some schools that have adopted a ‘whole-school approach’ to the transformation of values. As demonstrated by these educational institutions (studied within this module), unless the schools themselves become models of change, that is, unless there is a specific way in which schools are able to actualize normative values within the hidden curriculum, it will be hard to motivate students and enthuse them to perceive their responsibility as global citizens. Researchers such as Patricia White (1996: 5) have argued that whereas some schools give the undesirable message to students such as ‘this institution doesn’t trust you, respect you, and so on … it is a sociological truism that the culture of institutions, to a large degree, shapes, for good or ill, the aspirations, habits, and dispositions of those who work in them’.
Conclusion
Three key questions have been raised in this paper in relation to citizenship education. Who is a citizen? What does it mean to be an active citizen? And under what social, political or educational scenario does a person become a citizen?
To reiterate, a general agreement that we can reach given the various substitutes for this term within different cultural contexts is that in modern democratic nation states a citizen is a resident with legal and political rights, including the right to vote. In most countries, under ‘civic or citizenship education’ students learn their political and legal rights, and duties as a citizen.
What does it mean to be an active citizen? As the study of Makiguchi and Gandhi shows, an ‘active citizen’ has a strong normative position, which propels individual self-reflection, and the propensity to effect a social change. In this regard, schools need to engage with the personal values of learners. As argued earlier, ‘it is inadequate to “politically” educate the learner within the closed brick walls of schools where in most cases the learner is expected to drop their “identity, way of life, and its symbolic representations at the school gate”’ (Sharma, 2008: 155). 10 For students to take a strong normative position, their values need to be engaged in within the classrooms. The ‘can do’ spirit of taking action in one’s community is especially encouraged within student groups, as seen in institutions of higher education, amongst who have a shared commitment to important global issues (Bourn and Sharma, 2008).
The final question this paper posed was under what social, political or educational scenario does a person become a citizen? A study of the lives of dissident thinkers shows that they were able to demonstrate active citizenship within the challenges of an authoritarian or a hostile environment. Although the context is very different in classrooms of modern day democratic nation states, there are useful lessons we can learn from the lives and fates of these thinkers. As mentioned within the post-graduate module discussed, schools need to function in a democratic fashion. In addition, the curriculum should be multicultural even in teacher’s education in terms of engaging with new educational theories and perspectives. Furthermore, the methods of teaching between teacher and student, and the students themselves need to be built on dialogic models that facilitate a heuristic education with importance given to critical thinking and self-reflection. A commitment to a whole-school approach and change within the hidden curriculum in schools is a prerequisite. Further efforts are essential to equip teachers for a multicultural classroom in an increasingly globalized world. Institutional and policy support is urgently required to rethink citizenship education based on a broad perspective, including studies of less widely known educational theories and their practices, such as the Indian and Japanese examples provided in this paper. These are some ways in which schools can foster active citizens for a truly democratic 21st-century society.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.