Learning from community: Agenda for citizenship education

Abstract

Citizenship is about individual’s membership in the socio-political community. Education for citizenship conceives issues such as quality education, learning society and inclusion. Educational thinking in India has long valued community as a learning resource. With empirical experiences drawn from the programme of ‘Ecology and Natural Resource Education’ (ENRE), executed by local non-governmental organisations in three Blocks in West Bengal, India, this study argues that learning from community has potentials to contribute to quality education and democratic citizenship. Since the local community and non-governmental organisation efforts are insufficient, involvement of the state is necessary, to place it as a universal agenda for citizenship education.