Citizenship education as a response to Colombia’s social and political context

Abstract

In response to the difficult social, economic and political problems that Colombia faces, such as inequality, discrimination, weak civil society—fuelled by illegality and drug trafficking—the Colombian Ministry of Education has embarked on an ambitious citizenship education program, with the hope of strengthening the role of education by establishing alternative solutions. This innovative program attempts to counteract Colombians’ recourse to violence as a means of solving the country’s endemic problems by developing the competencies of students, teachers and other participants in education. The competencies include sound reasoning, care for others, communication skills, reflection on action, knowledge and active participation in classroom, school and community matters. This six‐and‐a‐half‐year‐old project has started to create an educational system that takes into account many of the elements and relationships fundamental to the socio‐political and moral behaviour of all involved. The paper indicates the horizons that this program opens up and discusses some of the problematic aspects that still need to be addressed for the program to be sustainable.

Acknowledgement

We wish to thank Rosario Martinez for her insights and comments on the manuscript.

Notes

1. The Gini coefficient is an indicator of inequality. It measures the inequality of income distribution within a country. It varies from zero, which indicates perfect equality, with every household earning exactly the same, to one, which implies absolute inequality, with a single household earning a country’s entire income. Latin America is the world’s most unequal region, with a Gini coefficient of around 0.5; in developed countries the figure is closer to 0.3.

2. The authors of this article were involved in the program in two respects: Rosario Jaramillo was the director of the Citizenship Competencies Program at the Colombian Ministry of Education. She was responsible for: (1) contracting the people that created the program; (2) coordinating the team in charge of training teachers or implementing the program; and (3) supervising the evaluation of the program. José Mesa was a member of the national team that trained teachers for the program and, as such, organised and directed several workshops throughout the country.