Rewriting citizenship? Civic education in Costa Rica and Argentina

Abstract

To what degree are nations ‘rewriting’ citizenship by expanding discussions of human rights, diversity and cultural pluralism in modern civic education, and what explains variation between countries? This study addresses these issues by analysing the intended content of civic education in Costa Rica and Argentina. Over time, civic education in both countries has become more focused on rights and the empowerment of individuals. In addition, both countries embrace aspects of global citizenship through an affirmation of human rights. Citizenship thus expands outward and upward, incorporating more groups and people into the national polity while also broadening the concept of citizenship beyond the nation‐state. Nevertheless, Costa Rica and Argentina vary in the intensity of the adoption of global citizenship, most likely a result of divergent historical experiences with state sponsored violence.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Francisco O. Ramirez, John W. Meyer, Juergen Schriewer, Jeff Marshall and Michael Crossley for comments on earlier drafts. All translations and errors are the sole responsibility of the author.

Notes

1. In Costa Rica the government produces many national textbooks, but these textbooks do not cover civic education. Interviews with academics and policy‐makers at the National Instruction Center (CENADI) identified two publishers of textbooks as being the most commonly used in classrooms, and textbooks from both publishers were analysed for both time‐points. Because study programmes from 2001 and 2005 are quite similar they are analysed together.

2. In Argentina the textbook industry became completely deregulated after the military dictatorship. Multiple textbooks for each period are compared to address potential variation.

3. Supplementary analyses involve newer study programmes from several Argentine provinces.

4. Costa Rica had included civic education as a subject in the curriculum for much of the history of the nation, but in the 1960s international agencies promoted a model of civic education integrated into social studies (Dengo Obregón 2001; Salazar Mora 2003).

5. Recent education reforms in Argentina, consolidated in a new education law in 1994, have been studied extensively. For an overview see (Hanson 1996; Dussel 2000; Rhoten 2000; Gvirtz and Beech 2004; Astiz 2006).

6. In the new guidelines, civic education is called ‘Ethical Development and Citizenship’.

7. Buenos Aires has not enacted the structural reforms from 1993.