Teaching Citizenship: What if the EU Is Part of the Solution and Not the Problem?

Abstract

We propose that the European Union (EU) should be used in citizenship education as a possible vehicle for citizens' influence on issues outside the reach of the nation-state. Citizenship education thus ought to include the EU as an arena for political action and relevant “EU knowledge” ought to be part of the curriculum. Concepts from the German politische Bildung tradition are used to discuss what should be the content of an education aiming at educating young people to (become) democratic citizens and the level of competence required in order to function as a democratic citizen. The “reflecting spectator” is given special attention. Environmental issues are chosen, for three reasons, to show how EU education can be part of citizenship education: the transborder character of environmental problems, the multilevel responsibilities connected to them, and the fact that virtually all European environmental policy is made in, or in close association with, the EU.

Keywords:

• citizenship education
• European Union
• politische Bildung

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Maxine Judge at European Studies Programme (http://www.european-studies.org/index.htm), Dr. Alan McCully, and Professor Alex Warleigh-Lack for constructive and useful comments on earlier drafts of this article. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Notes

“There is no single meaning of the ‘democratic deficit’. Definitions are as varied as the nationality, intellectual positions and preferred solutions of the scholars or commentators who write on the subject” (Føllesdal and Hix 2006, 534).

However, we relate our discussion rather to deliberations regarding connections between democratic theory, political participation, and citizenship, than to the citizenship education literature (see, e.g., Goul Andersen 2002).

In Sweden, EU and other citizenship-related issues are taught as part of the samhällskunskap (literally “societal knowledge”) subject. The subject is compulsory from primary school through to, and including, upper secondary school.

European Economic Community/European Community prior to the establishment of the European Union by the Treaty on European Union November 1, 1993.

For more in-depth discussions on multilevel governance, see Enderlein, Wälti, and Zürn (2010), Hooghe and Marks (2001), and Stegmann McCallion (2007).

Environmental policy could also be explained as a “spillover” and thus interconnected with another policy area, for example, the Single Market, thus being a direct result of horizontal interaction as discussed above.

The degree of bindingess depends on the type of decision made, that is, if it is a decision, regulation, or a directive.

See Hix and Høyland (2011) for a discussion on the EU as a political system, especially Part 1.

We have, however, not engaged with the global political discussion and global/international environmental cooperation, rather environmental policy has been used as an example to illustrate why states on the European continent have chosen to cooperate within the political entity that is the European Union.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/upse.