Active citizenship should drive curriculum

Dr Ruth Reynolds The University of Newcastle Ourimbah, New South Wales, Australia

Curriculum discussion has become associated with arguing about what proportion of the various disciplines and cross-disciplinary studies are essential for children to absorb.

Curriculum development has become a matter of filling up the boxes and making the shares equal or, in primary schools, making sure the boxes are full of English and maths. This then elicits the question: what is the purpose of education?

Reading, writing and ‘rithmetic are very basic skills. We teach them for a reason - so that our future citizens can make choices and decisions, for the wellbeing of our wider community, both now and in the future. We want our students to connect with the world and engage in the big conversations of life. We want them to consider what knowledge is of most worth. What does it mean to be a citizen of a particular country? What is our role as a member of the human race? What is their contribution to the world and how will they make it? Essentially, active citizenship lies at the centre of our teaching, and our teaching should be directed towards it.

Education is important, not simply for the individual student but for his or her family, the community and for the nation as a whole. The state, territory and Australian Government Ministers of Education met as the 10th Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA) in Adelaide, on 22-23 April 1999, and prepared ‘The Adelaide Declaration on National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-first Century’.

This declaration established goals in three areas. These goals contained the talents and capabilities all Australian students should have upon completing schooling; the types of curriculum they should encounter. It also established the proviso that education in Australia should be socially just.

The Adelaide Declaration lists that students should:

• have the capacity for, and skills in, analysis and problem solving and the ability to communicate ideas and information, to plan and organise activities, and to collaborate with others
• have qualities of self-confidence, optimism, high self-esteem, and a commitment to personal excellence as a basis for their potential life roles as family, community and workforce members
• have the capacity to exercise judgement and responsibility in matters of morality, ethics and social justice, and the capacity to make sense of their world, to think about how things got to be the way they are, to make rational and informed decisions about their own lives, and to accept responsibility for their own actions
• be active and informed citizens with an understanding and appreciation of Australia’s system of government and civic life
• have employment-related skills and an understanding of the work environment, career options and pathways as a foundation for, and positive attitudes towards, vocational education and training, further education, employment and lifelong learning
• be confident, creative and productive users of new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, and understand the impact of those technologies on society
• have an understanding of, and concern for, stewardship of the natural environment, and the knowledge and skills to contribute to ecologically sustainable development
• have the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to establish and maintain a healthy lifestyle, and for the creative and satisfying use of leisure time (DEST, 1999).

These goals are not easily taught in separate and unconnected discipline boxes, and essentially, how these grand ideas are interpreted in schools is through unconnected sets of lessons that do not necessarily address the big picture. In other words, the whole is not really achieved by the sum of its parts. The whole needs to be obvious in all of the lessons. Students and teachers need to consider why they are learning these things. They need to be engaged and link the little boxes of learning to the bigger picture ideas.

As an educator in Studies of Society and Environment, I have my own prejudices as to what big ideas should drive the curriculum and, in my mind, they are related to active citizenship. I do not dismiss the importance of science or technology or maths or health studies but I see active citizenship driving them all, with English and the creative arts as the vehicles of all the disciplines. After all, why are we exploring the concept of floating and sinking in science? Why are we learning skills on the internet in technology? Why are learning to divide and multiply numbers? Why do we need to understand how our diet works? Because, as citizens, we need to be able to understand what this means in our lives. Our economy depends on concepts of sinking and floating - look at all those coals ships off the port of Newcastle. The internet is a tool for further understanding, for making connections, for getting information on matters that affect our real lives –not as a classroom exercise. Maths and health studies help us survive in the competitive market economy.

Members of an informed citizenry make the right choices for their own longevity and quality of life. English and creative arts, as well as being important disciplines in their own right, also help us explore other discipline areas. They enable connections to be made.

When active citizenship is put at the centre of curriculum, the curriculum becomes value-laden. Issues associated with intercultural understanding; social justice; individual ethics; economic development; personal, social and national identity should be explored and the values associated with them investigated. Both discipline-based and interdisciplinary-based approaches can be used. Some of the key processes and skills needed for this type of investigation are self-direction, flexibility and creativity, collaboration and complex reflective thinking. Additionally, involvement in community activities out of the classroom, and in the virtual community via the internet, would assist the investigation of these issues.