Jim Traue: Good citizens need practice

New Zealand needs a healthy dose of compulsory citizenship education for the young and recent immigrants, according to at a meeting at the Beehive Theatrette last month.

All the good guys, MPs, educationalists, representatives of government and non-government agencies and business came out strongly for more and better citizenship education.

Tim Barnett, MP, the lead speaker, did admit that citizenship education was often a glib phrase that seemed to offer an easy way out for the problem of creating good citizens. He believed it was far more than civics, which focused on the mechanics of democracy.

His best attempt at a definition was a list of the outcomes of successful citizenship education. Its recipients became better people who thought globally, took responsibility for their roles and duties in society, worked co-operatively, thought critically and systematically, were prepared to resolve conflict in a non-violent way, and were willing to change their lifestyles and consumption habits to protect the environment.

The world desperately needs more people with these admirable characteristics, and if citizenship education could deliver even some of the goods we should be putting our money on it.

To place the discussion in a wider context, Dr Charles Quigley, director of the Centre for Civic Education in California, spoke by video link, not about citizenship education but old-fashioned civics.

He argued that civics provided pupils with information about the Constitution, structures of government, individual rights and the national ideals embedded in these rights.

His organisation was attempting to rectify a lack of good teachers and funding. There was also the problem that many pupils seemed to doubt its relevance to their lives.

Formal education in mathematics, science, and languages can take you so far, but real competence comes from applying knowledge in practice, speaking the language, doing the calculations, conducting the experiments. Formal education in civics will help, provided you know that in due course you will be able to exercise real citizenship.

This concept of citizenship education would be incomprehensible to a citizen of one of the ancient Greek republics or the Roman Republic. Education was training in the home in the values and the customs of society, followed by formal education for the few in mathematics, rhetoric and music.

Citizenship meant the self-government of each individual citizen, and government of society by these citizens. Citizenship was something you learned on the job. Greek citizens were chosen randomly by ballot, Romans by election, to perform civic duties as magistrates and other officials.

Most of the good guys at the Beehive assumed there was a new concept, to use Mr Barnett's terminology, of a citizenship that can be delivered through the curriculum.

Old-fashioned civics, that pedagogical ugly duckling, appears to have been rebranded as citizenship education, re-engineered to give it swan potential. But if you inspect this bird closely it still walks and quacks like a duck.

There are two different but linked concepts: civics education belongs to the field of pedagogy, and citizenship to the field of practical involvement in self-government. To improve them we need different approaches.

For civics there is an information deficit that can be filled by clear thinking about what it can and can't achieve, and a lot more resources. For citizenship there is an experience deficit that can be filled only by practising citizenship.

We have many refugees and recent migrants, and almost two generations of our people who have little or no experience of self-government. They have never voted or belonged to a political party or pressure group, never attended a political meeting, never belonged to a trade union.

Thirty years ago close to 15 per cent of adult New Zealanders belonged to a political party and more than half the workforce belonged to a trade union. The level of political literacy in New Zealand was one of the highest in the world. Now the practice of politics has degenerated into ill-tempered barracking.

Unfortunately, as the gaps in power and wealth in our society widen, that experience deficit is growing. A small minority is capable of using the powers resident in citizenship, a growing majority isn't.

To provide formal citizenship education for those who sense that they will never be able to exercise real self-government, who sense that the country is run by an oligarchy, accountable to nobody, of party officials, bureaucrats, businessmen, Australian banks, multinationals and overseas investors, where only the faces change, is like trying to teach the mechanics of human sexual reproduction to eunuchs. They can't see that it relates that well to their likely future experience.

Trade unions were once the kindergartens of citizenship, where most wage-earners practised the skills of self-government. If we really want to get more people into training for citizenship how about starting by making trade union membership fees tax-deductible?

* Jim Traue is a former public servant and chief librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library.