Programme 1: Rights and Responsibilities

Question 1

What does it mean to teach about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship?

Rights and responsibilities are central to citizenship

The phrase 'rights and responsibilities' has been described as the 'two words which best sum up what the citizenship curriculum is all about'. You may find some colleagues rather uncertain about the meaning of the citizenship as a concept. It can mean different things in different contexts; for example, citizenship for a teacher will be different from 'citizenship' for a political scientist or politician. For practical purposes in school, citizenship can be summarised by these two central concepts - 'rights' (entitlements owed by society to its members) and 'responsibilities' (the duties which are expected in return). The phrase is a reminder that citizenship is a two-sided coin. Teaching young people about their rights is no less than their entitlement, but at the same time they must become increasingly aware of their responsibilities.

Some people have claimed that citizenship cannot be taught because it is a contested concept, over which even expert commentators do not agree. This is a red herring as far as schools are concerned. We can be quite clear that citizenship is about those 'rights and responsibilities that come from membership of society'. What is contested, however, is where the balance should lie between individual rights on the one hand and responsibilities to society on the other. This is a matter for individuals to decide for themselves. Some people (and political parties) emphasise duties more than rights, while others place more importance on the fundamental place of individual (or human) rights. For example, there is on one hand a view of citizenship that says:

'Young people should be taught respect for the law and loyalty to the state'

while others might say:

'Young people should be taught to think critically about any society that does not respect individual rights and freedoms'.

If using this video in a training session, you might find it helpful to begin the work with some discussion of the different possible meanings of the term 'citizenship', before relating it to the role of schools in teaching about it. You could take the two statements above, which are located at different ends of a continuum, and discuss the merits and demerits of both positions. Teachers are individual citizens and will quite legitimately have a view of their own. You could use the 'active learning' technique of asking colleagues to place themselves on a line somewhere between the two positions or go to a corner of the room marked 'agree', 'disagree' or 'don't know'. Introducing the topic in this way can reinforce the point that in controversial matters, over which reasonable people disagree, the job of the citizenship teacher is not to favour one interpretation over another, but rather to expose young people to the range of possible positions on the issue and give them the critical faculties, the knowledge and the understanding to help them arrive at an informed position of their own.

Using the video

Ask colleagues as they watch the video to look out for which rights and responsibilities are mentioned or alluded to in the video (these include the right to a fair trial, rights on arrest (fingerprinting), financial rights and protections, the right to be free from racial prejudice). Ask colleagues in small buzz groups to brainstorm lists of the rights they believe young people should know about before they leave school. Similarly, what responsibilities should they be aware of? In the case of the latter, students should increasingly be able to articulate reasons why citizens have such responsibilities.

Ask colleagues to look at the list of bullets points in the statutory orders. These cover the range of areas to be included in the citizenship curriculum. At first, the list looks highly knowledge based but you can point out that key concepts of rights and responsibilities should be the 'engine' of the whole citizenship curriculum - driving the way we present and teach areas which could otherwise easily seem irrelevant and boring. To put it another way, let us be clear why, say, the 'role of the media in society' or 'local government' is relevant to young citizens. Answers to these questions might be in terms of 'the right to know the truth about what is going on in society', 'the right to be informed' (as far as media is concerned) or 'the right to have a good education', 'the right to decent facilities' or 'good roads' (in the case of local government).

One final point that may be helpful here is that rights and responsibilities as described in the citizenship orders include both 'legal' and 'human' rights. This refers to the fact that some rights are not legally enforceable but are more 'moral' rights, having their origin in the idea that everyone is born equal in human dignity. This is the basis for many of the international codes of human rights (including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) and the benchmark against which the laws and practices of any country should be evaluated.