Objectives

This theme aims at developing children's knowledge, attitudes and skills for active and responsible citizenship. Education is accountable to produce good citizens for both the country and the world. Schools can easily forget this obligation in their competition for examination results or daily organizational maintenance efforts. Are schools genuinely concerned for developing students' citizenship? Does that concern reflect in the behaviour of our youth? We often hear people saying, that the present youth, lack interest in issues of their own country. The general immaturity into social problems is reflected by their values' system. In some countries terrorism grows fertilely on this lack of informed citizenship of the youth. School has a heavy responsibility to develop their students' civic attitudes. For this, first of all schools should set examples in being interested in the contemporary social issues, in preference to keeping up with the long prevailing tradition distancing themselves from the social reality. Schools teach children the past as history but are blind to the present.

Social exposure programmes

We have to rediscover how schools can work in developing citizens for the country as well as the globe. Obviously occasional references and discussions into social issues are insufficient in creating a strong civic consciousness. One effective method for it will be the social exposure programmes in schools. Such a programme has six steps.

1. Expose students to socid reality

Exposing children to the social reality means letting them see what is going on outside the walls of the school, how people live, what their problems are and what we can do about them. In addition to visits, we can discuss current issues in the classroom, school assembly and seminars. Generally primary children are not exposed to negative situations. However primary children will be benefited in being exposed to good things in the society that build hope for them. To them negative realities could be presented indirectly. If we look deeper into good fairy tales we can see that they represent the struggle between the good and bad. Children who listen to them may not understand the inner message at once but as they grow they will slowly begin to realize it. Many children's stories speak in symbolic language. From the secondary grades children could be slowly exposed to social realities like poverty, drug addiction, environmental issues like pollution, and scarcity of drinking water and current heath problems. Exposure to social reality broadens children's vision of the world. They develop right attitudes. Exposures need not always be negative to social conditions. Children can visit successful community development project sites as well. Among others are important historical sites, mines, harbours, preserved natural parks museums and educational institutes.

Institutions such as courts, drug rehabilitation centres, observatories and prisons can also provide insights to children. The insights developed through such exposures have to be backed up by classroom activities.

A teacher reports: ( in Sri Lanka )

The school organized a peace education workshopfor perfects. A few days later prefects held a meeting to plan their annual prefect day Instead of having a gala celebration as they used to have in the past, they decided to go to a war-threatened disadvantaged area and donate basic essential items to children in a school. They collected a heavy load of such items from the community and with the support of the other students organized a trip with some members of the staff They performed a cultural educators ' show in that school which was a heart moving get-together of children.

On the way back as we were coming, I asked an enthusiastic student how he felt. He observed, " I was really moved to see the condition of poverty I decided to dedicate my ltfe to the welfare of the poor people in our society. "

2. Identify a community problem

With the facilitation of the teacher, children select a problem to act upon according to their own capacity level.

Examples of problems.

1 Environmental destruction / Pollution in the surroundings
2 A health hazard, e.g. smoking
3 Illiteracy
4 Poverty
5 A current issue of child right / human right / violation
6 Lack of a particular citizenship attitude in the community
7 Vandalism on public property

8 Waste of water 3. Study the problem

This phase involves collecting information gathered from reading, interviewing people, studying case histories and consulting. In fact these studies could easily be built into the subject lessons (See the examples at the end)

4. Decide the course of action

The approach adopted here is purely problem-solving where children take the lead to study and find solutions. The discussions are headed by themselves These studies and discussions can be accommodated in the co-curricular activities. (See examples at the end of the chapter) The studies of the problems and their presentation can be academic exercises using graphs, charts, photographs, drawings, written reports, and maps studying an analysis of the problem that leads to deciding a course of action, preparation of a plan and organization for implementation.

5. Act

Among the action children can take with regard to social problems are raising public awareness, writing to authorities, educating the-people, and engaging in shramadana (free labour donation). They can engage in public awareness raising activities such as

a. Exhibitions
b. Processions
c. Street drama
d. Putting up posters and banners
e. Wearing symbolic badges

How children saved trees. In a rural area of Sri Lanka a certain Provincial Council decided to cut down the old trees besides the public road. The trees provided shade to the public road and added to the beauty of the environment. On hearing the news a group of children in a neighbourhood school organized a'rally against the decision. They went on a rally covering every tree by a strip of white cloth with the sentence written on each tree saying, 'Please don 't cut me. Iprovide you shade. '

The rally created public opinion .As a result finally the Council gave up their decision.

6. Evaluate

All the activities need to be reflected upon by the students with the participation of a teacher. In reflective discussion they evaluate their experience in the light of strengths and weakness. It needs to be mentioned here that community peace building activities should not necessarily be engaged always in public campaigns as such. They could be done within the school through curricular and co-curricular activities. The nature of the activities widely differs according to the age level of the children.

Community building

The word community is defined as "the people living in one place, district or country considered as a whole.'[Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary] A community is linked together by many common factors and as a result they affect each other, Community building is a process that needs to go on continuously in a society or a country. It happens at various levels such as social restructure, educational reforms, cultural reawakening, conflict reconciliation, reemphasis of morality and value system. The movement may cease once the community starts getting disintegrated and disoriented. Especially after a war or a social catastrophe we find the community falls apart. Then it has to be rebuilt through special efforts.

Citizenship attitude building

Being a citizen involves understanding one's role as a member of the community or nation and acting with responsibility. A social role is built upon a certain set of attitudes. Attitudes are predispositions to behaviour.

Education is accountable to the society to produce good citizens. The word citizen is basically a political term. It is the politics in the global context. Thus a good citizen thinks globally and acts locally. Citizenship need not always be interpreted in a parochial narrow sense as blind obedience to the immediate political forces.

In promoting citizenship a school needs a clear model of it both in terms of local and global needs. With that picture in mind they have to draw education programmes within the curriculum. Peace education basically attempts developing peaceful attitudes in the future citizen. Good citizenship is built upon the following attitudes anywhere in the world.

1. Patriotism is the ground on which citizenship and democracy is based. A person is obliged to perform his duties because of his love for the community and country. It is a basic attachment to nation beyond the present interest of the government in power. In it there is general willingness to co-operate with the nation's effort for advancement.

2. Productivity is the degree of contribution a citizen makes towards the development of one's society. A good citizen does not want to be a burden on his people. He or she thinks in terms of "What can I give to the country?" not in terms of "What can I get from the country?"

3. Civic responsibility is the consciousness of one's duties towards the society in day-to-day life as well in long-term perspective, e.g. being informed about the current political and other issues, abstaining from disturbing the peace of the neighbourhood, protection of public property, participation in community building activities.

4. Interest in contemporary community, national and global issues. A citizen takes interest to seek information on the issues affecting his or her society at every level. Today there is a global tendency developing towards individualism. One of the seeming dysfunctions of this tendency is selfishness, which drives people to pay less care or no care to social issues and duties. Elders often criticize the youth as being increasingly disinterested in the problems of their society.

5. Active participation in community building: A citizen is bound by duty to participate actively in community building according to his or her best capacities. The Convention on the Rights of the Child lays great stress on the need of recognizing children's right to participate in community life and development through seeking information, expressing views and opinions through equal access to opportunity for personal development and cultural activities and education. Active participation in community building and environmental protection is the most effective way of developing children's attitudes and interests on responsible citizenship.

6. Cultural enricI.ment: A good citizen is a cultured person in that he is disciplined by the rich qualities of his culture as well as the global culture. Educationally speaking, children at the beginning need to be nurtured and disciplined by their own cultures. As they grow up they should be exposed to other cultures as well so that they can appreciate and learn from them to be world citizens.

7. Obedience to law: A citizen is necessarily one who abides by the law of his country. Here by law we mean the established code of law. Justice is the source of rightful law. However a citizen tries to rectify laws when they happen to be unjust as it happens sometimes. Schools need to develop law consciousness in children. It is a striking fact that many school syllabi are silent about social justice and the civic laws.

8. National coherence: A citizen living in a multicultural society preserves the national unity by respecting and giving due recognition and rights to all the sectors of people in spite of their differences of ethnicity, language, religion and class. Social diversity has to be viewed as an opportunity of social and cultural enrichment. Today many countries are becoming plural societies. Education is considered an effective means of promoting national harmony. To meet this need teachers have to be equipped to respond to ethnic and cultural diversities of students in schools. The curriculum has to be reconsidered in the light of multicultural needs.

9. Simple living: The need for simple living has never been felt in such a degree before as it is now. All the commercial forces press'us to buy their products. They create ney needs. in us through their strong machinery of propaganda. The consequence is the ever-growing consumerist society that wastes natural resources in the production of unnecessary goods only to satisfy the greed of people. They pollute the environment both during the process of productions and after their use, as heaps of garbage. Thus simple living is nature-friendly in every way. To live simply is to lead a life, outwardly, poor but inwardly rich.

10. Democracy: is interpreted in different forms in different countries. However the basic features in democracy are freedom of speech, public participation in governance through representatives, tolerance of differences and respect for human rights. In addition, a democracy can be evaluated by the degree of public confidence, voluntary compliance with the law, party activism, voluntary organization, activism, and political discussion. In a country, democracy emerges essentially from the ways people adopt in their lifestyle and administration of social institutes. For instance, children learn democracy by the way home, school and classroom are managed.

Intended outcome