Pedagogies for protest? Conceiving an education for political citizenship

• In Event: Opportunity, Appropriation, and Risk: Illuminating the Shifting Relations Between History and Citizenship Education

Proposal

Pedagogies for protest? Conceiving an education for political citizenship

Our humanity and planet Earth are under threat. The pandemic has only served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness. Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures. This report by the International Commission on the Futures of Education acknowledges the power of education to bring about profound change. (my emphasis, UNESCO’s Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, 2021, p. iii)

This paper draws on the literatures of active/global citizenship education and the philosophy of education to develop a conception of political citizenship education as attenuated to (1) our present historical conjuncture marked by multiple global crises, (2) the attendant heightening discursive demands on education, and (3) the phenomenal pedagogical processes of children’s learning and development in the institution of schooling. Specifically, it identifies political citizenship as the gap or aporia in the literature in (global) active citizenship which tends to focus on, or alternatively critique the focus on, the moral and cultural dimensions, where ‘action’ is represented by individualist and apolitical exemplars (author; Mundy & Manion, 2008; Veugelers, 2007). In marking out this terrain, this paper seeks to bring greater clarity to the question of how education might ‘make a difference’ educationally amidst the ‘clutter’ of politicization (i.e., culture-war targeting of schools), naïve and disingenuous mission rhetoric and related ‘progressive neoliberal’ ideology (Fraser, 2019) pressing down on (overworked) teachers working within regimes of accountability, surveillance and responsibilization (McNeil, 2002; Zimmerman, 2022).

This uncluttering is guided by an acknowledgement of the essential qualities of the ‘educational in education’ (Biesta, 2010), as inherently “weak” and existentially “risky” (Author; Biesta 2014; DiPaolantino 2018). Thus, the purpose is to seek the transformative potentialities of education—‘the power of education to make profound change’—without the ‘trap’ of what Mario DiPaolantonio (2018) calls a ‘strong language’ of education. As he warns:

Believing that education miraculously will correct or offer the answer to problems which society itself has failed to properly remedy (such as ensuring economic prosperity for all, fixing unemployment, creating social justice), we quickly come to feel betrayed and turn away in disgust from education. Our “strong language” of education actually sets us up to judge education according to a language and set of criteria foreign to education, consequently impoverishing our thinking about the educational in education. (p. 55)

Indeed, amid increasing calls, such as the UNESCO (2021) citation above, we have impoverished thinking that risks invading and cluttering the educational imaginaries and aspirations of teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers. Aligned with DiPaolantonio (2018) and with my aim to unclutter, is Natasha Levinson’s (2023) emergent call for a “politics of educational retraction.” Conceived as an “inward turn,” Levinson suggests that this retraction is strategic in tempering the too ambitious demands on schools. More fundamentally though, it is oriented to “educational autonomy,” guided by the notion that “educational institutions and practices need to be protected in order to retain their radical educational potential.”

This orientation follows Arendt’s (1993) categorical distinctions between adults and children, education and politics, and education and learning. Arendt’s orientation and distinctions are controversial given the heightened interpenetrations of education and politics and the demands on education for ‘action’ and ‘social transformation.’ Still, under the hyper-preoccupation on an unfettered ‘learning’ within the dominant neoliberal imaginary, Arendt’s distinctions represent conceptual resources to think on educational aims, priorities and qualities, preciously essential to re-calibrating the mission and practices of schooling as responsive to the preparatory demand that the young must reset and renew democratic institutions and norms that are always (at risk of) coming apart. Rather than ‘acting’ as pre-political subjects to take on political projects of social transformation, students must develop the understandings and commitments for political participation when their time comes. A critical political citizenship education, therefore, is preparatory. We adults have a political project before us, a struggle that must be fought, to build ‘a new social contract for education’ as UNESCO (2021) asserts, but the day-to-day labour of leading children to understand the “world as it is” (Arendt, 1993) so that their uniqueness can ultimately come into and act on the world, is an educational project. The goal is to keep open the potential autonomy of schooling to actually prepare new generations for political participation in a world facing multiple global crises. Magnifying an untethered learning for the privileged (soon to be overtaken by AI) or broadening access to low-quality schooling to the under-privileged (for narrowing upward mobility) are not worthy educational objectives in light of the multiple material and existential crises humanity faces.

Yes, students need to learn how they can ‘help out’ in their individual practices of consumption and being kind to others. However, the challenge for schools and educators is on preparing students for political participation, without a particular political project in mind. While we might wish that children and youth can solve political problems, we might focus on teaching children our truthful histories, and especially our histories of political struggle and protest—and again—not to direct their projects, but to prepare them to act to change the world, with the knowledge, understandings and ethical sensitivities / commitments for action.

Such a ‘retracted’ approach is nonetheless inherently difficult, especially given the pushback and hyperbolic politicization of, for example, school curriculum that seeks to tell the truth about the normalization of settler colonialism or white supremacy and privilege. Fundamentally students must make up their own minds and indeed their future participating as unique political subjects, rather than as mob, require it. Teachers’ work is to support students’ willingness to engage and learn our histories and this may certainly involve ‘active learning’ and various forms of experiential education. But such actions within the protected space of schooling, a place for study in the presence of others and guided by knowledgeable adults, should not be confused with the kind of political struggle and protest, demanded of citizens to protest for more sustainable and just futures.

Author

• Paul Tarc, Western University, Faculty of Education