Education for Active or Political Citizenship? Critical Reflective Learning in Context
Michael Murray (NUI Maynooth)
Abstract
This paper attempts to tentatively examine where critical reflection fits in with education for (active) citizenship debate. While the concept of education for citizenship is certainly not new, recent developments attempt to effectively depoliticise citizenship by introducing a strong emphasis on voluntarism over oppositional politics, where the normative stock of deliberative participation has taken on an almost hegemonic status.
While the current, official discourse of education for active citizenship might appear easy fodder for criticism in that it lacks any credible political component, a similar criticism can also be made of certain, dominant discourses of critical reflection within transformative learning. Building on an earlier critique of Jack Mezirow’s work by Inglis (1997) in relation to education and training, it is argued here that Mezirow’s conceptualisation of critical reflection for citizenship lends itself to official discourses of political citizenship principally because it fails to position itself within networks of power. Instead, it promotes the primacy of individual transformation over structural change, a discourse that has many similarities with the politico-economic ideology of the individualised society. Here, concentration on individual empowerment is aimed towards a model of democratic participation that takes little account of the asymmetries of power relations, resting instead on universal assumptions of mutual respect and empathy. This construction of citizenship is more likely to result in co-option and obedience rather than political resistance and opposition.
To conclude, this paper argues for a critically reflective approach where “context” is not incidental, but rather, calls for a rigorous analysis of macro/micro power. Crucially too, it is suggested that a critical education for citizenship should actively facilitate the exploration of alternative discourses for political citizenship by providing a space or voice for hidden histories of local, national and transnational struggles.
