A Study On Citizenship Education Of UK's Primary And Secondary School Since 1980s

The issue of citizenship has been essential in politics and education. It is a basic expectation of modern nations and the basic goal of education to make the social individuals qualified citizens. Attaching importance to the education of citizenship has been a world fashion since the 1980s.The education of citizenship in the modern sense came into being with the establishment and development of the modern democratic nations. Britain is the earliest state to establish the capitalism system and the first nation where industrial revolutions took place. However, due to the influence of Liberalism, the conception that the nation should not interfere with education has been universally acknowledged for a long period in the history. As a result, systematic citizenship educational rules have never been established in Britain. But this does not mean in Britain the education of citizenship did not exist. In fact, Britain possessed the tradition of attaching importance to the citizenship education since long ago, at the same time, Britain possessed a long history of citizenship education, rich citizenship educational thought and various forms of practice of citizenship education in folk forms. Since the 1980s, the Conservative administration led by Madam Satchel advocated individualism of free market, with the emphasis on the duty of the citizens or"active citizens". But the fact is that, the British citizens, especially young people lacked the politics awareness, they evaded from politics, even took part in some anti-social activities. The above phenomena made the British government aware of the importance of establishing a well-recognized ideology and promoting the citizen awareness and responsibility. In 1997, the administration of the Labor Party headed by Blair stressed on the cultivation of"active citizens"and was determined to strengthen the students'sense of democracy, responsibility and duty. In 2000, the government formally introduced the citizenship education as a national policy into middle school and the primary school, thus, the citizenship education became a basic course in the nation's curriculum system. Since August, 2002, the citizenship education has become the compulsory course in the period of middle school in Britain.Britain has focused on the citizen education since 1980s and accumulated many valuable lessons. This dissertation has done a further and systematic research on the British education of citizenship, and put forward the enlightenment of the British education of citizenship on the development of our nation's education of citizenship in the new era.Based on an intrinsic logic, the dissertation is composed of seven chapters.The first chapter is the introduction in which the practical and academic significance of the research has been pointed out. This part focused on the present situation of the study of the British citizenship education, at the same time the relevant terms such as citizenship, citizenship education, ideological and political education and moral education are defined. The framework of the study and the approaches applied are introduced in detail. The main approaches taken in this thesis are the approach of document analysis, the combination of history and logic approach and the approach of comparison.Chapter Two dealt with the historical evolution of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools. The emphasis is mainly on the literature review of British citizenship in primary and middle schools. The evolution is mainly divided into three stages: the stage of vague notion (from 16th century to the mid 18th century), the individual establishment stage (the late 18th century to the end of 19th) and the folk advocating stage (the beginning of 20th to the end the 1970s). The author further introduced the process of development of the British Citizenship education since 1980s. During this period, it mainly underwent three stage, namely, the government avocation stage (the beginning of 1980s to 1988), the government planning stage (from 1988 to 1999) and the formal implementing stage (since 2000).In Chapter Three, the author offered a detailed comment of"the Cricket Report". With the introduction and comment on this blueprint of the Citizenship education policy of the Labor Party, the author introduced the background of the emergence of the Report, the process of the emergence and its main content. At the end of this chapter the author analyzed the contribution of the Cricket Report to British citizenship education in primary and middle schools, at same the time the author pointed out the main problems in the Report.In Chapter Four, the elements that influenced the British citizenship education in the primary and middle schools are analyzed respectively. The analysis is mainly from the following perspectives: the tradition of liberalism, social citizenship culture, the political participation of different parties, the view of the citizenship qualifications, the citizenship education thought and the trends of the citizenship education of the world. In Chapter Five, the analysis focused on the present situation of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools. On the basis of the introduction of the goal, content and implementing means of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools, the author analyzed the background of the social systems and the problems concerning problems in the implementation of citizenship education in schools. It is pointed out that trend of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools will lie in the emphasizing of diversity, focusing on the education of"the core British value", attention to obtain the feedback of the students, strengthening of the training of the headmasters and teachers, promoting of the citizenship education by all means and adding citizenship education to the exam content in the GCSE.In Chapter Six, through the analysis of the unique characteristics of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools since 1980s, the author pointed out that being compulsory, evolutionary, contradictory, religious and integrity are the main characteristics of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools since 1980s.Chapter Seven summarized the enlightenments of British citizenship education in primary and middle schools to the citizenship education in primary and middle schools in our country: the government direction is the guarantee of the citizenship education in primary and middle schools; the construction of citizenship education curriculum should be strengthened; citizenship education should be underwent by various means; citizenship education should be carried out by the combined efforts of schools, families and the society, with the schools being the main site; importance should be attached to the cultivation of citizenship consciousness; further the education of the core value of the society; spread the distinguished traditional culture of the nation; highlight the construction of the faculties of citizenship education.Based on the systematic research on the British citizenship education, the author of the dissertation puts forward some constructive advice on the citizenship education in the middle and primary schools in our nation, this is also where the main contribution and the innovative points of this dissertation lie in.