Aux armes, citoyens!
The notion of citizenship comes to us from ancient
Greece, where it was contained in two principles. First it denoted the
limits of a state with its distinct boundaries. Secondly, it implied the
participation of residents as joint proprietors. Those calling themselves
citizens — originally those composing a city, but later by extension to
occupants of a circumscribed state — shared in public responsibilities
and in public privileges, in the same way as shareholders in a modern
company partake of those obligations and privileges.
According to the Greek concept, which was adopted
with modifications by Rome, citizenship conferred freedom of speech in
state assemblies and a measure of equity between rulers and ruled. By
a later development, it became possible to assume citizenship through
purchasing power.
It is not possible to determine precisely what our
government means when it talks of including citizenship as a compulsory
element in the school curriculum. Recent criticisms have indicated that
science will be included in citizenship teaching. For example, science
teachers would be expected to hold discussions with their students on
such troubling topics as genetically modified crops and animals, and nuclear
power. In the past, it appears that most classroom discussions concerning
biomedical issues have been included in humanities lessons, not science
instruction.
An editorial in Nature for 7 March stresses
that science seems to have been squeezed as an afterthought into "citizenship"
without thought for additional resources of teaching time or money. And
"it will strike many science teachers in England as ironic that, a decade
or so into the restrictive autocracy of the national curriculum, they
are now expected to be more flexible and free-thinking."
Nature makes the slightly sinister comment
that the citizenship agenda may be intended to overcome the growing reluctance
among young people to participate in politics, a tendency that the politicians
like to call apathy. That youngsters should regard politics, and democratic
voting, as a remote affair which has little effect on their daily lives,
is not surprising, and stems from the behaviour of our political leaders,
in government and in local administration. They are trying to impress
upon schoolchildren that voting for a candidate and taking part in political
processes is an essential part of human existence.
What our political leaders fail to appreciate is
that, when faced with a voting paper offering a choice between a half-wit
and a dishonest schemer, you are tempted to deface your paper. And, when
trying to get right out of wrong through your representative, you are
as likely as not to encounter meaningless equivocation and endless procrastination
that will discourage you in future. Can you, by introducing citizenship
(whatever is meant by the word), inspire more able future politicians
to emerge from the classroom?
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When
I worked in a small rural pharmacy in the lap of the South Downs and surrounded
by much woodland and pasture administered by the National Trust, I was
frequently asked to identify fungi that people had discovered in the wild
and wished to eat provided they were identified as safe.