Who are you? An introductory examination of Citizenship education

Citizenship is to be a compulsory subject in all schools in England from September 2002. The guidelines are laid down, an AS syllabus and long and short course GCSE syllabi have been approved, the 'wisdom' of the move apparently accepted and, in some quarters, regarded as overdue. At school level, however there has been little discussion of the meaning of "Citizenship". Without getting very involved in the "citizen/subject” discussion, this paper seeks to examine the model to which 'citizenship education' will adhere following the recommendations of the Crick Report. Emphasis will be on competing notions of citizenship - from Marshall's view of commonly held social rights through to more critical, and in some ways more cynical, interpretations of the content of the citizenship curriculum and possible motives behind its introduction. The paper identifies that teachers and students have very different views about what they are offering and being offered; different from each other and from those who have established this 'new' subject. Some implications of the spaces between these differences are aired in the conclusion of the paper