Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Michael Grimes: Relegating the citizenship curriculum to the
Basic Curriculum: what impact will that have on democracy?
David Blunkett: Well we knew, before I established the citizenship
and democracy curriculum - after the working party chaired by Professor Sir Bernard Crick
- that we had at that time, back in the '80s and '90s, the least politically literate electorate
in he developed world. The work that was done at York University demonstrated that. The
recent work from the National Foundation for Educational Research has demonstrated not
only that the citizenship programmes already increase the awareness, the political understanding,
but also the participation of young people; including in the 2010 election the 19 and
20 year-olds voted substantially more than the age group just above them. And I think
that demonstrates that it's already had an impact. But - crucially - that it's also increased
the active participation of youngsters in terms of volunteering; it's had an impact
on the quality of of outcomes in other study areas - in other words, the engagement of
young people with the community and with an understanding of society around them - has
actually had an impact on other subject areas. And it's no good saying that, well, we can
teach it through history or geography: subject teachers in those areas are specialists within
their own field; what they don't have - what many teachers never had - was an understanding
of the political arena, the legal arena and the economic arena, or the ability to be able
to teach it. And a combination of the withdrawal of the backup from national level of best
practice - and of the kind of materials that make it possible to do the job well, and of
outcome measures - would simply leave citizenship literally floating in the air.