ABSTRACT
It is widely accepted that a basic task of schooling is to prepare each new generation for their responsibilities as citizens. Indeed, the need to create a knowledgeable and responsible citizenry was one of the major reasons for establishing a public school system, and for making education mandatory. Education for citizenship includes, but also goes far beyond, classes in ‘civics’. Citizenship education is not just a matter of learning the basic facts about the institutions and procedures of political life; it also involves acquiring a range of dispositions, virtues and loyalties that are intimately bound up with the practice of democratic citizenship. Children acquire these virtues and loyalties not just (or even primarily) in civics classes. Rather, they are inculcated throughout the educational system. The aim of educating citizens affects what subjects are taught, how they are taught, and in what sorts of classrooms. In this sense, education for citizenship is not an isolated subset of the curriculum but, rather, one of the ordering goals or principles that shape the entire curriculum.
