ABSTRACT
At the time that the report was in preparation, however, there was growing concern about the alienation of young people from mainstream society. The poll tax riots had in March spread from Scotland and reached London where there was violence in Trafalgar Square. The riots probably fuelled the Commission’s concern about young people and the importance of leaving politics to the politicians. The Commission had further made use of two pieces of research concerning young people and citizenship education. The first had elicited the views of young people about citizenship and the other surveyed the extent and nature of citizenship education in schools.4 The young people for the most part were vague about the notion of citizenship, and when probed many of them thought that citizenship should have been included in their own education. The survey of schools merely underlined the fact that there was little evidence of any systematic citizenship education.
