ABSTRACT
The relationship between citizenship and political education is ambivalent. From one point of view they are the same thing: for example Alan Howarth, speaking to the Politics Association in 1990 implied this by saying that 'through the foundation subjects, political education will become the experience of the many rather than the privilege of the few.' The important thing, as politics teachers have known for years, is not to avoid bias but to identify it and to handle it in a thorough and professional way: the former is the more difficult, but once achieved it makes the latter easier. The effective handling of accusations of bias is part of the process of increasing confidence among teachers in handling political issues. There has been a serious lack of encouragement or support from official circles for all the cross-curricular themes, and no guidance as to what teachers should actually do in the classroom.
