ABSTRACT
This chapter will reflect on issues relevant to the setting up of programmes of citizenship. It will be suggested that only by giving and maintaining a guaranteed place in the National Curriculum for civic education will its present highly marginal role in the life of the school be transformed. The necessary corollary of enjoying such a status is the recognition that any programme of citizenship education on offer must be a determinate programme, spelling out in considerable detail what is expected in the name of citizenship education. Allied to this requirement of determinacy should be a requirement of realism in terms of what reasonably can be expected of schools generally and, more particularly, of education for citizenship within the context of a democracy. There will be some final sceptical remarks as to whether, given the present climate of our politics and the highly interventionist role being played by central government in the nation’s schooling, it is likely that citizenship education will be given the place, and allowed to play the role, its apologists would have for it.
