Is civic education an imperative? (Part 1)

Even before my mandatory retirement in 2016, I have always pushed for a truly learner-centered education that goes beyond just focusing on the student’s individual capacities and aptitudes. While these two are crucial for designing appropriate learning programs for a diverse population of students, we also need to look at the students’ milieus from a holistic perspective. Among other things, this means that we need to understand the students’ backgrounds, the factors that create either an enabling or a prohibitive environment for them to learn essential concepts, and an array of life skills that they would need as future mature individuals.

Ideally, this means that because each student has a distinctive personality, character, values, and attitudes toward anything that confronts them in their growing years, we tailor-make a program for each of them. Operationally, however, this presents a huge logistics and managerial challenge: Schools and learning institutions focus more on shaping individuals to become law-abiding citizens. Oftentimes, this means teaching students to follow rules and regulations, both of the school and of the larger units outside it, like the local and national governments, the society at large, and of course, the home, as the basic unit of society.

There is nothing wrong with following rules and regulations. This is the stuff of good citizenship, that of being able to recognize that we are all just parts of a whole, and we need to do as required or expected of us as members of society and of the government that has been created to ensure all its members are protected for their overall well-being. All these include the protection of our basic rights and freedoms, being granted opportunities for education, and anything that will make us contribute meaningfully to society’s development. These are the hallmarks of education toward effective citizenship in a democracy.

This brings us to the idea of civic education. This thought came to mind as I was contemplating the topic, “The role of civic education in shaping young learners.” It was the topic of a panel discussion that I was privileged to be part of, a huge gathering of teachers, students, and civil society leaders and animators that took place in Metro Manila last April 27-29. Earlier, I was told not to give a formal presentation, but just share some of my thoughts and experiences as an educator in Central and Southern Mindanao for more than four decades. Of course, I had to ensure that such thoughts are not just random musings but should focus on civic education, and the pivotal role it plays in creating a more inclusive, gender-fair, and just society. The panel discussion was among the key parts of the 2023 Civic Education Summit organized by The Asia Foundation in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development.

Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines civic education as “all the processes that affect people’s beliefs, commitments, capabilities, and actions as members or prospective members of communities.” This implies a strong bias against governments and political entities based on the principles of liberal democracy. In its elaboration on the meaning of civic education, such processes need not be formally taught in schools and learning institutions; they could take the form of informal transmissions of values and norms of society, perhaps following the dictum that “values are better caught than taught.”

Society’s major institutions, starting with the family as the basic unit (although the definition of family can also be contentious), community organizations, the government, both at the local and national levels, as well as religious and traditional cultural institutions, can be purveyors of the values that promote civic education. Even private sector and civic groups and associations could very well be promoters and advocates of civic education. Remember the four-way test of Rotary International? “Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill and better friendships? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?” All these questions are meant to elicit answers that lead to the characterization of a good citizen, one who had gone through a “proper” civic education.

(To be continued)

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