Education for citizenship in Romania and the UK: A Comparison

The article compares the development of Citizenship Education in the United Kingdom and Romania since 1989, the year when Communism was overthrown in several Eastern European countries including Romania (and when, coincidentally, Citizenship made its first formal appearance in the English National Curriculum as a cross-curricular theme). Findings are presented from two case study high schools, one in the UK and one in Romania. Staff and students offer views on the nature of citizenship, on how Citizenship Education might be taught in school and on issues influencing the development of a programme to help students become effective individuals with a commitment to community participation in its broadest sense. The analysis develops the view that, if Citizenship Education is to make a genuine contribution to the creation of a vibrant, participatory democracy in which young people are fully involved, the structures and processes via which Citizenship Education is devised and delivered should themselves reflect the principles of democratic participation.