Citizenship between innate behavior and educational approach
- Jouini nabil
- 16-23
- Mar 25, 2025
- Education
Citizenship Between Innate Behavior and Educational Approach
Jouini Nabil
Higher Institute of Education and Continuing Training, Tunisia
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.47772/IJRISS.2025.9030002
Received: 06 February 2025; Revised: 16 February 2025; Accepted: 19 February 2025; Published: 25 March 2025
ABSTRACT
As a place of education and training, a school is a social institution intended to function for the mobility of individuals and to contribute to the movement of society. It is, in the democratic concept of the right to quality education, a factor of transformation through the strengthening of individuals and the advancement of the group. Through the knowledge and skills responsible for the education of students, it is imperative to prepare them to develop and function in the social space. Through the programs and methods it implements, it is responsible for anticipating the future needs of the community. Through the values they convey, people must also be prepared to live and build together in a democracy. Many objects pass through the representation of the school as a body and place of movement.
Nowadays, the cultural environment is a flexible set of characteristics and attributes, a multinational mosaic within which the concepts of “territory”, “heritage”, “identity”, “culture” and “museum” are assigned a new meaning. It therefore seems essential to examine more closely the evolution of the notions of culture and citizenship, in order to better understand the boundary between global and local, public and private, individual and collective entities. Social and professional relations involve the development at the collective and individual level of a set of behaviors based on respect for ethical values. Ethics is in fact particularly important in the current context characterized by major social and behavioral changes, where the recognition and construction of identities depends on the ability to function in a network and to accept difference.
Keywords: Citizenship, éducation, school, society
What problems is tomorrow’s education called upon to solve
INTRODUCTION
Citizenship may mean full and equal membership in society with the rights and duties that result from it. It has cultural, social, economic and educational dimensions and is united by one factor, which is the citizen, as he is the most important link in practice and interaction with the state’s apparatuses and institutions, as he expresses membership in it, harmony with it and belonging to it. Given the prevalence of the concept of citizenship and the values it imposes, it has become a bet on the state to gain it, and thus integration through it into social interaction and the challenges it imposes, as citizenship here has become a challenge and a bet through which other challenges are won. From here came the idea of education on the values of citizenship and institutions became entrusted with devoting the culture of citizenship. Perhaps the school, with all that it carries, is the most important link in education on the values of citizenship, building, consolidating and activating.
In this sense, the role of the school in interacting with this education with citizenship is highlighted, considering that it has taken on another concept that goes beyond traditional belonging to global belonging in light of universality or globalism, and also in light of the emergence and formation of the concept of cultural globalization that works to unify human societies and integrate them in order to reach global coexistence, the name of humanity and cultural communication, and in light of the global village and thus the globalization of citizenship from a cultural perspective. And between the necessity of devoting, activating and consolidating the values of citizenship, even in the image of global citizenship, and in light of the globalization of citizenship, it has become necessary to re-read the role of the school in this activation, especially in light of the growth and formation of the concept of cultural globalization, which expresses a dialectic that is described by the least optimistic of it as a blow to privacy, belonging and social cohesion.
In this context, there is a need for education on the values of local and global citizenship, as well as human rights. It is an education that has become a global and local demand, in a universe that is moving towards fragmentation.
Our society today desperately needs education as the basis of the process of social change, because man is lost in the changing spirit, the values of efficiency and the will to change, his problems come from himself and need to reconfigure himself, strengthen the will, apply values and transmit the spirit of change, restore the spirit and an effective impetus that prepares him for the impact of reform and change.
The concept of citizenship is characterized by a nature of complexity and fluidity that makes its approach and understanding not easy, due to the problems it raises and the interconnection and overlap that it characterizes with many concepts that intersect different fields of knowledge.
From there, an attempt has been made to approach the concept of citizenship as an approach that mainly aims to examine the relationship of the concept with educational action and the school context. How these values are constructed within the school, including clarifying the presence and importance of these values in the school environment, and the possibilities of consolidating them in the learner and making them the guiding basis of the daily behavior of the learner and the Citizen.
Education for citizenship in the educational project
“It is at school that the future citizen can learn not only to obey the law but also to participate in its development”.
Bernard DEFRANCE (1998) “The world of education”
Definition of education on citizenship values: Education on citizenship is currently considered one of the major concerns of global educational systems, and the reason for this is that it is at the heart of the process of building knowledge like other competencies that must be developed in students, and because education on citizenship cannot be separated from the rest of the educational processes necessary to raise the citizen of tomorrow.
The growing social need for basic concepts that are in line with its developments and keeping pace with civilization and its requirements, especially the transition to a market economy and digital openness imposed by globalization, as well as political openness and the transition to democracy. Democracy, citizenship, human rights, personal and public freedoms are concepts that continue to impose themselves in our daily reality. In addition, openness to the international market, globalization of the economy, and information and communication technologies are no longer just empty slogans today, but have become tangible daily realities.
Dimensions of education on citizenship values in general are characterized by four main dimensions, which are:
- Knowledge of rights and duties: It includes the legislative aspects that regulate the citizen’s relationship with the government, his relationship with its institutions, and the rights he obtains, which are multiple rights: political, economic, social, and cultural in exchange for the duties he is bound by. Building a sound relationship between the individual and the authority requires the individual to be fully informed of his rights so that everyone enjoys all their rights, and exercises them within a framework based on awareness and responsibility, and realizes the importance of these rights in their lives, and their impact on the stability of their society, and the laws that frame them, and the methods and ways they can use if these rights are violated.
- Understanding national identity: As each society has its national identity, which consists of a variety of material and moral elements, and from these elements emerge customs and traditions, mechanisms of interaction between people, and the values that govern this interaction, and therefore citizens need to study how this national identity developed and its characteristics and values that they must preserve, and the role of state authorities and citizens in preserving this identity
- Strengthening affiliation: As any society is characterized by the multiplicity of affiliations of its individuals, the role of state institutions lies in transferring the individual from sub-affiliations to national affiliation, and this occurs when the relationship between state authorities and citizens is based on equality and justice, as the individual has the right to maintain religious, sectarian, and tribal affiliations, but the right of society and the state is for national affiliation to be at the top of these affiliations.
- Enhancing participation: It is considered one of the duties of the citizen that contributes to preserving his rights, and gives him a role in decisions related to him. The role of socialization institutions and empowerment institutions lies in introducing citizens to the types of political participation and its importance, the laws that regulate it, the places through which it takes place, and the conditions that govern it.
Levels of education on citizenship values: Citizenship education targets four basic levels, which are:
- The national level: It is concerned with strengthening belonging to the homeland, preserving its gains and achievements, understanding the nature of the political system, respecting the laws and legislation in the state, appreciating the importance of preserving national unity, loving the public good and caring for public affairs, the values of political participation, pluralism, accountability, and awareness of duties towards the homeland and readiness to perform them.
- Social level: It aims to understand the nature of the social and cultural systems of different groups in society, and awareness of the customs, traditions, issues and problems prevailing in society, and learning the peaceful management of conflicts and differences resulting from the diversity of these systems, and understanding the meaning of sound social responsibility.
- Personal level: It aims to build individuals’ abilities to control themselves, and tolerance whether at the level of thought and behavior, self-confidence, bearing responsibility, awareness of personal rights, and the ability to integrate into society with what this requires in terms of positions and behaviors that are open to the cultures of different societies.
- Skill level: It means training in scientific thinking skills, problem solving and decision-making, constructive dialogue, accepting criticism from others, self-learning, negotiation, forming coalitions, and employing acquired knowledge and skills in new situations.
School and the bet on education for citizenship and civic behavior
The school institution is at the forefront of educational institutions because it is a space on which society bets to produce cultural immunity and invulnerability in order to protect the social self from the specter of cultural penetration prevailing through globalization. the moment of “human understanding”. Values are the origin of the educational process and are the main pillar of educational policy, oriented towards the objectives of education, the main source of educational objectives is not society, the learner or even the school subject, and it is the values that control all stages. The educational process. The crisis of education, according to Roger Garudi, is a crisis of values
The first result of the development of science and technology is the emphasis on the need for education, because it is not possible to create citizens with the characteristics of a modern society if we do not achieve a sufficient and reasonable level of education, and one of the mission of the school institution is to achieve social integration through the education it provides in order to enable the individual/learner to internalize the dominant social and cultural values
In his environment, including concepts, customs and traditions …, then the individual/learner is transformed into a social/citizen being who carries the values, norms and language of society. The achievements made in this area frame the individual’s thinking and orientation. his behavior within the framework of the social construction undertaken by the school In addition to parallel institutions that perform educational tasks
The central role of the school in education in values has become of the utmost importance given the societal transformation and the impact of the value system within it, as well as the global transformations from a cultural and social point of view. individuals, groups and countries in our contemporary world pose the problem of what is constant and variable in the value system. These transformations inevitably lead us to make the function of the school and its effective role in the development and consolidation of civic behaviors more responsible
By socializing the younger generations and preparing them for the exercise of citizenship, the school contributes to social cohesion. The practice of citizenship is not an innate skill: being a citizen is learned. School and university play a role in civic education. Citizenship education is identified as a transversal tool that can be developed at all ages, in different forms and by all types of actors.
The school, together with the family, is the agent of socialization, a process by which individuals learn and assimilate collective norms and values, integrate them into the structure of their personality and, consequently, adapt to their social environment.
Is the uncivil behavior observed in daily practice sufficient evidence to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the school approach in fulfilling the requirements of social education and developing civil behavior? the child to represent and preserve the values of his society, and the role of the school is to provide learners with a positive culture, the programs aim to establish and consolidate positive values between learners towards themselves and others, and history and heritage, through Developing the behavior of appreciating the expertise and experiences of others, interacting with them and investing in them within the framework of human integration, and giving the individual the ability to question thinking.
The school’s challenge in educating on the values of citizenship in light of cultural globalization
What globalization produces and calls for in terms of unifying cultures, creating changes in social mobility, and disrupting social customs and frameworks, all of this and other repercussions have a negative impact on the weakness of belonging and considering it an obstacle to the development of citizenship. This may also come about through imported behavioral patterns imposed by the alphabet of globalization. Cultural globalization includes integrating the world into one mold and with one saying, the idea of a unified world, a world that forms one city, a world without borders. This is related to the overlap of cultures, technologies, and economies. Therefore, expressions such as global culture, global civilization, international governance, global economy, and even global citizen have become widely used from the perspective of this concept, leading to global citizenship. The idea of a common world that enters into one crucible is the mixed world, the world of ϥgelical cultural dimensions, it is the fall of the concept of national citizenship to global citizenship, as the citizenship of a nation-state has begun to collapse under the weight of the ideological demands called “Grupalistas”, where these ideologies refer to coexistence between groups of different cultures or any other types of social groups, in the first case we find the problem of generating multicultural citizenship in what is called the case of intercultural culture, while in the second case we find that the demands of each of the groups revolve around what Jung called “Diferenciada Citizenship”. It has become clear that the contemporary world is at a rapid pace of change that has affected all systems, whether cognitive, political, economic, social, and cultural, and all of this is done within the framework of the concept of globalization, which is intended to take the form of a unified global perception of the universe and life, which is an imposed model. The parties that produce it and seek to make it a universal culture that accommodates all societies are known. Although political and economic globalization is less prone to polarization and conflict, globalization in its social and cultural dimension represents an epic of tension and attraction between the pole of the will to dominate and the pole of oscillation between submission and modest resistance.
Empirical part
The interview survey
The interview was conducted with teachers, who were asked:
Does the school institution fulfill certain educational missions for students. What is the fate of the latter when they leave school?
The educational mission is to train citizens integrated into society.
(majority of teachers) sees that “the learner must leave school having acquired respect for the rules as well as respect for others, honesty, responsibility, solidarity, judgment and even the enlightened exercise of his individual freedom within society”, citizenship crystallizes a certain number of attitude objectives, such as respect for the rules as well as respect for others, honesty, responsibility and solidarity, which allows one to live in harmony in a society.
Do the aims of school in general contribute to the construction of a responsible citizen in social life?
43% of teachers consider that the educational mission is to learn to be autonomous in decision-making and how to assume its consequences in life. The school curriculum should ensure that the knowledge, skills and abilities acquired by students during their schooling allow them to fulfill their function effectively in society.
The results presented above show that teachers manage to achieve this junction between teaching content and the construction of civic awareness in students despite certain constraints
The results that we recorded from the observation of teachers and students reveal the importance of the school environment on three essential points, namely:
- citizenship education is an educational project
- teaching a vector for addressing citizenship
- Education is a counter-societal
Indeed the results have clearly highlighted the influence of Education in the development of a more favorable attitude towards school and our research aims to restore the primacy of school on its function in civic socialization in the context of globalization also the acceleration of scientific and technological progress and the emergence of this sudden phenomenon called “globalization” have led to the emergence of a reflection of the school of tomorrow. School whose educational mission consists primarily in
- Developing civic sense among young people by educating them in the values of Citizenship.
- Increasing their awareness of the inseparable nature of freedom Responsibility and preparing them to participate in institutional consolidation A unified society based on justice, equity and equal rights for citizens.
- Educating students to respect common values and the rules of “living together”
Education at the service of the public space
Our society consists of several groups of individuals who unite and live with their differences, traditions, religions, values and more. We live in a different world in which people’s mentalities and opinions differ from everyone else. This not only influences our society, but also finds a policy that represents a large part of its impact. At the international level, democracy will be the perfect system to achieve this. But what are the merits of living in a democratic society at the moral and political level, at the global level?
but as a path, among others, of course, even more than others to serve a more harmonious and authentic human development with the aim of reducing poverty, tyranny, misunderstandings, oppression and wars. Education does not completely create a person rather, it simply develops certain characteristics and natural preparations. Education is also related to progress and pushes the human being on the path of completion and leaps over his shortcomings, ending his contradictions and being torn by the universe, his affiliation with the order of natural beings. Thus, a good education makes a human useful and relieves him from savagery and saves him from barbaric brutality and education based on arbitrariness and coercion that bring him back to the status of the animal and strengthen the desire for possession and the degree of selfishness and aggression. For this reason, we must reject the existence of a correct and renowned idea of ideal education, and push the reflection towards establishing foundations and rules for education that are compatible with the qualifications of human nature and that are in line with the transformations of the time fail randomly with the improvisation of decisions regarding its educational system. This aspect can be described as epistemological work in the field of education. To talk about the meaning of education in a general and holistic way requires a group of interdependent and different elements, such as what is socio-economic, political and cultural.
In addition to what is psychological, education is perhaps the home from which all these areas come, and then we can say that education on this essential preparation of the individual to be able to take in this life, and merge with it according to the conditions that this life dictates and demands, but more than that, can create conditions that are suitable for that person. Therefore, a person through education determines his uniqueness and distinction, and in this Kant sees that (a person is a human being only through education. Education is what makes a person distinct from the animal). Man can only become a man through education. It is only what education makes of him. This statement by Kant on the issue of education is the faithful echo of Emile: “We shape plants through culture and men through education.”
This requires the need to coordinate educational work according to a specific pedagogical model that clarifies the process of the educational operation and presents the paths that lead to the objectives of this process; the pedagogical relationship with education is correlative, so that the educational process cannot take place without this element, which is considered its facilitator, otherwise the educational act will be anarchic, unsystematic, and therefore meaningless and without purpose. The educational act requires that it be subject to a defined system in which the constituent elements of this act are observed and provides it with conditions that can facilitate the progress of the educational process, including providing the appropriate working conditions for the teacher, the student and even the administrative and other staff.
There is no controversy about this and there is no doubt that education has a fundamental role in the progress of any society whatever it may be (time and place). Thus, today’s countries have only progressed by betting on this fertile and vital field. This has only been achieved through a philosophical background. Any society that has a theoretical philosophy necessarily creates an educational philosophy. The latter means among other things that looking at education is a holistic vision in terms of the foundations on which it is based and in terms of the goals and objectives that it aims for as it looks at existing educational systems. A critical and analytical vision and what we need today is these contemporary critical studies that blindly flops in improvised decisions in relation to its educational system and this aspect can be described as work in the field of epistemological education.
And if sociology examines education on the relationship between the child and the school and their interaction with society and social reality; and if pedagogy asks questions about the ways and means by which the irrigation process is carried out then the philosophy of education according to what scholars see raises broader and more comprehensive questions such as asking questions about the meaning of education? And about the objectives that a person should consider from this education and the desired objectives.
Situate educational action in its broad sense (educational system; teaching system; school institution; education …)
– Its social framework: as a social institution
– Its historical framework: as a given to be taken into account in any historical modulation desired or in gestation in relation to the values that this action intends to promote. We emphasize the idea that the question of social modulation considered in relation to the school system, because it involves the future of society and everywhere the very image of the man we want to form, is a multidimensional question and must therefore be part of more than one framework of reflection and research.
The educational action of the school is based on the consolidation of values, because it (i.e. the school) is a platform for creating free thought, consolidating critical thinking, valuing responsibility, exercising it and respecting self-esteem, which begins with the appreciation of others. It is a bridge to the consolidation of democratic values in the life and behavior of the learner.
Citizenship education nourishes minds with positive values. The educational objective: to build an open citizen, proud of his identity, imbued with a culture of dialogue and communication necessarily refers us to a very complex process because it is a common societal responsibility to which each of its members must respond. Positions contributes to the various institutions of society interested in education inherent in the production of values, standards of behavior and to ensure their sustainability.
CONCLUSION
Cognitive contents are not an objective in themselves, what is important is rather to use this knowledge and to be convinced of it, and to adopt it as a reference for behavior and interaction within social reality.
Interpreting phenomena is necessary, and educating the citizen should not aim to make him a tool at the service of an external force, but rather so that he can make an individual and collective decision on the use of a concept. Reign, define the goal and evaluate the possibilities. In the context of appreciating the other and valuing their efforts, the achievement of scientific truth alone remains impossible, without understanding the method used to produce and understand it.
Education for citizenship and the consolidation of civic behavior are not instilled knowledge, but rather a personal activity that the individual/learner undertakes autonomously, based on the real learning situations that the school creates for him, through which the learner acquires the rules of thought and conscious management of mental activities. By working on the principle of combining the transfer of knowledge with training aimed at building a judgment on them, and by consolidating critical thinking and education on… Values and training aimed at judging these values.
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