Citizenship in the context of the transformation of the European Union. Perceptions and issues.

Issue 20-21

“Citizenship in the context of the transformation of the European Union. Perceptions and issues.”

George Pasias

Pages

Abstract

The notion of “european citizenship” has been historically connected, both at the symbolic and pragmatic level, with the european societies integration and unification processes. This paper examines critically the european citizenship paradigm in the context of the European Union’s institutional, political and educational transformation. It is argued that EU’s discourses and practices have been characterized by a weak ideological and symbolic content, have been dominated by political and social deficits and are deeply controlled by an economic and technocratic rationale (marketization, govermentality, audit culture, benchmarking, etc.), literally establishing a “measurable” Europe of knowledge, governing by numbers.

The historical evolution of Citizenship Education in the Greek educational system during the 20th century.

Despina Karakatsani

Pages

Abstract

This article sheds light on the initiatives and measures taken for the introduction of Citizenship Education in the Greek educational system during the 20th century as well as the historical evolution of different paradigms of political education. In the first part we present the efforts made for the introduction of contents related to the education of citizen till the beginning of the 20th century. The basic axes of ‘Education of the Citizen’, which is the dominant paradigm of political education during the after-war period, are also analyzed in strong connection with the specific sociopolitical context. In the second part we detect the main components of civic education during ’70s and ’80s. The changes in civic and political education inside the Greek educational context during 1990 and 2000 are elaborated in the third part of the article. In the last part problems in teaching social and political education in the Greek case are detected and suggestions are made concerning the contents of this course and the teaching methods.