Communication de Sarah Pickard

Deliberative Democracy and young people: Citizenship education, a panacea to the democratic deficit?

New Labour introduced Citizenship education into British schools during its second term in office. Thus, since September 2002, Citizenship Education has been a non-statutory part of Personal Social and Health Education (PSHE) for pupils aged 5 to 11 (Key Stages 1 and 2) and a statutory foundation subject of the National Curriculum for pupils aged 11 to 16 (Key Stages 3 and 4), leading to a GCSE qualification. In primary schools the teaching of Citizenship covers personal and social development, including health and well-being. In secondary schools the National Curriculum programmes set out statutory requirements for Citizenship education.

This paper on deliberative democracy, citizenship education & young people will try to ascertain whether citizen education successfully fulfils the deliberative democracy aims of New Labour. It will outline:

- The reasons why Citizenship education was introduced onto the National Curriculum.
- How Citizenship education fits into the New Politics and deliberative democracy prerogatives of NL.
- The links between Citizenship education and the governmental Every Child Matters programme.
- The expected benefits to young people and to rest of the population of Citizenship education.
- The governmental aims and expected outcomes of Citizenship education.
- The concrete results of Citizenship education.

We shall see that New Labour has tried to fulfil part of its deliberative imperative through Citizenship education that has incorrectly been presented by the government as a panacea to a myriad of problems linked to youth and democracy in general.

Sarah Pickard, CREC, Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne-Nouvelle (sarah.pickard@univ-paris3.fr)