Democracy for everyone
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are some rules for every citizen around the world. For example, every human is allowed to live free from discrimination. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is seen as one of the milestones in the history of documents. It specifies all the rules for human life. Article 21 says that all humans should be allowed to vote for a representative government or be allowed to practice politics themselves. Modern-day democracy is described in this article, since it is about choosing someone to represent a personal opinion in government, instead of voting in a direct democracy. So, one of the rights of a citizen is that they can be active in democracy. As previously mentioned, our modern-day democracy is not the same political system as it was in earlier civilizations. The earlier democracies, as developed in Athens, used a form of direct politics. Most, if not all governments in the modern day are representative democracies. These governments are chosen by all citizens. The political parties they vote for found laws and make sure that those are treated with respect, by also having power over the police and the army.
In this democratic system as well as the ones before the common era, we see something called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a philosophical thinking experiment, supported by Jeremy Bentham. In this experiment, the participants have multiple choices and they choose the option that makes them the happiest. The most-chosen option is the one that utilitarianism would support. For example, say that two people are dying. One of them is Adolf Hitler and the other person is a regular citizen. There is one antidote that can cure one of these individuals. According to utilitarianism, the antidote should be given to the regular citizen, as he brings more people happiness or fewer people misery. This thinking experiment is used in many levels of society. Sometimes, it is used from a global perspective, for instance, in the United Nations. Politicians from all over the world come together to discuss global issues and try to come to an agreement, like when they wrote the UDHR. In Dutch democracy, the political party that receives the biggest number of votes will be allowed to choose other political parties to govern with them. Hence, it is a form of utilitarianism because the biggest political party generally be in the government. Using these examples, we can say that democracy is one of the strongholds of modern-day society. Therefore, we should teach adolescents about the importance of democracy as well.
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But before people start asking themselves what the best way of teaching citizenship is, we should first establish that democracy is the right form of governing, since that is one of the main points of citizenship. Furthermore, it is the way that most states govern themselves. (Socrates) Putting faith in politics when the average citizen is allowed to govern is ignorant. Socrates makes a comparison to filling a ship up with citizens, letting them set sail to a destination far away. Although there is only one citizen that is a sailor and who knows what to do, everybody on board can choose how they would sail. That is one of the reasons he disagrees with Athenian democracy since it was a direct democracy. However, there is a big chance Socrates would agree with the system most countries use nowadays since this is a representative government. People in the Dutch government are knowledgeable since more than 90% of people in the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives) have graduated from a bachelor's program at the least. This means that the people who have an understanding of politics are the ones who govern.
Schools are seen as communities in which students get inspired to become a part of democratic standards and values. However, the truth is the opposite. Schools have a hierarchy in which students are at the bottom, which results in them lacking democratic experiences. When students are more active in the democracy of their school, for example, a student council, it can be seen that adolescents improve their decision-making skills. But other than in the school council, there are limited opportunities within the school to learn about democracy. Dutch students learn even more about democracy and decision-making at home. In the families where adolescents are raised, democracy is important. Their opinions are heard more at home than at school, while citizenship should be taught in school. However, judgments at home are still mainly made by parents rather than by the children. In school, the opinion of the students is even less important than this, with them not being allowed to vote for new legislation in school. Therefore, debating more at school could be an outcome in citizenship lessons as well as for other subjects.
Learning by practicing democracy, making decisions, and debating are also effective ways of learning according to Bloom’s taxonomy. Bloom’s taxonomy uses different levels of cognitive thinking to remember and use as many skills and knowledge as possible. In six different stages, the author describes how to learn, by using all stages. The stages are then divided into what pupils can do for that stage. As an example, some of the words that pupils can do at the level of knowledge are defined, recalled, describe, label, identify, and matched. When debating, adolescents are describing what is important to them. Other words for different stages are explaining for stage comprehension, and a student can predict and use certain skills in a debate to pass stage application. Debating goes all over the six different stages of Bloom’s taxonomy.
What people see as citizenship is not common among all humans, hence people value citizenship differently across the world. The way individuals value democracy is also different because everyone is different. Still, citizenship should be taught at various schools, by debating for example, because it can help to increase knowledge about multiple aspects. These debates should end with a conclusion on which the largest group can agree. This conclusion should lead to reforms in schools or in other places to increase decision-making skills.
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