BLACKPOOL AND THE FYLDE COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIP REVIEW 2021
Reflections on the need to develop a multi-heritage critical citizenship education David Hayes
Abstract The central argument of this think piece is the need to develop a multi-heritage critical citizenship studies in post-compulsory education. It will begin by making a crucial distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism and examining different conceptions of citizenship education promoted by UK governments. There will be an analysis of the broader implications of the current UK state governance strategy of constructing ‘Britishness’, which arguably bases a politics of national identity, social solidarity and community cohesion on exclusionary practices (McLaughlin, 2009) linked to ‘fundamental British values’. Global capitalist networks and flows present a challenge to dominant conceptions and meanings of society, home, community, nation, culture, and social belonging. In response to this challenge, there have been various attempts in the early 21st Century to promote a sense of civic nationalism in the UK. It is argued that the current UK Conservative government’s construction of ‘fundamental British Values’, and related ‘prevent agenda’, represents a cultural supremacist and ethnic nationalist politics, aimed at culturally, politically and socially defining the limits of an ‘at-risk’ national identity. As a challenge to fundamental British values and the rise of ethnic nationalistic politics, an outline and possible theoretical basis for an alternative citizenship discourse will be explored – a discourse that promotes the development of the social, cultural, and political literacies of a multi-heritage, active and critical citizenry, providing individuals, institutions and communities with the necessary resources for building solidarity and respecting difference.
Introduction The rise of ethnic nationalist politics has arguably served to highlight how urgent and necessary it is to develop political, social, historical, and cultural literacies to counteract socially divisive, right-wing populism and promote community cohesion. What has been conspicuously absent from the versions of citizenship education promoted in the 21st Century, has been a focus on social class and a rational critique of the socio-economic structure of capitalism. The aim of the critical citizenship education proposed here would be to capture and celebrate the narratives and discourses of multi-ethnic and multi-heritage communities. It is remarkable how many students in FE/HE lack even a basic knowledge of modern world history and the development of multi-heritage and multi-ethnic Britain. Without this knowledge, history is arguably doomed to repeat itself, both as tragedy and farce, and appears to be doing so with the rise of the political right and ethnic nationalism in the UK, Europe, North America and other nation-states around the world.
Civic and Ethnic Nationalism Michael Ignatieff (1993) makes a useful distinction between two forms of nationalism – civic nationalism and ethnic nationalism - and identifies how both forms of nationalism vest political sovereignty in ‘the people’. The crucial difference between the two forms of nationalism is that, in the case of ethnic nationalism, not all ‘the
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