Are schools educating toward active citizenship? The internal school struggle between contradictory citizenship models

Abstract

This article investigates the phenomenology of Social Education Coordinators in Israeli high schools regarding school’s civic education. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted, followed by a two-stage coding process. The Social Education Coordinators indicate that their schools seem to be unified behind the goal of maximal citizenship. However, their unique position as agents of non-formal pedagogies gains them insight into the role of pedagogy in advancing various citizenship models and the struggle in schools between opposing pedagogies and citizenship models. Formal pedagogies are understood to be incoherent; they speak of maximal citizenship, however, habituate minimal citizenship. Informal pedagogies are understood to be coherent, to both speak and habituate maximal citizenship. From the Social Education Coordinators’ perspective, their attempt to insert meaningful informal pedagogies and true maximal citizenship is subversive and a show of agency. They perceive themselves as still weak but significant players in providing students with ‘voice’ in the public sphere. This analysis may advance our understanding of schools as arenas of incoherency and contradictions, of simultaneously pushing toward contradictory civic education ideals; it may highlight the civic significance of pedagogy choice and raise the issue of cultivating informal civic education pedagogies as a basic student right, a democratic right to cultivate ‘voice’.

Keywords

Civic education democracy formal vs informal pedagogies minimal vs maximal citizenship models qualitative research

Theoretical background

Worldwide attention toward public school civic education is fueled by concern regarding the waning of civic attributes in both established and new democracies; these concerns are intensified by the unprecedented emigration from non-democratic to liberal societies (Abowitz and Harnish, 2006; Center for Civic Education, 2001; Galston, 2001; Naval et al., 2002; Pharr et al., 2000; Quigley, 2000; Torney-Purta et al., 2001; Vontz et al., 2000). These concerns are growing in Israel as strife between contesting factions, national sentiments, Jewish and Arab segregation, human rights violations, and security threats are deepening (Avnon, 2006). Because of the need to influence how young citizens conceive of citizenship and reinforce procedural values of equality, tolerance and adherence to democratic institutions on one hand, and to have them participate actively, check those in power and work toward the common good on the other hand, many perceive schools as one of the few societal agents that may be able to address these concerns (Wahrman, 2013).

Two major rival theories exist within contemporary western liberal discourse regarding the direction of citizenship and civic education: the minimal and the maximal (Habermas, 1994; McLaughlin, 1992). The minimal works to instill strong tolerance toward centrifugal forces in society, the private sphere, and heterogeneity (Galston, 1989). A thin layer of procedural values should constitute a minimal social bond, and these are to be sanctified and protected at all cost and become the core of a vigorous civic education (Bell and Staeheli, 2001; Gutmann and Thompson, 2009; Heater, 2004b: 219–220). The minimal strain was influenced by the liberal political thought of John Locke (2014) and is characteristic of the English-speaking world.

The maximal contends that the population should develop citizenship as their primary identity, promote commonality and unity (Bell and Staeheli, 2001; Gutmann and Thompson, 2009; Habermas, 1994), and respect for centripetal forces within society (Galston, 1989). This primary belonging induces feelings of loyalty, responsibility, and high levels of involvement in the public sphere where the individual expends great effort to promote the public good (Aristotle, 1992; Crittenden and Levine, 2013), conserve public assets, or mend public problems (Freire, 1972 [1968]). The maximal tradition originated from classic Greek and Roman republicanism. Plato (1955) and Aristotle (1992) envisioned a small, tightly knit union where all citizens become personally familiar with one other. Plato in his Republic believed that citizens should act as one while Aristotle in his Politics allowed more room for differences (Heater, 2004b). In modern times, with the advent of mega-societies, the maximal sentiment needed to evolve and promote solidarity on a larger scale (Heater, 2004a: 88–89, 2004b: 54–62). Various competing ideologies were offered to consolidate large scale nations based on race, ethnicity, political commonality, and global identity (Heater, 2004b). The first two are based on exclusion and the wish to create thick bonds for a closed social group and the latter two on inclusion in an attempt to strengthen social bonds and mutual responsibility among all (Osler and Starkey, 2005).

Thus, the minimal and the maximal models as well as the different maximal strains of thought support very different visions of society and the choice between them is political. Which is embedded in public schools?

An important observation regarding school civic education is its tendency toward incoherency (Newmann et al., 2001). This occurs, in the words of Cohen (2010) when ‘conceptions of citizenship are translated into educational practices that are incompatible […] at best and contradictory at worst’. In other words, goals tend to reflect high ideals of equality, inclusion and maximal citizenship intended to enhance ‘voice’ (Hirschman, 1970) among all students, social bonds and shared responsibility, but the actual curriculum implemented varies: teachers, for example, may talk to students about freedom of thought while insisting on their own conception of citizenship (Cohen, 2016). Schools may teach democracy while themselves being undemocratic organizations that habituate undemocratic practices (Torney-Purta et al., 1999).

Cohen (2017a) claims that privileged groups receive maximal civic education that empowers their voice while the unprivileged receive minimal civic education that disempowers and leads toward lack of voice or ‘exiting’. School civic education is understood this way to perpetuate the existing inequality of citizen status of the Palestinian minority (Agbaria, 2010) and students from low income families (Cohen, 2017a). Ichilov (1999, 2004), and Pinson (2007) demonstrate how the same curriculum may contain contradictory citizenship models, in effect aiming to provide Jews with a maximal ethnic-exclusive model while providing the Palestinians living in Israel with a minimal model.

Cohen (2017b: 13) and Pope et al. (2011) suggest that what is still missing from the field of civic education is research on enacted curriculum and practiced pedagogy. Progressive pedagogies are considered linked to education for maximal citizenship (Cohen, 2017b; Hess and McAvoy, 2014; Pope et al., 2011; Torney-Purta et al., 1999, 2001). Cohen (2018) implies that students from privileged status may be receiving more progressive pedagogies than the unprivileged. More research into civic education pedagogy is needed and it is the focus of this article.

In researching enacted school civic education, this article examines the perspective of a specific group within the school environment in Israel. We aimed at the phenomenology of Social Education Coordinators (SECs) who operate mostly in the periphery of the Israeli school experience, in the role of moral educators (Hartaf, 2007; Zidkiyahu, 2007). The SECs oversee extracurricular activities in Israeli schools, outside the realm of formal syllabus, textbooks, exams and grades, and many times outside the boundaries of the classroom, relying instead on informal progressive pedagogies such as play, music, theater, field trips, workshops, student leadership, volunteering, informal gathering, and so on. The research aimed at revealing their perspective regarding the civic education in their schools and perhaps what they believe should be offered.

Methodology

This study was part of a project carried out in 2009 by a team at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem¹ whose objective was to reveal the civic education perceptions held by various role-holders in the Israeli education system. Our research focused on the perceptions held by SECs. Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted based on the qualitative-phenomenological tradition (Shlasky and Arieli, 2001) with the following distribution: ten SECs from Jewish Secular schools (J), five from Jewish Religious schools (JR), and six from the inspectorate in the Arab sector (A). Schools from each category are characterized as having students of differing socio-economic backgrounds (high, middle, low) and geographic diversification. We were assisted in choosing the SECs to be interviewed by Ministry of Education inspectors, with the aim of reaching those schools considered to be most active in moral-social informal education activities.

The interviews were held in locations chosen by the coordinators, in or outside the schools. They were asked the following questions: What in your opinion is good civic education? What civic education exists in your school? What conditions support or constrain civic education in your school?

The interviews were transcribed verbatim and underwent two non-linear analysis stages (Baptiste, 2001; Marshall and Rossman, 1999; Shkedi, 2003): The first, generative stage included identifying, organizing, and establishing themes. This stage begins by recognizing emic self-conceptualizations of the interviewees and is followed by etic theoretical conceptualizations in the fields of citizenship and education (Headland et al., 1990; Jardine, 2004; Pike, 1967). The second non-linear analysis stage is critical, where all themes, narratives, or metaphors are exposed to critical inspection (Baptiste, 2001; Marshall and Rossman, 1999; Shkedi, 2003). Findings and analysis were periodically presented for the critique of the broad-based research group at the Van Leer institute and were subjected to an intellectual tug-of-war among the authors. Coding proceeded until saturation.

Findings

Discussing the ideal civic education

Releasing students from their self-focus

The coordinators were concerned with the students’ tendency to be focused on themselves: ‘Indifference is a malady that, for me, angers me the most’ (J7). ‘I tell the students … you cannot be an amoeba …’ (J5):

We should be taking the students and extricating them from their state of indifference, a situation where they only take and take from the Ministry of Education, from the school, from parents, and from the environment. … Give of yourselves a little. (J4)

The first way is by educating that our passions should be checked by laws. The students should be taught that they ‘are pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle … that I am obliged to abide by various rules and laws even if I don’t agree with them, and I must accept them’ (JR1). The goal is that the student ‘will emerge as a person who is a law-abiding moral citizen’ (J3).

But abiding by the law should not be technical; one must consider the laws’ purpose: ‘A loyal citizen knows the law … knows its conditions … and its purpose’ (A3). He should also judge these purposes. Hence, when discussing Israel’s obligatory army service, the Jewish SECs felt it worthwhile to expose students to opposing views—those who support and those who reject such service (JR4, J9). An Arab SEC led his students to question the morality of some Israeli laws and their unequal enforcement: ‘We are both parked and I get a ticket and the other doesn’t … because he’s a Jew he doesn’t get a ticket, and because you’re an Arab you do get a ticket?’ (A2).

Furthermore, students should engage in doing more than is required by the letter of the law. Jewish SECs discussed obligatory military service with their students, postulating a ‘worthwhile army service’–in a combat unit (JR1, JR2, J1, J6, J7, J9). Similarly, in areas in which the current law has no clear say the student should think what the law should be:

A good citizen is one who cares about others … I don’t mean citizens paying their taxes on time … what interests me is that he or she should care, be willing to do … and act and apply pressure till the things he feels are not good will change … (JR2)

Thus, releasing students from their self-focus is accomplished by engaging them in the values and limitations of laws: emphasizing obedience to the law but also thinking of its purpose and evaluation and eventually acting beyond the written letter of the law.

Instilling students with tolerance

The SECs work to instill in students respect for multiple opinions, first, by becoming aware that there are ‘others’: the ‘Arab/Jew’ (A6, A5, A1, J3, J2), the ‘religious/secular’ (J5, J3, J2, JR2), the ‘Mizrahi [from eastern countries]/Ashkenazi [from western countries]’ (JR2, J2), the ‘kibbutznik/urbanite’ (J3), or ‘others of the various Jewish persuasions’ (J5). Second, by granting ‘others’ the possibility to air their opinions. ‘Each one has a right to express his or her approach’ (J5). The Arab SECs explain that all views have a rationale that any person may understand:

One must respect the person standing before you as a person, not because he/she is an Arab or Jew or Christian; first and foremost, respect him/her as a person. The most important issue is tolerance and patience. (A1)

Jewish SECs base their tolerance not on the idea that universal sameness will lead to understanding but on the premise that we can always learn from others. A religious Jewish SEC tells of the value that her religious Jewish students can gain from learning from a Bedouin girl (JR6). This version encourages respect without adhering to a universalistic self-conception.

Civic education pedagogy

The SECs portray a civic education pedagogy which relies on responding to an ever-changing, chaotic, disorderly civic sphere, which appeals to emotions and learning not from theory but from concrete examples, experiencing, and most importantly, by doing.

Any group identity is a starting point

The SECs express a very pluralistic approach regarding which collective to introduce to students in school. First, the overall aim is to promote many collective identifications:

A good citizen relates to many circles. A small circle, starting with yourself, to love yourself, not to settle for what is … and we widen the circle, family, neighbors, [name of community], district, country. (A3)

I’m part of an urban community, part of a national community, I’m part of the international community … therefore it’s important to me that a person be connected to what’s happening here and abroad and also to know how to observe, where a contribution can be made … (A5)

But second, the order in which these collective identities are introduced to students is not important. There is an assumption that one leads to the other, meaning that once a student is pulled out of his self-indulgence into some type of public concern he can then be more easily sensitized to other types of public concerns and other types of publics. In the informal pedagogies used by the SECs, the exposure to public group identities in society depends on the yearly timetable of school events and special days. The yearly timetable dictates the order in which various ‘publics’ appear and come into learners’ consciousness.

Discussion of current affairs as core activity

This lack of order is obvious in what the SECs consider to be the major content of their civic education—discussing the news with students (J2, J8, JR4). Discussing the news is understood as the major action of good citizens, and news changes daily.

News raises controversies which inject the classroom with energy for resolution. Students are encouraged to think hard and strongly for themselves: ‘There should be a discussion, they should grapple’ (J8); ‘there should be a discussion and argument and each one will thus express his or her opinion, what each one thinks’ (A5). The SECs actively seek those controversies that exhibit dilemmas, that is, that bring opposing values that are not easily reconciled to the discussion. These encourage students to examine their assumptions. One SEC provided an example (JR4): ‘After the disengagement from Gush Katif² … we spoke of the dilemma that on the one hand they felt they should resist and on the other hand, what–I’ll use weapons against [our own] soldiers?’ (JR3). Discussing unresolved dilemmas is a good preparation to the harsh reality of citizenry in Israel, where politics is extremely difficult:

Real dilemmas I think … on a small scale are in the framework of the school. But later you see them in much larger frameworks—whether in the army with dismantling settlements, or [later on in life] when a person is at work in a career. (JR4)

There is a typical structure for discussions: first, the SEC puts forth a concrete news item and offers an outline of the opposing positions regarding it. Second, the students engage in a discussion that may become heated and remain unresolved. Third, the SECs then shift the discussion to a more abstract form of the dilemma. One example of this is provided by a religious SEC (JR4): He creates the setting: ‘When accepting a student to a religious school, what should be the more important consideration: his or her level of religious observance or his or her behavior towards other people?’ After a heated discussion by students, he moves on to a related but more abstract dilemma—‘What is preferable in general: Torah [the holy scriptures] or civility?’

A good discussion needs to air a variety of positions. ‘… you must bring variety, you bring all the viewpoints, you don’t bring [only] your own’ (A5).

I was once exposed to a social program that was approved by the Yeshiva students’ parents … there was someone from the extreme right opposite Yossi Sarid [a prominent left-wing Israeli politician], and there was a priest and an Islamic scholar … something perhaps unexpected in a place like a Yeshiva where supposedly there is more constraint. This shows in my opinion that this school is not afraid. Not afraid … it believes in its ability to educate. (JR5)

Voicing multiple positions unfettered by authority regarding what is allowed or prohibited is in the eyes of the SECs a democratic right. Moreover, the SECs believe that when students express their own views, they become personally invested in the discussion, engaging in it and, therefore, becoming committed to the opinions they form. Discussion should be conducted

… in partnership, in dialogue. Dialogue is a democratic value, … it’s such a fundamental value that it simply needs to be a part of the spoken language at school. (JR1)

One of the aims of social education is to expose [students] to as many ideas as possible and give them the tools over the years to identify or reject, but also to know how to stand firm behind things, to consolidate a position and consolidate values. (J2)

However, this stance causes the SECs considerable stress. The SECs are pressured to direct the students’ value systems and not be neutral bystanders:

The entire basis of social education is to identify which values and what things the institution wishes to imbue and what change to bring about among the students. (JR3)

The SECs portray a situation in which they need to create true dialogue on one hand, and on the other they need to instill certain values. The practical way ‘out’ of this catch 22 is to maintain the appearance of dialogue while artfully directing the discussion toward pre-defined values.

What is interesting to note is the chaotic not-orderly fashion in which groups, interests, news, controversies, dilemmas and values are brought up for discussion in the reality of the SECs’ civic education. Unlike teachers who work in the framework of a pre-defined curriculum, the SECs respond to an ever-changing external reality, moving from one subject to the other relying more on improvisation than on planning.

Aiming at the emotional

SECs believe that civic education ‘cannot work only on the brain … actually this is the role, the entire basis, of social education’ (JR3). Moreover, conflicting emotions need to be awakened: on one hand feelings of ties, affinity, and loyalty to the state (JR5, A5) and on the other feelings of anger, distrust, and criticism aimed at corruption and human rights violations (J4, A5). The good citizen is envisaged as one who cultivates contradicting emotions.

Exposing the students to public space and time

The SECs defined the pedagogy by which the abstract notion of the ‘public’ should be demonstrated concretely:

What is social education? It can be defined as the merging and integrating of studying in school and life outside school which allows the student to feel—it invites him or her to feel—all layers of society … (A6)

There are a few ways to attain a concrete feeling of citizenship issues. One is by interrupting the classroom space and tempo and going out to public places and experiencing public time. By taking students to educational events in the hallways, gymnasium, and schoolyard, they encounter and can visualize the larger ‘school community’ and envisage themselves as school members. By projection, they see themselves as members of a nation and state. SECs conduct tours of the neighborhood, the city (J4, J8, J2), the country and state institutions such as the Knesset (parliament) and Supreme Court (J10). They also organize visits abroad—mainly to Poland to see World War II concentration camps.

SECs also introduce students to ‘outside’ tempo. They organize what they call school ‘peak days’, such as traditional ethnic holidays and holy days (J8, A6), state holidays such as remembrance and commemoration days initiated by the government, ceremonies awarding identity cards (J2, J3), and so on. This deconstruction of normal school tempo allows students to feel the tempo of various publics out in society.

Role models

Another way to achieve a concrete feeling of citizenship issues is by exposing students to role models who exhibit good citizenship and demonstrate that being a good citizen is not a utopian dream but a real-life option. One of the SECs (JR3) tells of an annual bike ride that takes place at a school in memory of Dror Weinberg, a brigade commander who was killed in the city of Hebron in the West Bank. Various activities were held at the school prior to commencement of the bike ride, to which the soldier’s mother was also invited; she spoke about him and a movie depicting his life was shown. The SEC indicated that the purpose was to exhibit to each student ‘… an exemplary character, one that he or she may wish to emulate …’:

… The more the students are exposed to such personalities and more they participate in activities of this kind … another and another and another, the process begins to mold the students. Becoming familiar with exemplary personalities … educates them well. … They learn about the concrete moment, location and context in the country where these personalities were active and were part of things, being what we call ‘good citizens’, yes?,,, an exemplary personality that he or she would like to emulate … therefore we invest much thought in the personalities we choose to expose them to … (JR3)

Role models are thus a means to show young students that the high ideals of good citizenry are attainable, and that the concrete behaviors needed to attain such an ideal can be emulated.

Experience and reflection

The importance of learning from concrete examples is mostly highlighted in the SECs’ wish to promote active citizenship by the virtue of being active (JR5, JR2, J6, JR2). Thus, studies about the Supreme Court should be supplemented by visiting it, talks about volunteering should be complemented by volunteering, recognizing class strata within society should be augmented by meeting students from other schools, and other socio-economic strata and talking about injustice should be enhanced by fighting it.

The structure resembles Paolo Freire (1972 [1968]) concept of ‘praxis’, combining ‘Talking’ and ‘doing’. The SECs begin with a preparatory talk. The students arrive at an activity ‘after a lesson or two that discussed the issue, preparing them regarding its importance’ (J9). Then the students are sent out to ‘do’. After the experience the students reflect, one SEC told of a time when several of his students were volunteering at army emergency warehouses. They felt that they were doing work that active duty soldiers should have been doing and that they were ‘just suckers’ for doing the work instead of them:

This was a great opportunity for the educators and me … to raise this issue. Hang on—are we suckers or not? What’s a sucker? In the next war if the emergency stores are not ready—who will suffer? Like, is it the army’s problem that the emergency stores aren’t ready or is it my problem …? (JR3)

It would appear, then, that the SECs perceive a good citizen as one who is active and also thinks and talks about his actions.

Participation in school administration

Students were given expanding responsibilities in running school affairs such as in designing ceremonies, planning yearly field trips (J4, J3, JR1), and electing the student council:

The student council is first of all democracy in practice … here you are like a nation in the school, you decide who will represent your class … who will be your candidate for chairman … (J4)

The school is understood as a little ‘state’ and students are its citizens. Participation in running the school is understood as parallel to a citizen participating in running the state.

The conditions influencing school civic education

The SECs talked about the conditions that exist in schools that support but mostly impair their civic education efforts.

First, school is immersed in the larger culture of the country, and culture in Israel is perceived by them as rewarding contrary values in regard to citizenship: individual achievement and material welfare, apathy toward the community, and growth of extremist groups on all sides of the political spectrum accompanied by a lack of hope that conflicts in Israel will ever be resolved. There is quiet desperation and hopelessness. As a result, students arrive at school ‘semi attentive–they won’t open a newspaper and read it, they won’t sit and listen to the news’ (J4), ‘They are disconnected, … this is a generation absorbed in television, in computers … with a very limited circle of things that interest them …’ (J6). Mass media celebrities are socializing the young for extreme individuality:

For my part I see myself struggling against these trends in society. Because I’m an agent of socialization and they are agents of socialization. Mass media, politicians, celebs … and this is a very difficult struggle for me as an educator. How, despite this, do we bring students to the point that they believe in things—like friendship or that money isn’t everything in life? … I’m aware of my position as a weak agent, because in this era and in this period of adolescence the celebs and the mass media are much stronger agents. (P19)

This culture is mirrored in the internal school culture as well. The dominant formal pedagogies in the schools focus the entire school system on measurable academic achievements:

The pressure of matriculation exams and teachers who are evaluated by percentages and success rates … then a teacher, much to our distress, is more intent on academic achievements than on values or social problems. (J4)

Sometimes I meet with various inspectors, at various inspectorate meetings, and I feel as if the discussion is only about how many kids have matriculation accreditation and what were the average grades in the exams. (JR3)

The SECs contend that this counters their attempt to encourage good citizens. One pleads: ‘Subtract 10% [from grades] but [have] an enriched program that promotes good kids’ (JR3):

There was an enormous argument whether the education should constitute more or less than formal pedagogy, and we began calculating seventy-five/twenty-five. Really! seventy-five percent [formal pedagogy] and twenty-five percent [informal social education] … look, there are also months that … a whole month for instance that you do nothing informal with the students because they need to study … (J8)

Because of the growing political intolerance in Israel, the SECs worry that when sensitive issues come up in school, they will get an angry reaction from students, parents, and authorities. One SEC (JR5) tells that leading up to the last elections, she organized a panel comprised of representatives from different political parties, but due to the dissatisfaction voiced by several intolerant teachers, she desisted from organizing a similar panel with representatives of several religions. Other SECs report that various groups connected to the school, such as parent groups, the municipality, political parties, local newspapers, and so on, continuously review their work critically and apply pressure to control the way school treats sensitive political issues. An Arab SEC (A1) reports being constantly wary, ‘diplomatic’ (he called it) in order to enlist the various groups so that ‘they’ll be on my side’. The SECs are not free agents, they are under unsympathetic scrutiny.

The Arab coordinators added that they are constrained by their un-privileged position in Israeli society. On one hand, they are expected to instill democratic values and Israeli identification: ‘We are striving to integrate the children into Israeli society’ (A5) ‘In order to succeed I must be able to push forward and integrate into the Israeli society’ (A1). On the other hand, Israeli society is not entirely accepting:

You demand that I be a good and loyal citizen, therefore I deserve to study anywhere. I deserve entrance everywhere. I deserve to build everywhere. Because if I’m a citizen in this country and I hold an identity card of this country, then I deserve to be everywhere. If I am not entitled, … and I am subjected to profiling … then … we teach the value of equality, and suddenly in society he or she [the Arab student] receives … the exact opposite message. (A6)

Discussion

This research aimed at revealing the phenomenology of 21 SECs from Jewish and Arab schools in Israel, regarding their schools’ civic education. SECs provide a rich perspective held by those who operate in the periphery of mostly extra-curricular school activities. Their emic conceptualizations will be interpreted through a larger etic theoretical framework.

At the surface unified, below the surface contradicting and competing

The SECs show how their schools seem to be unified behind a common goal of maximal citizenship. Curricula, textbooks, exams, lesson plans, all call for high ideals of equality, tolerance, strong social bonds, civic solidarity, responsibility, and involvement. However, the SECs’ unique position as agents of non-formal pedagogies focused their attention on the civic implications of pedagogical choices, and it is here that two opposing factions in school are revealed: those who stress the advancement of academic achievements through formal pedagogies versus those who stress education for values and group identification through informal values:

There is always this tension, between two domains that comprise every school … the scholarly domain … and education for social values … Clearly the scholarly domain is considered more important, the one on which, it is believed, a school will rise or fall—its scholastic achievements. However, one must never forget the soul of the school and education for social values. We are not sending forth a person like a computer or machine, rather we want him or her to be human and sensitive, with a mantle of social values and ethics. (J1)

These two goals live together side by side in the official school ‘talk’ which emphasizes both. However, the SECs observe that pedagogy choice is not technical; rather it is at the core of the citizenship model being cultivated. This is because unrelated to content, pedagogy type influences the habits being formed (Bowles and Gintis, 2002), and formal and informal pedagogies promote contradictory civic habits. To illustrate, teaching ‘active democracy’ through formal classroom lectures forms habits that are contrary to active democracy: passivity, obedience, and a focus on individual achievements. A declared ‘maximal’ educational program is therefore minimalist and incoherent with the explicit goals (Newmann et al, 2001). This incoherency may explain why the learning of civics is considered ineffective in changing civic aptitudes (Cohen, 2017b; Pope et al., 2011) and why schools in general do not promote the growth of democratic attitudes (Cohen, 2016; Torney-Purta et al., 1999).

Informal pedagogies, in contrast, talk about maximal citizenship and form maximal civic habits. They are therefore coherent. To illustrate, learning ‘active democracy’ through ‘discussion’ and ‘dialogue’ habituates symmetry of power among equals, and through volunteering habituates caring, acting, and thinking of the type that is concrete and utilizes implicit and inductive knowledge. Choice of pedagogy is therefore the choice of the civic education model itself (Freire, 1972 [1968]).

Leaving content aside, on the level of habit formation, the school is divided between those who through the formal pedagogies habituate minimal citizenship and those who through the informal pedagogies habituate maximal citizenship. School is conceived of as a messy arena of competing agendas (Ball, 1994).

The subversive informal civic education

These two civic educations in school are not equal in their influence. The civic education embedded in the informal pedagogies remains in the periphery of the mostly formal school experience and goes against the currently strong inclination of schools to form minimalist civic habits. The voice of informal pedagogies is therefore subversive and is a show of agency to act against common practice. Such agency in educators was researched in Singapore (Sim, 2011), the Philippines (Almonte-Acosta, 2011), and Israel (Cohen, 2016). The agency can be explained by two factors. One is the higher level of freedom that SECs enjoy in relation to teachers who are subordinated to written curricula, supervisors, exams, and grading systems. SECs are free to improvise, change pace, move from one pedagogy to another, and experiment. But more importantly, the agency of the SECs originates from their will to address the substance of good citizenry. In the terms of Eyal and Gross-Yarm (2018), the SECs are not satisfied with reproducing the existing core practices of school routine, because these formal routines do not correlate with their deeply held beliefs regarding good citizenship. It is because they are addressing the substance of good citizenship in their own lives and are immersed in the problems and needs of Israel’s public sphere that they wish to transform school core practices. Their work to transform school practices is their own show of good citizenry.

This agency offers an alternative civic education on at least three distinct levels (Heater, 2004a: 198–213).

The first is the identity of the students. While formal pedagogies are understood as encouraging a commitment to own personal achievement at the habit formation level, the informal pedagogies are understood as promoting commitment to the public or multiple publics. The informal pedagogies juggle possible loyalties: global, national, ethnic, vocational, interest groups, locality, and so on: ‘A good citizen relates to many circles’ (A3). A ‘good citizen’ is viewed as one who exerts cognitive and emotional energy to examine his loyalties, reconcile tensions that arise between them and constantly prioritizes commitments.

The second is the level of civic responsibility students should develop. The formal pedagogies are understood at the habit formation level as encouraging students to direct their energy toward their own personal scholarly achievements. The informal pedagogies are understood as encouraging the direction of energy toward civic issues—how much to commit to thinking, feeling, and acting upon them. (a) The formal pedagogies reward thinking which develops students as well-versed in authorized knowledge while informal pedagogies entice students to think about issues that are without clear authorized knowledge, news that is ever-changing and evolving, where important information is at times purposefully concealed. The SECs seem to advocate a view of good citizens who are committed to think harder than is required in formal classes. (b) The formal pedagogies focus mostly on cognitive work while the informal pedagogies work on emotional development. They evoke emotions and advocate citizens who care. Cultivating emotions is ‘harder’ than just thoughts or knowledge; it requires delicate, empathic, tactful, and discreet interactions. Emotions are not easily visible, they may dwindle or intensify in varying contexts. Students need to be committed to exerting high levels of energy to handle their own and other people’s emotions, particularly when conflicted issues are discussed and both tolerance and commitment are expected. (c) The formal pedagogies habituate—if successful—a life of intellectual pursuit while informal pedagogies offer more opportunities for doing. The students are encouraged to obey the law but also to act beyond the letter of the law, and at times against unjust laws. They require students to commit to the harder life of action.

The third is the way students develop ‘procedural values’. The formal pedagogies are understood as promoting tolerance but in a weak sense, since it is constructed from a theoretical, emotionally distant, and not strongly invested stance. The informal pedagogies, however, are understood as promoting tolerance in a stronger sense, one that exists among players who despite their commitment to issues, have taken sides and need to deal with others who threaten their interests. This tolerance entails painful compromise and is harder to cultivate (Krathwohl et al., 1964). First, it means allowing other views to be heard. But second, in paying prolonged attention to them, it requires giving them serious consideration and allowing them to change you. This stronger sense of tolerance encourages citizens who actively exercise discretion or prudence on civic issues they encounter, waiting to fully examine all sides of an issue, sanctifying a constant ‘discussion’, and seeking moderate solutions for political problems, that is, those that serve competing interests. The good citizen envisaged by the SECs through the informal pedagogies seems to correlate with the ideals of ‘deliberative democracy’ theory (Cohen, 1989; Fishkin and Luskin, 2005; Habermas, 1984, 1996).

Although the SECs envisage themselves as marginal in the current formal school culture, they believe their voice is important for advancing students who truly care, feel responsibility, and turn to action in Israel’s public sphere. As such they conceive of themselves as significant players in the shaping of Israel’s future. We suggest that it is worth listening to the SECs’ perspective on school civic education and considering their appraisal of schools as encumbered by contradictions, incoherencies, and struggle and as pushing toward contradictory citizenship models. SECs stress the advancement of informal pedagogies in schools, perhaps considering exposure to such pedagogies as a basic right—the democratic right of each young student to develop habits of voice in public affairs. We believe that this perspective should receive more attention.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Hillel Wahrman

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