Democratic Citizenship Education

Abstract

Political education is the part of human’s learning process that seeks to enable searches for intellectual uniqueness, cultural and historical knowledge and political ideology. It also involves the processes of giving information and of developing skills necessary for responding to problems that arise in real life situations and which occur daily. This is to engender wisdom, efficiency and responsibility vis-a-vis the political system. Political education has three components. First is general knowledge, namely, basic information that constitutes the necessary condition for understanding the various dimensions of politics. Second is skills, namely the ability to assemble the information for deep analysis and evaluation of the decision-making process. Third is attitude in the holistic and deep analysis of political information before believing and using in one’s own decision-making. Political education thus has to be consonant with life in society. Educational institutions need to be microcosms of society and be models of goodness in life. They should offer learners experiences appropriate to their levels of maturity and age groups. They should have a democratic atmosphere, so that learners come to know the basic nature of society, able to learn new things and to aim to engender a better society. The institutions should thus encourage cooperation between the educators and the learners and between the learners themselves, so as to move toward the aim of democracy, which is peaceful coexistence.