Educating Democratic Minds in South African Public Schools: African Teachers' Perceptions of Good Citizenship

The notion that South African public schools have a distinctively civic mission has been recognized in all national education policy documents published since the first democratic election in 1994. The African National Congress (ANC) government immediately began to realize that if the new-found demo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Negro education 2005-07, Vol.74 (3), p.275-286
Main Author: Schoeman, Sonja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Citizenship
Citizenship Education
Civic education
Civics
Civil society
Critical thinking
Democracy
Democratic Values
Education policy
Educational Practices
Foreign Countries
Functional Literacy
General Articles
Perceptions
Political Socialization
Political systems
Public Schools
Research Methodology
Social Cognition
Social Science Research
South Africa
Teacher Attitudes
Teacher Characteristics
Teacher Expectations of Students
Teacher Surveys
Teachers
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Summary:The notion that South African public schools have a distinctively civic mission has been recognized in all national education policy documents published since the first democratic election in 1994. The African National Congress (ANC) government immediately began to realize that if the new-found democracy was to survive, education for democratic citizenship had to be taught to every future generation. The purpose of this article is to summarize scholars' views on the attributes of a good citizen and to report the outcomes of a research project on African teachers' perceptions on what factors contribute to being a good citizen. Finding out what African teachers think will provide a reasonable starting point for addressing the issue of education for democratic citizenship in South African public schools. The literature review and the individual interviews revealed that a good citizen in a constitutional democracy is someone who possesses, among others, the following characteristics: communitarian characteristics, public characteristics, and knowledge characteristics.
ISSN:0022-2984
2167-6437