Education citizenship: Where does it comes into realization?

Abstract

Projects on and thoughts about citizen education must make room for tension and contradiction. This is a characterization of the subject. A first part, based upon a few results taken from an investigation of French teachers, questions the teacher’s conceptions and the manner of this education at the primary school level. The author situates the analysis in regards to several important evolutions of school and of the society and of corresponding debates. Citizen education demands rigorous reflection on its theoretical and practical references, on the citizen’s competence, on the conditions of its existence. This article is driving at defining three manners/ways of presence, indispensable and complementary manners/ways, in order that citizen education reaches its level of ambition and expectation.