The ‘Competence’ discourse in education and the struggle or social agency and critical citizenship

Abstract

This paper argues for an education for critical citizenship closely connected with a revitalisation of the democratic public sphere and which prepares citizens to contribute to the emergence of a ‘substantive democracy’ (Giroux, 2001). An education for citizenship, in this context, is a democratic education, one in which students learn about democracy not simply by talking about it but by engaging in a democratic learning experience governed by non hierarchical social relations of education. This is in keeping with John Dewey’s over-arching concept of education for democracy.The competences involved, for want of a better word, are those that can enable a person to function as a social agent contributing to and thriving within a genuinely democratic environment.