Public Participation and the Active, Critical Citizen: Another View

Abstract

It is generally taken for granted by educators, and taught as such in schools, that children should grow up to be good citizens. It is further assumed that when such children reach their majority and become such good citizens, that they, in their turn, will demonstrate their goodness in this realm by exercising their citizenship actively. In normative terms, we teach that: they should ‘take part’, that, in other words, they should ‘participate’. The world ‘out there’ is, however, different from that of the Civics class. While in Western democracies, limited participation in national and regional political processes, and in local decision-making, is often regarded on one level as both an absolute good and a civic responsibility, on another level it is seen as a nuisance, an impediment to efficiency, a barrier to ‘getting things done.’ Here, we experience a basic contradiction between the democratic ‘ideal’ of public involvement and the autocratic ‘reality’ (even in democracies) of elite decision-making. The same is frequently true of the ‘critical thinking’ we try to teach: its expression by ordinary citizens is often much more valued in the halls of academe than in the palaces of global capitalism.