Culture, Identity and Citizenship 

I would like to share what I have learnt in the lesson of Democratic Citizenship because I find it very interesting. I hope you also enjoy like me.

Culture: A group that you belong to. It can be a national culture, a gender culture, religious culture, youth culture and so on.

The Concept of Culture

• Some kind of group people belongs (national, sports, gender, religions etc.)
• Culture changes from our countries to here (we discussed the reason why we have different cultures)

               - Habits are different.

               - We are learning more with less amount of content here. It’s because we have group works, so we can remember easily. (social constructivism = the name of this kind of learning)

               - In Denmark, more relaxed teachers and students concerning classroom.

               - People  negotiate  culture (negotiation between participants)

Examples of descriptive culture and complex culture

* Culture change e.g. gender roles (complex)

*  Culture   and static. The way to do things will not change. (descriptive)

*  Tendency to stereotyping people from other groups to nation (descriptive)

* There is a change that stereotyping will lead to judgements about a stituation. That is not right or at least, not the whole explanation. (descriptive)

* What is important here is that we should try to be open minded. Not all people from a culture acts the same thing. (complex)

* Looking  for other explanations to how a situation went

Identity

There is a discussion between few extremes concerning identity.

1.  "Identity has a care that never changes.”
2.  "Identity is changing all the time because we are in social relationship with others.”
3.  "Identity is negotiated and differs according to the social group you are in.”

                - Upbringing

                - School

                - Friends

                - Prejudicing

Identity has to be confirmed.

Cultural Identity: It is not something static.

                - Culture is complex.

                - Identity is complex.

Be aware of prejudicing about people from other culture. Or else, there is a possibility that you act in a negative way about are not aware of it.

What is the citizenship?

Citizenship: right and duties that the citizen in a country has. If you are a citizen to a country, there are some rules you have to obey such as moral rules, right and duties, a sense of belonging, a feeling of responsibility. If you have a passport you will have these rights and duties.

Next, Thomas asked us a question on how to make people feel that they belong to a country. And then, we have talked about "cohesion and unity".

Grundtuig after 1864: There was just one national culture in Denmark. We had lost the last regions with minorities to Germany.

Many people feel that the social cohesion is corroding (crumpling). That may be special for Denmark in comparison with other countries. Moreover, immigration is what people concerned. The Danish focus on culture in citizenship is the strategy to cope with the question of diversity.

Citizen education is about the group of people and the democratic constitution.

T. H. McLaughlin’s text (Citizenship, diversity and education a philosophical perspective)

• Is concerned with the question of cohesion.
• From 1992 which is early when we discussing the content of citizen education.
• Asks if “liberal democratic values” is enough to make cohesion is multicultural England.
• He is not sure it would be enough for people to feel that they should take active part of society.
• Asks for public virtues. (teaching to be concerned with more than themselves)

We have to teach pupils to be active and not indifferent.

• Not tell them how to take care but make sure that they are concerned with more than themselves.

In early 1990s, it became important for the European Union to focus on democratic citizenship education because of “the Fall of the Iron Curtain (a term for the communist part of the world)”.