Postlude - Citizenship and the teaching thereof - The Revd Dr Chris Sunderland

[The material in italics is inserted from a paper Dr Sunderland had been invited to circulate as part of the preparations for the Symposium]

‘You shall teach citizenship,’ they said.

And the reply was, ‘So what is citizenship? That’s a contested concept.’

And they said, ‘Well, we won’t tell you, because we know it’s a contested concept and we will be accused of peddling political positions.’

So another initiative was foisted on the teaching community, ill defined and yet to be measured. And we have to face the fact that actually this subject is really difficult. It asks big questions of how we see the society in which we are placed and how we go about the process of education. This is one subject above all that cannot be taught simply by some body of expert knowledge being just handed over to the pupils. This is a part of education in which teachers and pupils will find themselves positively exploring, positively seeking, engaging with the subject and each other. It could be, if handled well, subversive in a really healthy sense in our education system. But to address this we have to think about society and how we describe it, and we have to think how we act in that society. Those are the two themes I’m going to explore.

We are living in an age, I think, of deep change. Of deep change in a sort of practical, political sense. We’ve been through medieval Christendom. We’ve been through the nation state, which reflects the sort of idea that nations had boundaries and you let them get on with what they wanted to do within those boundaries and didn’t interfere. We’ve been through the colonial period. Now we’re coming, I think, into something new where increased communication, increased relationship between countries, is asking us to develop politics on a global dimension.

Technological progress coupled to the continuing development of world-wide marketing operations will necessitate the development of new co-operative systems on a global scale. New forms of international co-operation or global governance are already being called for in order to deal with problems such as the regulation of trade, international terrorism, money laundering, immigration, asylum and global warming.1

If we are to truly grapple with an issue like global warming, for example, then we need the peoples of the world to co-operate more willingly and more effectively than we have ever previously achieved in human history. The alternative is to stumble on blindly under the dictat of the most powerful. How will we hear the voice of the least powerful peoples of the world? Where can we find sufficient sense of our common humanity and the shared vision to complete this task?

Resistance to certain forms of international co-operation will arise from the commercial need to compete on the global stage. This will continue to drive efficiencies in Western society. High labour costs in developed countries will further the trend toward increasing levels of stress in the workplace. In the public sector, attempts to maximise efficiencies may result in increased use of market methodology, applying competitive pressures through measurable performance indicators and league tables. Yet our current use of indicators is already causing many to lose motivation for their professional lives, fragmenting vision and undermining integrity.2 How can other value systems be brought to bear in the workplace, including holistic views of the task and the benefits of good relationships?

The underlying questions that I think this Symposium would want to ask are, ‘Where can we find vision to deal with the issues that we have to deal with. And can faith play a part in that?’ We’re holding this conference in Westminster (in Church House) and I’m aware that in comparison with the international arena, Westminster is becoming less and less powerful in our lives. So is the Church.