Citizenship under scrutiny: education, ethics and politics

This paper basically constitutes a contribution to the current debate on the concept of citizenship, the terms of citizenship education after its inclusion in the curriculum, and the reasons why this political decision has been rejected in several social sectors, mainly on ethical and legal grounds. In the various sections of the paper, we give possible reasons for the lack of definition surrounding the concept of citizenship, using arguments from linguistics and historical analysis. Then, we return to discourses from political education that reveal new ways of clarifying the subject. These are based on references to contractualism and civil society, among other topics, that are taken from political philosophy. We also examine discourses from values education, which indicate that there may be inaccuracies in the way ethical and political values and assets are dealt with in relation to the Spanish Constitution. These inaccuracies can be seen in the curricular design of the subject “Education for Citizenship”. In view of the arguments, we conclude with a proposal for future research on the coordinates that should be used for civic education in Spain.