CIVIC EDUCATION: A BASIC REQUIREMENT FOR SUSTAINING CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

There is hardly any country including the United States of America, that has achieved the level of understanding and acceptance of rights and responsibilities that is required for maintenance and improvement of constitutional democracy among the. totalin: of its citizens. The paper examines the relevance of civic education in sustaining constitutional democracy. It affirms that democracies are sustained by citizens who have the requisite knowledge, skills and dispositions. More importantly, political knowledge, skills as well as depositions and virtues that inform democratic ethos, are not inherited, but rather learnt. Some of the strongest recommendations of the paper are: community service should be made an integral part of civic education, the importance of civic education should be communicated to the general public through televised public for a print media, parents and civic leaders; participatory methods of teaching is more germane to the success of civic education programme and that capacity building programme should be organized for civic SB teachers at all levels.