EU Citizenship Teaching Packages for secondary school pupils (Deliverable 11.6)

In this paper we present the outline of a series of five teaching packages for secondary school pupils in the age group of 14-16/17. These teaching packages all address a specific dimension of EU citizenship. More attention for EU Citizenship is relevant for several reasons. It first refers to the set of civil, political, economic and social rights that all citizens of EU countries possess in addition to the rights that come with their national citizenship. Secondly, it refers to the membership of a European political community in which each citizen of an EU country can participate actively; next to or intertwined with, being active in a local or national political community.

One of the conclusions from a comparative study of civic education in 7 EU-countries (D8.10 bEUcitizen), is that adolescents are hardly educated in what their EU citizenship rights are, nor are they trained in competencies to realize or enforce these rights. Parallel to this, young adults leave secondary school without being taught the civic and political competencies to participate in the variety of political communities on different levels they belong to.

EU citizenship is relevant when you stay in your country of origin and in the town you grew up in. For instance, in one’s role as a consumer. Furthermore, political participation manifests itself on the local level in different forms. On the one hand, during elections: local, regional, national or European. On the other hand, in many forms of collective action by citizens who organize themselves in protest movements, around opinion leaders in the public sphere, interest groups and NGOs. Often when there is a European dimension, the action starts at the local level. For that reason, it is important that citizens both understand their rights and that a more lively European public sphere emerges. As a result, we choose to develop teaching materials for secondary school pupils that contribute to the EU dimension of their civic competencies.

With these teaching packages we do not intend to lobby for or create support for EU citizenship. Our goal is to make EU citizenship visible in a realistic way, showing concrete relevance not only for ‘movers’ but especially for those who stay at home; show how EU citizenship is directly related to one’s daily life and how one can influence these choices.

After having outlined the goals, target group and didactics, in the appendix a summary of the five teaching packages are presented:

1. Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
2. Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
3. Organizing our interest
4. Travelling around
5. Advising the EU in solving Global Problems