‘Britishness?’ A discussion of citizenship education and the Ajegbo Report
2009 essay revisited
Motivation: What is Britishness anyway? This paper focuses on aspects of deliberation surrounding citizenship education in the wake of the findings of the Ajegbo Report. It looks at how, for many, the concept of ‘Britishness’ has become synonymous with citizenship education.
Design/methodology/approach: Discussion of a range of perceptions of ‘Britishness’ and the related conceptions of it being an elixir t0 a myriad of contrasting socio-political obstacles.
Findings: It is found that discourses relating to Britishness continues to pervade the pedagogy of this professional field despite insistent controversy.
Value: This paper provides some context for recent interpretations of Britishness and their influence on the exploration and expansion of citizenship education in the wake of 7/7.
The concept of ‘Britishness’ has become central not only to debates of nationality and citizenship but to all manner of disparate socio-political areas such as crime, education and the media, and more and more it is being used in public debates as a form of cure-all for many of the current issues within twenty-first century Britain (Bradley, 2007: 2). Gordon Brown, for example, in a speech made to the Fabian Society in 2006, stated that:
“Britishness is not just an academic debate — something for the historians, just for the commentators, just for the so-called chattering classes. Indeed in a recent poll, as many as half of British people said they were worried that if we do not promote Britishness we run a real risk of having a divided society… And I believe that out of a debate, hopefully leading to a broad consensus about what Britishness means, flows a rich agenda for change: a new constitutional settlement, an explicit definition of citizenship, a renewal of civil society, a rebuilding of our local government and a better balance between diversity and integration…” (Gordon Brown (2006) cited in Peter Brett (2008), Identity and Diversity: Citizenship Education and Looking Forwards from the Ajegbo Report, (published online).
Here, the value of understanding and instilling what ‘Britishness’ means extends far beyond concepts such as citizenship and nationhood; it affects the very constitutional base of the country and not only reflects but provides entry points into its political mandates and social aspirations (Gross, 1999). This paper looks at how the concept of ‘Britishness’ has been linked to citizenship education (most obviously through the 2007 Ajegbo Report, The Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review (Ajegbo: 2007) and how this, in turn, is a reflection of the wider social debate concerning British cultural identity in a time of increasing ethnic diversity. To this end, this paper is divided into three main sections: the first highlights the key points and findings of the Ajegbo report and attempts to place them into context with current thinking on ethnic diversity and citizenship teaching; the second section looks directly at the notion of Britishness as it is reflected in the report and recent Government thinking and the last section looks at some of the criticisms of the report (Kerr et al, 2007; Brett, 2008; Goodwin, 2007 etc) and the possible future of citizenship education especially in the wake of its many and varied practical recommendations. It is hoped then that this paper represents not only an attempt to understand the concept of Britishness and how it relates to citizenship but how it is being used, in various manifestations, as a term to counter all manner of disparate social and political concerns, from education to counter terrorism.
The Ajegbo report was published in 2007 and, as it states, was a response to the growing debate over the place of national identity in contemporary Britain. Ajegbo (2007) gives its direct legislative antecedents as being the MacPherson Report on the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence (MacPherson: 1999), the Cantle Report (Cantle: 2001) and the 2001 Race Relations (Amendment) Act (HMSO, 2001); as well as citing several key political events such as 9/11. We could also mention here the 1998 Crick Report (Crick, 1998). As Kymlicka (2001) details, the notion of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity have become central features of many liberal democracies especially in the wake of globalisation and transformations of national borders through such things as cheaper pan-national travel and a more widespread media. The Ajegbo report recognises the current situation in the UK as being one of many ethnicities, cultures, languages and religions (Ajegbo, 2007: 16), in 2001, for instance, British minority ethnic groups comprised 7.9% of the population, 1 in 8 pupils in UK are of an ethnic minority, by 2010 the report predicts that this will be somewhere in the region of 1 in 5 and, by 2017 15% of the UK workforce will belong to the Muslim faith. As Haddock and Sutch (2003) detail, such multiculturalism can often lead to issues in defining a homogenous and coherent definition of nationhood and it is this, to some extent that the Ajegbo report attempts to address.
The notion of Britishness, as Favell (2001: xi) outlines, has always been complicated by its colonial past, with cultural, geographical and sovereign identities constantly vying for supremacy in many post-colonial cultures. As Ajegbo (2007) details, one of the major challenges for any pedagogical system under such diverse circumstances is to create a curriculum that offers substantive and worthwhile images of Britain without recourse to monovocal and imperial discourses. Without any formal written constitution, the concept of Britishness has also always been under negotiation with definitions largely emanating out of the agendas of those that form them (Arnold, 2004: 1); former Conservative Party Prime Minister John Major’s notions of Britishness consisting of long shadows on country lawns, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers, existing alongside more universal conceptions such as NUT President Balgeet Ghales who advocated Britishness has consisting of valuing diversity, freedom and tolerance (cited in Brett, 2008).
The Ajegbo report advocates a specific regime of citizenship pedagogy, forming what it terms a fourth strand entitled Identity and Diversity: Living Together in the UK (Ajegbo, 2007: 97); this should consist of three major components: critical thinking about ethnicity, race and religion explicit links to politics and the use of contemporary history in the teaching of citizenship (Ajegbo, 2007: 97). The report also stresses the importance of schools reaching out to the wider multicultural societies around them and details the steps by one school (Valentines High School) to invite local faith leaders to speak and to share knowledge.
Such thinking outlines a clear mandate for the education system, not only in terms of curricula but the ways in which the school interacts with the local community. Ajegbo clearly sees a place for local multi-ethnic knowledge within the classroom and advocates systems of partnerships between cultural groups and educational establishments. One of the key ways that this can be approached is through the questioning of concepts such as Britishness, concepts that, the report suggests, can be interrogated through a series of measures centred on the notion of Who Do We Think We Are?, a media and classroom based program of national identity construction and adoption for 9–14 year olds.
The report draws a picture of diversity education that is well meaning but insufficient; under funding, under– motivated and –trained staff, institutional racism and a sporadic leadership have all contributed to what one commentator called a failure to foster a sense of Britishness (Henry, 2007) especially in the wake of high profile crises such as 7/7.
What then does the Ajegbo report say about the concept of Britishness and how does this relate to the wider socio-political context? For Ward (2004) Britishness is far from being a distinct and constant construct, it is on the contrary, an ever changing and evolving set of practices, ideals and assumptions that serve as much to exclude as to include, he states:
Since the 1970s there has been a sense of crisis about what it has meant to be British. But not only British. Far from being constants, as had been presumed to be, national identities have been recognised as constructed and reconstructed. This is not to say that national identities are ‘false’ or ‘artificial’, but this idea of the ‘making of national identities’ has opened them up to academic study, Paul Ward (2004), Britishness Since 1870, Routledge, p.1.
As we have seen already, definitions of Britishness also depend on the agenda and opinions of those who form them; a point recognised by Ajegbo in the report (Ajegbo, 2007: 8). The notion of Britishness as merely pertaining to the experience of living in Britain is criticised by Ajegbo who asserts, instead, the value of historical and cultural knowledge in the formation of national identity. The report itself however is, perhaps unsurprisingly, vague on its own definition of Britishness, preferring instead to stress the plurality and diversity of the term and to quote from others such as the Home office document Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship (HMSO: 2005) that states that Britishness consists of respect for the laws, faith in democratic elections, mutual tolerance and allegiance to the state and Crown (Ajegbo, 2007: 93).
For Ajegbo, Britishness pertains to a shared set of values, some of which are enshrined in legal statutes such as the Human Rights Act (HMSO: 1998) and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act (HMSO: 2000); these values not only create a shared set of rules and regulations with which to live by but, as Cook (2004) suggests, create a sense of cultural belonging and encourages a sense of social and political ownership over ones country. The Ajegbo report offers a number of different views of what it means to be British and, we could assert, it is in that plurality that its own definitions lie.
As Brett (2008) details, some of the opposition to the Ajegbo report focussed, to a large extent, on the role of citizenship within the national curriculum itself; he cites an article in the Daily Telegraph that criticised the current position of only teaching citizenship up to the age of 14; David Willets, the then shadow education secretary, stressed the importance of a distinct national narrative within citizenship education and Philip Beadle of The Guardian criticised the government for twinning the seemingly irreconcilable policies of diversity education and the promotion of mono-faith schools.
A report by the National Foundation for Educational Research, published in 2007 entitled Vision Vs Pragmatism, casts doubts as to the efficacy of many of the proposals put forward by the Ajegbo report; whereas it concurs that the citizenship curriculum should aim to focus on and to foster a sense of national homogeneity and belonging, it disagrees with the fourth strand approach, suggesting instead that a discreet delivery method alone is not effective in achieving the reports aims (Kerr et al, 2007: 9), a distinct commitment to a citizenship curriculum, state Kerr et al (2007) should also be twinned with a commitment to reducing class sizes, fostering strong leadership and encouraging the development of up to date and relevant classroom materials. The role of citizenship in society, then, is inextricably linked to the economics of the classroom and the future of one is ultimately also the future of the other. As Elizabeth Cleaver, one of the reports authors stated:
What is required is recognition of the need to address the structural challenges facing citizenship in schools. Without this, any proposed revisions to the delivery of citizenship education will merely exchange the current set of implementation challenges with a different set. (Goodwin, 2007).
For the authors of Vision Vs Pragmatism, then, the teaching of what Britishness means needs to be seen as merely one in a number of structural and pedagogical changes that need to occur; something that is only touched upon in the Ajegbo report. Rather than being the cure of all points of homogenous identification that is often cited in speeches like that of Gordon Browns, the report suggests that a sense of Britishness has first to be filtered through a number of concrete commitments in areas such as education, the legal system, public office and the media. If Britishness indeed means tolerance, equality and mutual respect those traits need first to be enshrined in its social apparatus.
As we have seen, focussing on the concept of Britishness in education is often viewed as a simple solution to a complex problem. The Ajegbo report, in many ways, exemplifies the key issues with the debate in general: its vague and nebulous definitions of Britishness do not easily translate into clear and concise pedagogical avenues, its desire to be inclusive sometimes means it loses the central focus of defining the specificity of Britishness, key terms such as ethnic diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship are sometimes, erroneously, considered interchangeable and it fails to fully explore the wider social and political changes that national identity is based on. Citizenship education, as Arthur, J., Davison, J. and William, S., (2000) state, should perhaps concern itself with ideals of social literacy and a range of social skills (Arthur, Davison and Snow, 2000: ix) rather than a concept as multifaceted and as ill defined as Britishness; a concept that, as we hinted at earlier, has never been free of controversy, negotiation or duplicity.
References:
Ajegbo, K., et al (2007), The Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review, (HMSO, 2007).
Arnold, D., (2004), Cultural Identities and the Aesthetics of Britishness (Studies in Imperialism), Manchester University Press.
Arthur, J., Davison, J. and William, S., (2000), Social Literacy, Citizenship Education and the National Curriculum, Routledge.
Bradley, I., (2007), Believing in Britain: The Spiritual Identity of ‘Britishness’, I.B. Tauris.
Brett, P., (2008), Identity and Diversity: Citizenship Education and Looking Forwards from the Ajegbo Report, published online at: www.citized.info/pdf/commarticles/Peter%20Brett%20- %20Identity%20and%20Diversity.doc
Cantle, T., et al (2001), The Institute of Community Cohesion Review of Community Cohesion in Oldham, HMSO.
Cook, J., (2004), Relocating Britishness and the Break up of Britain, published in: Caunce, S., (ed), Relocating Britishness, Manchester University Press.
Crick. B., et al (1998), Education for Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, HMSO.
Favell. A., (2001), Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain (Migration, Minorities & Citizenship), Palgrave Macmillan.
Goodwin, G., (2007), New NFER Citizenship Education Research Challenges Ajegbo Report published online at http://www.nfer.ac.uk/latest-news/press-releases/new-nfer-citizenship-education-research-challenges-the-ajegbo-review.cfm
Gross, F (1999), Citizenship and Ethnicity, Press Haddock, B and Sutch, P., (2003), published in: Multiculturalism, Identity and Rights, Routledge.
Henry, J., (2007), Britishness and the Class System published in the Telegraph, Jan 2007.
Kerr, D., et al (2007), Vision Vs Pragmatism: Citizenship in the Secondary School Curriculum in England, NFER.
Kymlicka, W., (2001), Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and Citizenship, Oxford University Press, USA.
Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship, (HMSO: 2005), Stationery Office Books.
MacPherson, W (1999), The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, HMSO; The Human Rights Act, (HMSO, 1998); The Race Relations, (Amendment) Act, (HMSO, 2000).
Ward, P (2004), Britishness Since 1870, Routledge.
