Citizenship and the Commonwealth The Active Commonwealth ...

Citizenship in the Commonwealthstate encourages, before setting out the content by which learners willbecome responsible in aspects of citizenship education at their level.Citizenship education is taught in all sixyears of primary school. Of the threesubjects, civics education is the mostelaborate tier catering separately for eachof the six year classes. From Class One toClass Four the content revolves aroundthe relationship between the individual,home, school, the administrative contextand the broader society. Direct mentionThe syllabusemphasises thetype of younglearner the nationstateencouragesis made of the Commonwealth in Class Five (there is further developmentof this in post-primary school). Classes Five and Six emphasise some ofthe ills in society such as gambling and bribery and teach children abouttheir duties to the home, as well as developing their knowledge aboutlocal, provincial, national world issues such as types of councils, thevarious arms of government, international organisations and their relationwith Cameroon. Other areas covered include: the constitution; duties ofmembers of government; use of the highway; types of elections; and rightsand obligations of self and others.It has been hard to judge the effectiveness or impact of teachingcitizenship. Whilst the nation-state of Cameroon is trying to encourage theEnglish-speaking ‘Young Learner’ to develop a sense of the local, regional,national and global belonging, this is undermined by their experiencesoutside the classroom. Seeing corruption and bribery in their societymay confuse the young learners, robbing them of any trust in the idea ofcitizenship and leading them to perceive it merely as a subject in which tosucceed at school.Corruption and briberymay cause younglearners to lose trust inthe idea of citizenshipCitizenship must not just be aschool subject ― people musttranslate theory into practice, intheir professional, personal andpolitical lives. Moreover, effectivecitizenship education must encouragecollaboration between the state,schools, parents, local communityand peers.20