Citizenship education and learners with mild-intellectual disabilities in South Africa: A critique of post-apartheid citizenship education policy

Abstract

Citizenship education, as a knowledge branch of the philosophy of education, affirms and educates learners in schools about citizenship as a legal status, feeling of belonging and the practice of activism in preparing them for citizenship participation. Globally, citizenship education policy is segmented between liberal, communitarian and civic republican strands. Arguably, contemporary communitarianism and civic republicanism are apt to accrue educational benefits that foster the development of learners with mild-intellectual disabilities’ intellectual and adaptive functions, yielding effective citizenship. The study’s research problem is citizenship education policy embraced upon classical liberalism, which individualises learners with mild-intellectual disabilities in post-apartheid schools. As an unintended consequence of policy, the social problem becomes the exclusion of learners with mild-intellectual disabilities, who are left in the doldrums and characterised as passive citizens. The conceptual and philosophical study uses philosophical research in education as a methodology, with Frankena’s three methods of enquiry serving as a methodological approach. In addressing the problem, Critical Disability Theory and Tomaševski’s 4-A scheme framework are adopted as theoretical lenses which form part of the transformative paradigm to critique policy under the prime objectives of attaining social justice and human rights. The central argument of the study asserts that the implementation of post-apartheid citizenship education policy reflects a tendency to adopt and overemphasise classical liberal strands of citizenship. In the critical analysis of citizenship education policy, the liberalism explicated undermines and underemphasises the educational benefits of contemporary communitarianism and civic republicanism. Invariably, the theoretical contributions of social justice and human rights when educating learners with mild-intellectual disabilities in post-apartheid South African schools are not supported. By shifting the pendulum between the ideals of citizenship education policy and its implementation, strategies are presented to help learners find their identity as a means of fostering agency, community involvement and responsiveness, while also balancing formal knowledge and experiential learning. In looking to the future, citizenship education in schools under communitarianism in a civic-orientated Republic of South Africa is proposed in which learners with mild-intellectual disabilities’ intellectual and adaptive functions can be developed for effective citizenship.