Education for democracy is a Swiss specialty but one academic wants to update the system. From Swissinfo‘s Aarau Renat Kuenzi:
A new curriculum introduced at Swiss schools could better equip students to play a more active role in democracy, argues political scientist Monika Waldis.
It was quite a shock when Swiss students performed badly in the 1999 International Civic and Citizenship Education Studyexternal (ICCS). Not in physics or biology, but in political education. The situation was the same in 2010. In 2016 Switzerland didn’t take part – for cost reasons, authorities claimed.
For a country that prides itself on being the world champion in direct democracy – in no other country can citizens vote so often – this was a wake-up call.
As a result of the ICCS finding, Switzerland rebooted its political education curriculum, the basis of which is now anchored in the new “Curriculum 21” for primary and secondary schools. The aims can be summed up as “political competence”.
See the full article at Swissinfo, produced by the Swiss public broadcasting association.
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