Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the promotion of fundamental British values
- one ‘Managing’ diversity: policy and practice
- two Citizenship, identity and belonging
- three Researching the promotion of fundamental British values in schools
- four Promoting British values in schools
- five Morality, controversy and emotion in schools
- six Conclusion: citizenship, values and belonging
- References
- Index
six - Conclusion: citizenship, values and belonging
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 April 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: the promotion of fundamental British values
- one ‘Managing’ diversity: policy and practice
- two Citizenship, identity and belonging
- three Researching the promotion of fundamental British values in schools
- four Promoting British values in schools
- five Morality, controversy and emotion in schools
- six Conclusion: citizenship, values and belonging
- References
- Index
Summary
Even as we challenge dominant discourses and the specific language which feeds and sustains them, we may find ourselves doing so within those discourses’ own frames of reference, constrained by the very language with which they seek to determine our thoughts, words, deeds. (Moore, 2018: 145– 6)
[Both welfare professionals and those who work actively for equality and diversity] are all situated ambivalently, implicated in inequality's reproduction as well as its challenge. (Hunter, 2015: 144)
I finished the previous chapter by highlighting the ambivalent position – also illustrated by these quotations – of the teachers who invest considerable time, energy and commitment in highlighting and explicitly promoting respect and tolerance to students, (other FBV have a much lower profile, as discussed). As the ‘good’ professional cannot be an ‘unreasonable’ one, teachers’ promotion works through a discourse of liberal ‘reasonableness’ (Chetty, 2018) that fails to recognise the entanglement of long- standing classed and raced inequalities in defining what ‘we’ know and should transmit through education. This absence of acknowledgement produces a curriculum and pedagogy that ‘suggest[s] not moving too far from where we are and not looking too closely at how we got here’ (Chetty, 2018: 9), a stance that also has to overlook the determining role of current high-stakes testing in shaping what are understood to be ‘effective’ curricula and pedagogies. Given this situation, there are ‘no straightforwardly heroic, noble acts of resistance’ (Hunter, 2015: 144). However, in this chapter, I go on to briefly consider whether particular approaches to citizenship education have the potential to offer considerations of liberal democratic values that go beyond the simplistic, assumed consensus of FBV. But, first, I shall summarise my arguments to this point.
The enactment of FBV
Ball, Maguire and Braun identify a major tension visible in recent education policy as being that between ‘neo-conservative and neo-liberal versions of government, knowledge and social authority’ (2012: 140). The FBV policy, however, exemplifies both. The influence of neoconservatism is visible in the idea of promoting a set of national values. This raises questions about equal belonging to the polity, and the likelihood of the effectiveness of a policy that seeks to enforce uniform commitments and loyalties on everyone, despite unequal starting points in terms of whether people perceive themselves, and others perceive them, as full citizens.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Tea and the Queen?Fundamental British Values, Schools and Citizenship, pp. 135 - 148Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2019