Promoting citizenship in schools has been a long-standing focus of the UK Bahá’í community. When the Department for Education and Science decided to introduce citizenship as part of the national curriculum in England and Wales, a national Bahá’í agency decided the time was right to respond to the new initiative and offer its expertise to teachers.

The government’s plans involve focusing on three areas of citizenship: social and moral responsibility; community involvement; and political literacy.

In the run-up to the introduction of citizenship classes into schools, the Bahá’í Office of Religious and Educational Affairs has prepared background information offering a Bahá’í perspective on citizenship and practical exercises for teachers to use for the curriculum’s three focus areas.

The citizenship packs will be distributed to pilot schools for the summer term, to assist and support teachers in their citizenship training for secondary schools. BOREA then plan to submit the materials to the Association for Citizenship Teaching for review in their quarterly journal.

“Many countries already include citizenship as part of their national curriculum, but in the United Kingdom, teachers are crying out for materials,” said Jenny Lockwood, a member of the BOREA.

Among the materials that BOREA is offering teachers are practical exercises on subjects such as conflict resolution.

In a class of children aged 12 to 14, the teacher might ask them to define conflict on personal, local, national and international levels. Examples might include bullying, race riots, or the events of September 11.

The exercise would then move on to analysing the meaning of a “fair” resolution of a conflict, and to examine the examples chosen by the class to assess whether they had been resolved “fairly”.

The class would then examine the consequences of conflicts such as the war in Afghanistan, and try to assess different perspectives of “fairness” that might be held by people from different ethnic, religious or political backgrounds.

“Children are encouraged to find and investigate the examples they choose themselves, and the exercises encourage them to think both cerebrally and practically about citizenship,” says Simon Trick, another BOREA member.