9 - PUKA


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POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS IN 
EDUCATION: AN ANALYSIS OF CITIZEN 

FORMATION PROCESS THROUGH ACTIVE 
CITIZENSHIP  

 
EDI PUKA, European University of Tirana, Albania 

DILINA BESHIRI, University A. Moisiu Durres, Albania 
 

 
Received: April 15, 2013 Accepted: September 14, 2013 Online Published: October 14, 2013 

 
 

Abstract 
 
 

The human being grows in relationship with others of its fellows, and it is by virtue of this 
relationship that it receives a particular cultural heritage and acquires its own identity, 
differentiating itself, finding its own space of freedom and autonomy allowing it to interact 
and extend its own network of relations. 

In such a dynamic of reciprocity, the man realizes himself as such as a conscious member 
of a “social body”, i.e. of a radical society in an organic human context, which has become 
nowadays a clearly planetary one, by virtue of the unpublished migration flows and obvious 
interdependence of the Planet.  

The education is a line of human civility and it causes that grounds of anonymity, fears, 
consumerism, prejudice, haste, indifference, abuse, insecurity, solitude, become grounds of 
hospitality, trust, sharing, security, friendship, and brotherhood.  

The patterns of political education having prevailed so far are: the academic model with 
its explanation and dissent in the abstract of a great deal of knowledge, and that of the 
laboratory, which tilts and leans over, even by moments of simulation, toward vital worlds of 
operational policy.  

It is now manifested a widespread social demand about the necessity to provide to 
everybody, but especially in the range of basic youth socio-political information, an 
equipment of historical and values’ nature, and by providing comparative elements on the 
different socio-political matrices and traditions, raising the incentive at a renewing and 
increasingly conscious commitment in the face of growing difficulties, inherent to the political 
perspectives disputed so far in the world. It is necessary to refocus and reestablish a political 
culture uniting the breath of the ideal with the reality of administrative experience, supporting 
this political culture with the contribution of a dynamic and open reflection, capable of 
understanding the reality.  

 
Keywords: Education; Policy; Citizenship; Culture; Emancipation   
 



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1. Introduction 
Educating in politics responds to a social necessity, with the society being thus composed by 
and taking advantages of citizens capable of asking for and exercising democracy in a critical 
and independent way, according to a precise draft of man and woman. 

 A Project raising from the belief of man and woman being at the center, subject-object of 
political demand in a continuous, constructive relationship between the common good and the 
individual one, where the common good is also understood as a set of all legislative and 
instrumental equipment allowing everyone to achieve their individual goals. 

I consider important the education in politics and legality, because it is necessary to 
develop among young people a sense of individual responsibility and awareness of the rights 
for the common good; teach them that the delegating process through citizens’ participating in 
elections constitutes a representative and not intellectual delegation, and that the effort at 
whatever explicative level must tend to research of organic solutions of problems (problem – 
thought – action). 

It seems to me that we must finally recognize that it is time to bring forth with all forces 
and in all available educational settings a formative commitment with the political dimension 
being not only clearly and consciously present, but also considered to be one of its main 
features. Our times call for urgent: the alternative is likely to be the defeat of the entire 
humanity and thus make it impossible for the person to be fulfilled in his higher significance 
and true value.  

Politics and education have formed since the ancient world an almost inseparable 
binomial. It is well known that the state was the center of social and individual life in ancient 
Greece and Rome: ancient men (of course the free ones) were first and foremost citizens. 
Civic education and human formation have always been intertwined. The idea of education is 
based on fundamental concepts, those of paideia and humanitas that, in large measure, are 
proportional to ethical-political reflection. The image of man was that of an individual whose 
existence made sense only within the community and whose activity was essentially political. 
The polis was a solid support and guide to life. Plato himself speaks of “inner city that every 
man carries within himself”, destined to evolve and transcend itself. (Plato IX, 591)  

Usually the concept of education has meant the transmission of knowledge with training 
purposes of adult generations to younger ones. (Piaget, 1980: 129) The perspective of a 
political education is actualized in family, school and out of school contexts. The sharing of 
project that promotes the person and the conviviality that is pursued in the relation are 
essential factors for success in educating. Cooperation is the other factor that favors the 
constitution of a sense of community.  

The fact that education and politics may be recognized as primary and necessary 
dimensions to the life and development of man is founded on the epistemological assumption 
that the individual is in need of a duality for his own survival and development as a human 
being. 

 The man, in order to survive, needs what Ferrarotti calls “l’insiemità sociale” (social 
together-being) which, as he himself says, “is not accidental, but it doesn’t even respond to 
the imperatives of meta-historical archetypes.” “Man is in any case forced to choose not in 
absolute, but in the dated and lived situation, to make a gesture that saves him or leads toward 
getting lost in a horizon set in motion by historically variable needs identifiable in their 
profound essence: culture, values and citizenship”. (Ferrarotti, 1999: 13) 

Educating in politics requires you to give space to the autonomy and solidarity of the 
person, to consolidate the sense of responsibility connected with freedom and a sense of duty 
related to the right. It becomes essential, therefore, in the scholastic institution to get into 



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political education and ban ideologies, (Snyders, 1986: 193), and give rise to the development 
of routes and procedures that will educate into politics.  

The philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that it is sufficient, in a liberal democracy, 
“to be all judges”, and such minimalism seemed, in his open society, plausible and easy: it’s 
time to reintroduce, re-vivify such an attitude, which necessitates maturation, a vibrant style 
of personal involvement. Rather than lamenting for the thickening night, let’s try to clear it up 
step by step; with a similar but even more realistic minimalism, some Anglo-Saxon authors 
today warn: "If you want a clean city, begin to sweep the road in front of your house.”   

Through “political education” can be maximally highlighted the importance of the path 
leading to a personal choice rather than drawn attention to a specific content. (Aa.Vv. 1999: 
177)  On the other hand, the forms of citizen activism in public policy emerged already all 
over the world in the last thirty years and aiming to protect rights and ensure the care of 
common goods in the reality of democracy’s everyday life of, represent a change of the same 
boundaries of democracy from which you can restart.  

 
2. Educating in politics and active citizenship  

Political education can be defined as the process of critical elaboration of the content of 
political socialization, which tends to promote an independent ability to develop an own 
attitude or political choice. It becomes a mature expression of social education and civic 
education taking shape as an antidote not only against individual self-referentiality, but also 
against possible exclusiveness of political parties, social classes, and various localisms. 
Educating at politics means developing an own vision of the world made up of projects and 
commitments, with a capacity to express the own presence in active and participatory terms. 
(Santelli, 2001: 77)  

To understand what education to citizenship is necessary today, I will outline briefly the 
historical passages of the concept of citizenship. The concept of citizenship is complex and 
changing, whether it is considered in its transformation over time, whether it is analyzed in 
modern times from points of view that provides different interpretations and realizations.  

Since the earliest days of civilization, the organized human groups tended to ensure their 
own safety and separating themselves from other groups by drawing boundaries between 
“citizens” and “foreigners”. Each group internally tended to give themselves a hierarchy 
structure, differentiating the elective powers and responsibilities.  

The polis of ancient Greece is an example of this dual differentiation. The citizen is 
opposed to foreigners, although not all are the same: barbarians, women, servants, slaves, the 
poor, are not citizens. Citizenship, says Aristotle in the third book of Politics, should be 
granted only to adult and free males; free also in the sense that freedom from servile work 
enables them to take part in the ekklesia, an assembly in which were taken the key political 
decisions and completed the highest public offices, such as those of judge, magistrate, and 
priest.  

Not much different is the conception of Roman citizenship in the Republican era. Also in 
Rome, the citizen is identified with the adult male that is free and is also a “pater familias” 
exercising his power over the whole family group composed by his wife, his children, his 
freedmen, his clientes. 

The Roman citizen is opposed not only to the non-resident alien, but also to foreign 
residents, women, children, slaves. The modern conception of citizenship emerges thanks to 
the theorists of absolute monarchy that operate between the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes. The concept of citizenship loses its 
meaning of attendance at public functions and of honors associated with it: being citizens is 



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equivalent to being faithful and obedient subjects of the sovereign, subject to the same laws 
and customs, regardless of differences in religion, language and ethnic origin.  

With the great bourgeois revolutions between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
and the works of authors such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseaux, was affirmed the 
modern conception of citizenship as equal “legal status” of all citizens as subjects of law, 
holders of sovereignty and members of the nation. For long remain excluded women and non-
owners. 

The modern citizenship is stated as the container for a set of individual rights: men are 
rational beings, free, morally responsible, equal before the law and independent from the 
economic point of view. Citizens are involved in politics, but as pointed out by B. Constant, 
they are also jealous guardians of their privacy against the intrusion of public power.  

Since the last decades of the 800s, the model of liberal state tends to result in forms that 
have been defined as “liberal democracy”. On this process, since the early decades of the last 
century, further institutional evolution was assumed, leading – after the fascist and nationalist 
parenthesis – to the “social state”. Thus, a new conception of citizenship was established; the 
“democratic-social one, attributing to all citizens beyond civil and political rights also social 
rights”, with everybody entitled to a degree of education, welfare and social security 
commensurate to standards prevailing within the political community.  

 
3. The social and economic citizenship rights 
Despite principal declarations that: «All peoples have the right of self-determination. By 
virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their 
economic, social and cultural development» and «All peoples may, for their own ends, freely 
dispose of their natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any obligations arising out 
of international economic co-operation, based upon the principle of mutual benefit, and 
international law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence» t 
mentioned in articles 1.1 and 1.2., part I of the International Covenant on Economic, Social 
and Cultural Rights, it is important to note that nowadays, at the beginning of the third 
millennium, social and economic citizenship is living a rather deep crisis that doesn’t allow it 
to cope with the radical changes imposed by the current globalized society.  

The space for the exercise of rights has been greatly restricted, in a seemingly inexorable 
movement of estrangement between citizens, who can not find space for effective political 
participation. The same political institutions seem not to want to give areas of power able to 
support shared decision-making processes.  

In addition, due to the increasing immigration and global conflicts that feed a narrowing 
of the community around an identity which is more visible from outside than inside, 
citizenship has shifted from an inclusive concept to a unique concept. In order to properly 
educate for active citizenship, political education must ensure the necessary resources for 
formation and the best possible instruction. (Izzo, 2003: 187) There must be a refraining from 
dictating educational precepts and didactic prescriptions, and knowledge by itself must be 
encouraged. This constitutes a prerequisite for acquiring progressively “self-control” and then 
the ability to act and interact on awareness.  

The image of educational activity is thus that of delivery of a know-how, which 
constitutes itself knowledge and possession of reality and it has to be immediately 
operational. Political education is operational not because it is marked on the complaint, but 
because it encourages a proactive and affirmative sensitivity, capable of planning, ready to 
comply the change, along the thread of events. It is not enough, therefore, the notionism of 
education. We need moments of true education, such as to encourage political judgment in the 
context of a healthy realism.  



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The four guiding values of this educational journey are linked to: the common good 

mentality, loyalty to people and to concrete reality, loyalty to the ethical dimension, and last 
but decisive, loyalty to the policy itself, with its own rules. Neither abstraction, since the 
formation without commitment is empty, nor activism, since commitment without training is 
blind. The education at politics is configured as a path to empowerment of the own presence 
in the world and thus, it takes a particularly important role in stimulating cognitive, 
emotional, ethical, and social abilities and in finalizing this in a single act for the common 
good. (Santelli, 2001: 77)  

The discourse on political education could really lead to a society of a higher moral. 
However, it is clear that whatever meaning you want to attribute to political activity, 

whether negative or positive, it is necessary to deal with it, also because political education is 
nothing more than the institutionalization and improvement of political “formation” that in 
each case, randomly or accidentally, badly or adequately, takes place in each individual. In 
short, it’s not about creating something new, but not leaving to chance what is the first task of 
the citizen.  

 
4. The citizen’s formation through active citizenship  
“If education is an investment for the future, education for active citizenship is an investment 
for the democratic future of Europe. Democracy is neither something taken for granted, nor an 
abstract concept. It requires investment and responsible actions by the citizens in their daily 
life. In an age of young people’s deserting the polling stations and the public and political life, 
it is urgent to address the question of education for democratic citizenship - a long-term 
investment for the promotion of human rights, tolerance and cultural pluralism.”1 

In defining the "concept of responsible citizenship", the majority of European states 
recognized three key objectives:  

- Development of a political culture: study of social institutions, political and civic 
activities in which the individuals can live in harmony, and preparing young people for the 
exercise of rights and duties defined by national constitutions;  

- Development of critical thinking and certain attitudes and values: skills necessary for 
active participation in public life as a responsible and critic citizen; development of respect 
for oneself and for others for greater mutual understanding and acquisition of social and moral 
responsibility; learning to listen and resolve conflicts peacefully, learning how to contribute to 
a secure environment, development of effective strategies to combat racism and xenophobia; 

- The active participation of young people, that can be encouraged by allowing them to get 
more involved in the community and providing them with practical experience of democracy 
in school.  

A concept of citizenship stands in contrast with that proposed by the models developed 
since a long time in civic education in our schools. The rise of democratic states has placed 
for a long time the problem of educating citizens on the principles governing the community, 
the rules that must be followed in the public sphere of society, as well as raise awareness of 
the subject to the rights of their acquired status. It was therefore introduced in public schools 
(1877) the study of civic education “first notions of the duties of man and citizen”.  

 

                                                 
 
1 These are some of the significant phrases of the foreword to Notebook No 24 of Eurydice, “Citizenship 

Education at School in Europe", organized by the Ministry of Education and INDIRE, with the objective of 
divulgating in '"European Year of Citizenship Through Education” (2005) programs of education for citizenship 
of the Council of Europe.  



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At the center of civic education, there is a strong emphasis on the laws and regulations of 
the state, as it is argued that a good citizen knows about and how to respect the order in which 
he lives; it is thus a transmission of knowledge acts to adjust the individual to correct the 
behavior sanctioned by the society. The aim remains to instruct rather than to educate.  

In 1991, the year in which Italy rectified the Convention on the Rights of Child, civic 
education was transformed into citizenship education. It is about promoting a formation that 
pays attention to the value of the law and to the significance that leads us to respect it. 
Education is interested in a behavior that is not only legal, but also and first of all moral, 
namely, inspired by the reasons that make the law worthy of respect. (Corradini, 1999: 171) 

Civic education can represent the passage through which subjects learn and understand the 
operation of the regulated community in which they live, but it can not stimulate the 
individual to become a co-builder of the society in which he lives. It is thought, therefore, 
about a citizenship education including in itself the protagonist role that each person needs to 
earn, not only as a “citizen”, but above all as an “active” one.  

Democracy must treat not only the representative forms of power, but also and above all 
encourage and facilitate participatory forms at every level that can influence and conduct 
decisions for the entire collectivity.  

Active citizenship is not something that is given once and for all, but it is an instance that 
needs to be built. In order to get implemented, it needs to be formed, educated. An essential 
contribution stimulating the creation and growth of education for active citizenship is 
undoubtedly that of the American philosopher and educator J. Dewey. 

What matters is not only that a democratic system put in place resources to eliminate, in 
fact, the effects of economic inequalities and to ensure to all members of the younger 
generation a chance to be educated and trained. There is need above all of “modifications of 
the traditional ideals of culture, of traditional disciplines of study and traditional methods of 
teaching and discipline, in order to free the individual abilities of young people until they are 
sufficiently equipped to become arbiters of their own economic and social career”. (Dewey, 
2004: 107) . 

The subject has therefore a responsible and active role in the own education and in the 
definition of society that is modified with the changing generations. It is necessary, therefore, 
to activate forms of participation that are not only meetings designed to inform citizens about 
what public bodies have already decided to do, but to draw a path through which the citizen 
not only learns to be present in the construction of the environment he lives in, but also to 
participate together with other citizens: “the common participation is the only dynamic that 
can transform a group of individuals into a social community”. (Lorenzo, 1998: 97)  

This model of citizenship education involves not only those concerned with education, but 
requires a synergy with those managing the city, with those working to design and implement 
interventions aimed at improving the conditions of life. A model that requires commitment 
and resources to be used where it will be carried out, provided that participation is radical 
because it “bridges the gap between those who govern and the governed ones, between who 
decides and who is affected by the decisions, presupposes a delegation of power and 
sovereignty, and therefore casts serious doubts on the consolidated power structures”. 
(Tarozzi, 2008: 129) This participation, therefore, emancipates and is subversive, because it 
requires the political and administrative spheres to be made in respect of its authenticity. 

Educating and being citizens brings with it a part of participatory instance that places each 
subject at the center of decision-making dynamics affecting the collectivity in which he lives, 
and on the other hand, it admits a concept of inter-subjective citizenship, or rather negotiated, 
discussed and reformulated by related subjects who pose themselves a goal and conceive the 
reality in which they live as necessitating to be built by those same relationships.  



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5. Concluding remarks  
Given these premises, it is clear the value that has a possible educational process in the 
direction of active citizenship, as it does not arise extemporaneously by the course of events 
(or it can do it, but still needs to be supported), but it requires to be powered by paths that 
have a decidedly pedagogical value. If the concept of citizenship to which the society we live 
in has to do with politics, understood as a decision-making and illuminated process, with the 
authentic and effective participation of as many subjects as possible and in any age group, 
with the responsibility perceived by the subject as taking charge of the world where the social 
environment is built, then a set of participatory formal and informal processes, inside and 
outside the school, are necessary to prevent that the political culture becomes a prerogative of 
a few subjects living far away from the living world, from everyday experiences that the city, 
the community offers and demands to signify.  

The socio-political formation is required by that necessary selection, by that exchange, 
the crisis of which involves the sclerosis, with risks of notability and too easy co-optations 
within the political class. The business intertwinements, advocacy groups – especially the 
occult ones – and transformatic opportunism seem to be three deadly risks of a political 
system with shortness of breath that could reduce us inadvertently to “shadow people”. Our 
attitude must change. In Italy in particular, there is a tendency to discredit lightly the politics, 
and then make use of it, often in logic of patronage. Our society looks tired, no more 
thoughtful of its European and planetary future; and of institutions, we tend to get served with 
a distracted selfishness: we use them without any complexes, to complain then without any 
shame. It’s not enough just show the necessity of politics, even at a world which is young in 
research; there is need of helping to move from politics as a destiny to politics as an ethical 
option, encouraging fidelity as the cardinal virtue of the commitment in the dimension of 
continuity and consistency. 

 
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