Citizenship education - Essay Example

In most economies, education is a right to each and every citizen with permanent citizenship and they stretch education privileges to non-nationals who are democratically/ legally living in these states as outlined in the national task on citizenship education (Tilly, 2007, pp.13-16). Citizenship education can be viewed in two perspectives of immigrants or as a subject. As a subject it is designed to associate the learners with the cultural, social, and economic activities with the best approach as supported by Herbert and Kertz (2012, p.26) Bloor (2010, p.24) claims that “Citizenship education for immigrants is designed to prepare non-nationals/ non-citizens on their dos and don’ts so as to become legally and socially accepted as citizens of these states either on a permanent or temporal basis”. . free interaction by people in a country exercising their rights and freedom, and taking part in legal and political activities of that country without discrimination.

This forms the basis of a free and fair exchange of cultural diversities. Citizenship education platform can be gauged by multiculturalism in a state which can be simply described as a demographic make- up of the society at certain organizational levels such as schools, neighbourhoods, and cities within the state. Alternatively, Osler and Starkey (2006) define multiculturalism as “ideologies or policies that that promote institutionalization of diversified desires of human kind to express their identity in the manner they deem fit like equal respect of different cultures in the society and opportunities entitlement”(p. 11). They argue that for multiculturalism to hold a great measure of democracy needs to be put in place.

An Intercultural citizen can be viewed as one who appropriately adapts valued rules, norms and expectations of a given foreign state for a healthy relationship with the citizens and who effectively values the state’s goals and/or rewards in line with the society. This is to mean that intercultural citizen is knowledgeable enough and competent to interact freely with foreign cultures through understanding specific concepts of these cultures like perception, thoughts and feelings. Citizenship education, multiculturalism and intercultural citizenship are related in that for appropriate education, economies with multiculturalism have to come up with policies and regulations to govern interactions of foreign students/cultures and their establishment in terms of education and coexistence as described by Osler and Starkey(2005, p.11). For instance, multicultural economies will have to