Youth
Children and Citizenship
This Home Office report explores children's understanding of the 3 elements of citizenship: social and moral responsibility, community involvement, and political literacy. The research was undertaken in 7 On Track project areas and one pilot area, which also has high deprivation. In total 269 children aged between 7 and 15 took part.
Title: Children and Citizenship
Author: Home Office Research Development Statistics
Series: On-line report 08/04
Number of pages: 51
Date published: April 2004
On Track is a pilot project for the comprehensive provision of early and multiple interventions for children and families in areas of high deprivation and high crime. There are 24 pilot projects in England and Wales delivering services with the aim of reducing the risks of children becoming involved in anti-social and criminal behaviour.
Objectives
The objectives of this research were to:
describe children's understanding of rights and responsibilities, in particular exploring the notion of civic responsibility.
describe children's feelings of belonging and inclusion, and the opportunities available to them to contribute to their communities and to their involvement in both antisocial and pro-social activities.
explore the factors which shape children's views on family, media, school, and friends.
compare the perspectives of children from different groups: e.g. age, gender, ethnicity, faith. Examine the understandings of children excluded from the mainstream, such as young offenders, and pupils excluded from school.
Main Findings
Children generally understand the reasons for rules and accept their legitimacy, though they do question some of them. They report finding it easier to renegotiate rules at home than at school.
Children usually comply with rules, commonly because they feel it is the right thing to do. Rules that they view as "silly", or see are not being enforced, are less likely to be observed. Reasons for not complying with rules include peer pressure, it feels good, feeling there is no alternative course of action, and that sometimes it happens unintentionally.
The biggest complaint by children, particularly about the school environment, was that they are not listened to. Few of the children felt that they had any real say at school. A few schools had participatory systems to encourage children to become involved in the decision-making in school, but many of the children were sceptical of these schemes where they thought their involvement was tokenistic.
Children are quick to spot unfairness, especially where they feel that rules are not being applied reasonably. Children complained of rules that adults enforced but did not abide by themselves.
Children have 2 main responses to wrongdoing: retribution and restoration. Although their immediate suggestions for responding to wrongdoing may often be punitive, most children spontaneously demonstrated an understanding of the perspective of the victim and a concern to put right the wrong that had been done, often suggesting some sort of restitution.
Most children found something positive to say about their neighbourhood. When they were critical, it was often about community safety issues in local public places: syringes in parks, rubbish and untidiness, dangerous pavements.
The most common complaint from children about their neighbourhood was in relation to how they spend their time: younger children wanted safe, clean places to play, and older children wanted more facilities and things to do.
A major concern for many children, particularly primary school children, is "teenagers". This is related to reports of acts of antisocial behaviour and general intimidation.
The children reported very limited involvement in formal voluntary activity, but they do undertake informal "helping" activities on a much greater scale.
The children and young people showed an interest in and knowledge of political issues. Much of it was tinged with cynicism about national and local politics.
The findings emphasise that children are not a homogenous group, and should not be treated as such by policy makers. Even within limited age bands there is a wide range of views and abilities.
Social and moral responsibility
The results show that, even at a young age, children have sophisticated reasoning and understandings of complex issues. They navigate a wide range of rules imposed primarily at home and at school, and this work shows that they generally accept and understand the legitimacy of these rules and are happy (more or less) to comply with them. They do question these rules and know how to renegotiate some of them, particularly at home. They are very quick to spot unfairness in the enforcement of rules.
There are occasions when children will disobey rules, particularly where they cannot understand, or do not accept, the reasoning for the rule. Unsurprisingly, as children grow older they are more likely to question these rules, and in that process allow themselves to break more rules. However generally and overwhelmingly the message from this work is that children and young people are very rule abiding.
Community Involvement
The children and young people who took part in this study live in deprived areas, often with high crime rates – areas where levels of community involvement and social capital are generally thought to be low. Membership of formal clubs or groups is indeed minimal, but this study reveals a surprising amount of informal community involvement which shows how these children care for others in their community, even though they may not be very happy with the physical environment in which they live and can identify significant problems there.
Political Literacy
The third focus of this small piece of work was political literacy, and here we find perhaps unexpectedly high levels of knowledge about how government works, though admittedly with some substantial misconceptions.
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Last update: 15 April 2004