Building Cultures
Learning Democracy: Values and Attitudes in South Africa's First Post-apartheid Generation
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robert Mattes, David Denemark, Richard Niemi
Using an original 2012 survey of eleventh grade students in metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa – the first generation to complete their education in post-apartheid schools – we explore why students in this new democracy are less supportive of democratic governance than older generations. South Africa’s students are the product of a reformed school curriculum largely which emphasizes the importance of the methods by which schools and teachers train students in democracy more than what they actually teach. Our study, however, shows that the most important cause for students’ low levels of support for democracy is the failure of schools to impart basic facts about South African politics and an appreciation of the role of active, critical, and peaceful participation by citizens. We argue schools can best help to build a democratic culture if they concentrate not on revamping teaching methods and styles, but on teaching students basic factual content about politics, democracy, and citizenship.
Creating National Citizens in Paraguay: Comparing Primary School Textbooks, 1989-2015
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carolina Alegre Benítez, Oswaldo Lorenzo-Quiles, Marisa del Socorro Zaldívar Acosta
This paper examines the construction of the Paraguayan national identity from the historiographical chronicle of the Paraguayan War (1864-1870) present in a sample of school textbooks published between 1989 and 2015. Specifically, two objectives are established in the study. First, I explore how the school helps secure historic speech settings citizenship in national key. Secondly, the study reveals the tensions caused between a teaching of the romantic story linked to training project Paraguayan nation-state and history teaching conceived beyond national identity ascriptions and articulated around the other conflicts inherent in the current processes of globalization in the region.
