Abstract

This paper begins by rehearsing some commonly heard conservative and radical objections to the idea of citizenship education. I then explore another potentially radical objection, implicit in the tenets of ‘character education’ and ‘socio-emotional learning’ but rarely stated explicitly. According to this objection, citizenship education, with its overarching ideal of democratic justice, politicises values education beyond good reason by assuming that political literacy and specific (democratic) social skills, rather than transcultural moral and emotional ‘basics’, are the primary values to be transmitted. I show how this objection is based on three major disagreements about (a) the good and the right, (b) pluralism and (c) the connection between morality and politics.