We live in times of search for an education that can transcend national, ethnical, religious and cultural borders. As it seems, contemporary education is to be found in despair. Or at least found to be unsatisfactory in relation to new challenges in the contemporary world. The aim of this text is to deepen the prospect of the potential of education, regarding what might seem almost like a visionary educational objective - to provide for a global democratic citizenship. The core issue in the text is to surface what appears as insufficiencies in present democratic citizenship education. The urge is to draw upon some feasible features of an alternative to these insufficiencies. Drawing on Stanley Cavell-s notion of voicing and language, I will suggest an altered understanding of democracy and of a democratic citizenship that may direct the mission of democratic education in another way. What is needed for a compelling democratic education, I will argue, is an existential orientation. In order to make my argument, I will use Swedish Education policy as a case in point.
National citizenship education has come under increased pressure. Not the least in Europe, where the European Union has given increased emphasize to the vision of a double citizenship during the 1990s and onwards. A central question related to this is whether it is possible to bring about a democratic we in the present situation of pluralistic and global calls? In this paper light is shed on how this issue is being dealt within a specific national setting, Swedish Education policy of the 1990s. Through a critical scope of elucidated citizenship understandings in this national policymaking, its established ideas of social inclusion, of how to create a we, are examined and a possible alternative we presented.
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