“Beautiful” or “ugly”? Civic education pills for aware citizens

Abstract

The following pages aim to be an account and a proposal for reflecting on how educating teenagers to observe our heritage more carefully, even its smallest, daily examples, can stimulate them to know and take care of what belongs to all of us, and is an essential quality for really aware, active citizens. The concepts of “beautiful” and “ugly” that are linked to the account of two field experiences, leave the level of abstraction and, for the reasons that I will try to explain in this short text, suggest proposals for a kind of education to heritage and to active citizenship based on both historical and laboratory methods. In teaching, we should bear in mind that our students need to grow up as aware citizens and, therefore, need experiences that give them the necessary tools.  In my view, this is the aim of teaching citizenship education, which, being an interdisciplinary subject, can and must be thought and planned for this high and very challenging purpose.