Personal Responsible, Participatory or Justice-Oriented Citizen: The case of Hong Kong

This article starts off with a discussion of Westheimer and Kahne’s typologies of citizens followed by brief discussions of civic education in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia with reference to the typologies. Then it moves on to an analysis of the development of the civic education in Hong Kong by comparing the six official policy documents in civic education, with reference to the typologies. It points out that the conceptions of ‘good citizen’ portrayed in the official documents, as in many countries, are just hovering between the Personal Responsible Citizen and Participatory Citizen and seldom attain the Justice-Oriented Citizen. It also argues that, in addressing the political demands of the society, the cultivation of Personal Responsible Citizen and Participatory Citizen is the result of conservative politicization of civic education, either through depoliticizing the teaching content or teaching politics in a conservative tone in the civic education curriculum. However, civic education deprived of Justice-Oriented Citizen may not be adequate in equipping youths to address the pressing social and political issues and concerns triggered by the global Jasmine Revolutions, Occupy Movements, and struggles against the rapid widening of gaps between rich and poor and the demand for a genuine democratization for the society. Therefore we contest that cultivating Justice-Oriented Citizen should be seriously explored with immediate urgency and propose that liberal civic education programmes aiming at cultivating Justice-Oriented Citizen should be included in school for an all round development of citizenship in the youths.