Citizenship Education in Slovenia after the Formation of the Independent State

Abstract

In the present article we first describe how citizenship education is positioned in the curriculum of pre-university Slovene education. We then analyse the influence of various pedagogical and other concepts in the last fifteen years on the formation of legal provisions and curricular solutions, as well as on actual citizen-ship instruction in the state school. We first establish how influence is exerted – or could be exerted – on citizenship education by the interests of the Roman Catholic Church such that its own subject of denomina-tional religious education is implemented in the state school, along with general implications regarding ques-tions of which values should form the basis of education in the state school. Recently the question of moral education and the educational concept in the state school has come to the fore, and with this also the ques-tion of universal or particular values. In the continuation we analyse how the prevailing permissive paradigm influenced the very concept and implementation of the subject of Ethics and Society in the 1990s, and from the end of the previous decade onwards – after the implementation of curricular reforms – how it has influ-enced the subject of Citizenship Educational and Ethics.