E-Journal of Philosophy of Education:
International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 2, 2017

Education and Politics in the Individualized Society:
Connecting by the Cultivation of Citizenship
Kayo FUJII
Yokohama National University
Abstract
In this paper, I will consider the citizenship education of the future in the Individualized Society, whilebearing in mind how politics has directed education. According to a proposal by the Science Councilof Japan, the new subject, “Publics,” is “citizenship education that fosters political literacy,” citizenshipeducation has taken its first steps in Japan. But, citizenship education sometimes promotes socialinclusion. Social inclusion tends to expand and strengthen homogeneity and commonality, thus
moving is different from the formation of a political community based on multiplicity and difference.
For that reason, I will talk about citizenship education as subjectification. According to Gert Biesta,subjectification is not about maintaining the existing order, but about independence from the existingorder. Subjectification has a unique relationship to politics in citizenship education. In this sense,children are already political entities, faced with the numerous worries and struggles that stem fromexisting with numerous layers of citizenships, and there is no one way by which problems relating tocitizenship arise nor is there one way to solve them. This paper concludes that citizenship education isless of an education that seeks to form predetermined good citizens and more of an education that isheaded toward a democratic experience.
Keywords
citizenship education, democratic experience, subjectification, politics, public places

Introduction
Looking back at the history of Bildung (education, cultivation, refinement, andcharacter building), it can be said that it has had an educational and a political aspect(Biesta 2003). The educational aspect is the history of devising educational contents
needed for fostering good character and a good internal spirit. What emerged as a part of20K. FUJII

that process were Kant’s ideas. Kant suggested a philosophy of Enlightenment fromimmaturity to maturity, a state where one can perceive one’s own will and make decisions
without being swayed by external factors. At the same time, he saw that education wasneeded to become such a person. The image of the mature person was “an answer to thequestion about the role of the subject in the emerging civil society” as well as an aspectof “political history” (Biesta 2003:62).
Kant was not the only one to envision a connection between education and politics.
For example, critical pedagogy is a field of study. Having incorporated the theories ofHabermas, critical pedagogy (that is, Kritische Erziehungswissenschaft) was conceivedof and practiced in the 1960s and 1970s in Germany, critically framing the social situationof that time. In the United States as well, critical pedagogues such as Apple and Giroux
inquired about social and educational issues from a political perspective, pointing out thatthat no knowledge is neutral. What this suggests is that the concept of education hasalways already contained politics.
In this paper, I will consider the citizenship education of the future, while bearing in
mind how politics has directed education thus far.
1. The New Subject, “Publics”
According to a proposal by the Science Council of Japan, the new subject, “Publics,”
is “citizenship education that fosters political literacy” that encourages “thinking deeply
about controversial issues” and “understanding what the points at issue are,” centering on
political literacy.1 Active proposals have been made about what to learn and how—for
example, a shift from knowledge acquisition to active learning, learning about therelationship between citizens and the state (“how citizens support the state and control
the state’s authority”)—so it can be said that citizenship education, which teaches students
how to live as citizens, has taken its first steps in Japan.
An especially interesting part of the proposal is the “quality of publicness” thatcitizenship education pursues. Simply put, the “quality of publicness,” which consists ofthe five areas of multicultural coexistence, sexual diversity and gender equality, Japan in
East Asia, constitutionalism and democratic government, and elementary philosophy andethics, can be explained as follows. Among other things, publicness is a state thatembraces the diversity of people and religions; it is thinking from “a broad perspective of1

Science Council of Japan (Psychology and Pedagogy Committees, Subcommittee for Thinking about HighSchool Civics Education from the Standpoint of Citizenship Education), Proposal: Citizen at Age 18: High-School
Civics Reform for Citizenship Cultivation, May 2016.

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cultivating ‘global citizens’” and not just “cultivating the nation”; it is “further opening
up our national consciousness (understanding of domestic multiculturalism and diversity)”by framing Japan as part of the “East Asia region” and “relativizing the self with theperspective of the other”; it is the availability of diverse pathways of political participationon the foundation of constitutionalism and the existence of a multilayered “public” spaceconsisting of “municipalities, prefectures, and nation”; it is “‘public’ space whose
structure is neither singular nor simple” because “one man or woman simultaneously
belongs to multiple spaces”; and it is citizen cultivation in the form of ethical subject
formation.
In other words, publicness in citizenship education is highlighted from theperspectives of geography, equality, ethics, and politics, thus being framed as a complex
quality woven from multiple perspectives that embrace spatial multilayeredness and thediversity of human relations, political participation, and lifestyles. Hence, publicness
cannot be understood with close-mindedness or individual thinking.
2. Social Inclusion and Citizenship Education
As a matter of fact, citizenship education sometimes promotes social inclusion.
According to Biesta, because European active citizenship promotes active participationin the community and is an activity for practicing “good citizenship,” the image conjured
up is one of citizens who do what are considered “good” deeds without reflecting on whatis “good” and from what perspective (Biesta 2011).
If it is decided from the outset what is “good,” then the result will be the formationof a largely steady and stable community premised on existing values. According toLingis, such a community is a place where conversations are maintained as part of a given
context and a rational community, in which individual voices are exchanged as
representative of roles within that community. For example, a school becomes a place
where teachers and students speak “as a representative of the common rational discourse”(Lingis 1994:112). A different kind of community is one where nothing is shared. Such acommunity does not emerge from the importance of conversational contents, but from asituation in which one must say something.22

Lingis’s theory on community categorizes based on differences in communication quality. “There are then twoentries into communication—the one by which one depersonalizes one’s visions and insights, formulates them inthe terms of the common rational discourse, and speaks as a representative, a spokesperson, equivalent andinterchangeable with others, of what has to be said. The other entry into communication is that in which you find
it is you, you saying something, that is essential” (Lingis 1994:116).

E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 2, 2017

22K. FUJIIAs a matter of course, a community of active citizenship is not one where nothingis shared. Active participation in a community based on specific values is premised not
only on simply being citizens, but on the common goal of being “good citizens.”
Participation in such a community gives rise to an inside and an outside of the communityand tends to expand and strengthen homogeneity and commonality, thus moving in adirection different from the formation of a political community based on multiplicity anddifference.
Moreover, how we understand political literacy becomes important when we talkabout citizenship education. If we were to understand political literacy as something
individual, that is, specific knowledge or skills to be acquired by individuals, then thiswould mean that democracy is sustained and created by the skills of individuals.
Citizenship education teaches students how to live with others, so is individual skill
acquisition enough?
3. Citizenship Education as Subjectification
The aforementioned Biesta observed that education, while partially overlapping,fulfills the three different functions of qualification, socialization, and subjectification,
arguing that education is not simply the acquisition of skills by individuals.3 In the caseof citizenship education, qualification is about providing citizens with important
knowledge and skills. Socialization is about fitting individuals in “existing ways of doingand being” (Biesta 2010:20) and is deeply connected with maintaining existing order. For
example, schools have pulled newcomers into the community through specific forms ofcultural transmission. Subjectification is not about maintaining the existing order, but
about “independence from such orders” (Biesta 2010:21). In this sense, subjectification
has a unique relationship to politics in citizenship education.
The concept of subjectification is a notion conceived of from the fact that students
can learn things that are unknown to the teacher. According to Rancière, the educational
relationship of the student learning what the teacher explains is one intelligence
subjecting another intelligence, and it is a relationship that advances “stultification”(Rancière 1991:13). This educational relationship is dependent on the division between
the teacher and the learner, so that “those excluded from the world of intelligencethemselves subscribe to the verdict of their exclusion” (Rancière 1991:16). As such, any
3This division is a theoretical division to clarify “the different functions of education and the different potential
purposes of education” (Biesta 2010:21). As such, the three educational functions are not independent, but exist ina multilayered relationship.

Symposium: Civil Society and Education: The Public, Self-Interest and Democracy

Education and Politics in the Individualized Society

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education premised on a separation of learners and teachers by there being “an inferiorintelligence and a superior one” (Rancière 1991:7) must be criticized, allowing us toconceive of an education based on intelligence equality in which the manifestation ofintelligence is unequal, “but there is no hierarchy of intellectual capacity” (Rancière
1991:27). In other words, subjectification signifies liberation from hierarchical educationthat subjects the student’s intelligence to that of the teacher. Subjectifying education
reframes the student from being a “good citizen” to an “ignorant citizen” (Biesta 2011:97)
released from the intellectual hierarchy, thus building up a politics of intelligenceequality.4
Citizenship education as intelligence equality is not a process of continuously
acquiring the knowledge of the teacher. If socialization is future-oriented learning(preparation for entering society)—learning to become a citizen—then subjectification islearning that stems from the irregularity of experiences in the present—learning to be acitizen.
Adults and children alike are born into diverse citizenships, being citizens of Earth,
East Asia, a prefecture, a city, a town, etc., and live life with multiple citizenships at thesame time. As such, children are already political entities, faced with the numerous
worries and struggles that stem from existing with numerous layers of citizenships, andthere is no one way by which problems relating to citizenship arise nor is there one way
to solve them. Citizenship education, which throws this diversity of life into relief, acts
as a bridge between being a citizen and becoming a citizen, repeatedly revealing life as acitizen as the base of human life.
Furthermore, subjectification does not refer to Kant’s autonomous subject, which
has been central to conventional pedagogy. The reason for this is that, although theKantian subject very much is character-building oriented toward freedom, it “seems tobe unable to be open to the possibility that newcomers might radically alter ourunderstandings of what it means to be human ” (Biesta 2010:79-80), owing to how it
limits the meaning of being human. In other words, citizenship education as
subjectification is ever expanding educational horizons driven by an “interest in humanfreedom” (Biesta 2010:75), even when education is carried out with a focus on
qualification and socialization.

4In an interview, Rancière was asked whether democracy is neither a form of government nor a form of society,but something like an ideal beyond reach or a critical tool, something akin to a drop hammer for debates, to which
he replied that, “No, it’s not an ideal, because I always follow the principle of Jacotot that equality is apresupposition, not a goal to be attained” (Rancière 2011:78).

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4. An Education Theory without Teaching
Subjectification is the appearance of individuality that cannot be contained in theexisting order or, put differently, the appearance of unique individuals within a world ofmultiplicity. This uniqueness stems from “interruptions” to regular continuous education
caused by human action, meaning that it cannot be defined as a result of education. In
this sense, the notion of subjectification is something that cannot be taught, an educational
notion that originates from process.
We already saw how the creation of a community is the same as the appearance ofuniqueness. A community with nothing shared is not formed as a result of education, but
comes into being when a rational community is interrupted (Biesta 2010:90). It appears
when continuous educational actions are interrupted, such as when those educationalactions are obstructed by noise or when one is not deprived of the chance to encounter
one’s own voice within those educational actions. Similarly, the appearance of acommunity with nothing shared is also something that cannot be planned in education.
In other words, the coupling of freedom and citizenship education suggests a notion ofsporadic education. It is education that is incidental to regular educational actions andsomething that might happen anywhere. If so, is the citizenship education of the futuresomething that forges ahead with socializing and qualifying education while always
latently containing subjectification, only to have it appear unexpectedly and sporadically?
5. Education and Politics in the Age of Individualization
Now, I would like to consider the place where subjectifying learning takes place.
Biesta says that subjectifying learning happens in “public places.” Public places refer toplaces where private voices shift to concerns greater than individual summation. They
are places where democracy is practiced.
According to Bauman, public places are nothing more than “a giant screen on which
private worries are projected” (Bauman 2000:39) that are beginning to disappear in our
modern age of individualization as the public spaces have become incapable offunctioning as places where private worries and public problems meet and enter dialogue.
In order to energize the hollowed-out public places, we need to stimulate citizenshipeducation in the form of citizenship cultivation, and in order to stimulate citizenshipeducation, we need to revive the public places. To achieve this, we must practice learning
based on intelligence equality as well as engage in debate in a broad sense, conversing,
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Education and Politics in the Individualized Society

25

debating, and negotiating with children as ignorant citizens. The reason for this is that
democracy always contains the potential for innovation by heterogeneous voices and ismaintained by constantly devising pathways that connect the public with the problems
that arise from the lives of fluid individuals that can be framed as neither minorities nor
the majority, without doing away with them as individual issues.
Conclusion
Citizenship education is less of an education that seeks to form predetermined good
citizens and more of an education that is headed toward a better democratic experience.
Better democracy does not emerge from practice converging on a single order, but frompractice that redraws the borders of a new order directed toward freedom and equality.
Discourses at school always contain the potential for drawing new borders. At thesame time, they also have the potential to operate to qualify students through theacquisition of debating skills and to socialize them to enter debating groups. Citizenshipeducation that is directed toward freedom and equality will have to explore how tocontinue the discourse when no mediation is possible.

References
Bauman, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity. Polity.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2003) How General Can Bildung Be? Reflections on the Future of aModern Educational Ideal, in: Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity.
Blackwell.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2010) Good Education in an Age of Measurement: Ethics, Politics,Democracy. Paradigm Publishers.
Biesta, G.J.J. (2011) Learning Democracy in School and Society: Education, Lifelong
Learning, and the Politics of Citizenship. Sense Publishers.
Lingis, A. (1994) The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common. Indiana
University Press.
Rancière, J. (1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual
Emancipation. Stanford University Press.
Rancière, J. (2011) Democracies against Democracy: An Interview with Erich Hazan,
in : Democracy in What State?. Columbia University Press.

E-Journal of Philosophy of Education: International Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education Society of Japan, Vol. 2, 2017