Citizens’ views on appropriate civic education curricula under multi-party democracy in mainland Tanzania

Abstract

The study investigated views of a broad spectrum of Tanzanian citizens on what they considered to be the appropriate civic education curriculum after the country adopted a multiparty political system in early 1990s. Data relating to preferred objectives, competencies and values were gathered by means of a questionnaire. Analysis was done using SPSS software and presented in percentage. Comparison between categories of respondents (analyzed by gender, religion, education background and occupation) regarding their preferences was done by ranking. The findings indicated similarities in preference for some key aspects and variation in others. Tolerance, knowledge of citizen rights, patriotism, and empowerment of citizens to question and criticize were ranked first by all respondent categories. However, male respondents ranked the right to be heard higher than female respondents, while female respondents ranked the right to education higher than male respondents. Christian respondents ranked respect to authority higher than Moslem respondents. Moslem respondents ranked the right to education higher than Christian respondents. These results are indicative of the differences in group behavior, but on the other hand they are indicative of the special civic education needs of each group. It is generally the case that while knowledge of citizen rights and duties is low country-wide, it is even lower for groups with low education background.

Keywords: Civic education, rights and responsibilities, responsible citizenship, democracy, multiparty system, empowerment, Tanzania.