Journal of Social Science Education:
Volume 7/8, Number 2/1, pp 1-2, © JSSE 2008/2009, ISSN 1618-5293
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The symptoms are manifold, yet the diagnosis seems to be clear:
youth and politics are a bad match. Their lack of interest in political
issues, growing disenchantment with politics and politicians, ignorance
of basic social structures, boycott of voting booths, draw a darkening
picture of „youth and politics“ and predominate public perception:
Young people are anything but close to politics and participation.
Educational plight, lack of vocational training, unemployment,
violence, often leading to political extremism, seem to be the basic
coordinates of an endangered relationship – and to make matters worse,
the situation is embedded in the decline of traditional institutions
like family, school system or political parties. Despite these bleak
perspectives, different studies (e. g. Shell, BAT, CivicEd) have been
emphasising for years that today’s young people should not be labelled
„politically apathetic“, but rather show a vast disapproval for its
institutional aspects and the traditional political actors. This
assessment is intensified by the institution-centred concept of
politics, which is still favoured by the established educational
institutions – themselves often trailing behind social change and not
adjusting their curricula to contemporary aspects of society and
culture.
What are the consequences? Although being directly
confronted with them, many young people are often unable to discover
and recognize political problems, issues or challenges. They are at a
loss to rediscover politics – or perhaps more accurately: political
issues – in their everyday life („Lebenswelt“) and thus often miss
possibilities and opportunities for their own political development,
their forming of an opinion, and their participation. For exactly this
reason, this special issue of the Journal of Social Science Education
raises the question, where politics becomes visible or is made visible
right in the social and cultural situation of young people. In this
context, our understanding of „making visible“ is broad-minded: In this
issue, the authors adopt the expression in a literal sense (visual
artefacts of political life) as well as in a more metaphorical way
(becoming aware of political actors, processes and routines).
Nevertheless, the duality of „visualisation“ and „making visible“ is
present throughout this entire issue and the variety of articles adds
some ideas for clarification of its character and relation.
While
developing the special issue, we decided to organise the contributions
in two main sections: The first part addresses the more general
questions of the field (i. e. the consequences of the pictorial turn
for Political Science (Drechsel), the concept of
„Entertainment-Education“ (Arendt), the connection between pleasure and
politics (Rhein/Müller/Calmbach), or how new media can help to the
increased political interest among young citizens (Owen) and last but
not least Web 2.0 as a means of political communication (Perlot)).
The
second section focusses on current phenomena and presents a series of
case studies. In these case studies, various medial and cultural
artefacts are examined as platforms for visualising politics (i. e.
graphic novels (Mahrt), history television (Adelmann), children’s
television (Raabe), computer games (Rauch) or online communities
(Swertz)). Although this second section of the journal principally
examines concrete cases, the questions already launched in the first
section are nevertheless taken up and processed here. Directly
following the articles by Arendt and Rhein/Müller/Callmbach, Evers for
instance points out specific examples from entertainment TV shows to
demonstrate that pleasure and education need not be incommensurable
opposites. In the context of political education, entertainment and
education can also go hand in hand. This opposition is also ultimately
at the heart of Claudia Raabe’s study, titled “Children’s Television as
a Medium for Social Orientation”. She deals with the question how and
particularly via which TV programmes children at the age of 10 to 13
years old acquire social and political orientation. It is quite
telling, that supposedly “worthwhile” or sophisticated programmes for
children such as special children’s news or other special programmes
referring to society play unfortunately only a minor role in this
context, as Raabe demonstrates. Instead, children of this age use daily
soaps, talent or gameshows, or cartoons such as Mickey Mouse or The
Simpsons, for their social orientation. Recognizing this more often
than not, the educational experts in charge in the field of
political/civic education have their hair standing on end. But as Nina
Mart and Michael Wehner, together with Sebastian Reinkunz and Isabel
Flory are able to demonstrate, exactly these media formats often bear a
considerable potential that political education has not tapped yet.
By now, it should have become clear that the problem of making politics visible
is indeed manifold. While children and adolescents – as mentioned above
– often have significant difficulties in perceiving politics beyond its
representation by concrete political institutions and persons,
political/civic education also has difficulties in perceiving the
political or social markers or signs, discourses or positions young
people actually do have or show with regard to political and social
issues. It is difficult for political education to recognize and
acknowledge the phenomena that children and adolescents use for social
and political orientation, and how they construct their image of
society and find their position in it. At the same time,
political/civic education also has difficulties in making politics visible
and perceptible, as a complex and challenging and, above all, as a
daily changeable subject, in concrete teaching. Seen in this light, Making Visible
becomes the central didactic challenge for a discipline dealing with
political and social issues. In his article „Escaping the
Disenchantment Trap“, Rössler therefore closely examines in how far
„innovative settings for civic education“ are suited to render the
political more attractive to young people on a short- or long-term
basis.
This issue of the Journal of Social Science Education unfolds
a critical survey of the general conditions, under which today’s young
people are confronted with politics. In a variety of perspectives the
articles in this issue keep asking for the “visibility of politics”
– and, by doing so, also explore what civic education should learn from
such phenomena for the communication of politics within the educational
contexts.
Tackling the process of making politics visible
can however not be based solely on texts. This is the reason why we
asked all authors to fully exploit the possibilities of online
journalism with regard to making their issues visible.
The authors have taken this up to different degrees, but you will at
any rate find by far more visual material next to and in between the
texts of this issue, than is normally the case for a journal of social
sciences. As the reader of this special issue we invite you not only to
follow the textual-, but also this medial trail to get a closer look at
the phenomena discussed here. Please note, for instance, the witty,
simpsonesque author presentations by Wehner/Reinkunz/Flory. At times,
the pictures are slightly concealed, as for example with the Marth or
Raabe or in the diverse links by Perlot. Here, it is also worthwhile to
take a bit of time and follow the traces of the images. We shall not
drop behind our authors here and therefore we shall now interrupt our
written editorial in order to continue with a little visual collage, in
which we sum up and stage the questions raised in this issue.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx7lkQ2QQW8&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUF5w03b8dU&feature=channel_page
Keywords:
Media, making visible, visualisation, entertainment, political education, civic education
