Political Education in Croatian Secondary Schools: An Emergency Reaction to a Chaotic Context

Abstract

The article draws on an analysis exploring how the content and aims of secondary school political education have been framed in official Croatian policy documents following the country's war for independence, with particular focus on the underlying conception of citizenship promoted in such a post-conflict setting. The article also addresses how official textbooks for the secondary school subject of ‘politics and economics’ shape this conception of citizenship through their choice of topics. It is argued in the article that the case of Croatian political education illustrates how a social and historical tipping point can influence what counts as official political knowledge to be transmitted in schools, and thus exemplifies the transitional nature of such knowledge in emergency settings. This locates the issue of knowledge transmitted in Croatian secondary school political education in a broader theoretical discussion on how knowledge can be radically affected by ‘paradigm shifts’ in social and political circumstances, and raises the question of ways in which its arbitrariness can be minimised. To this end, special attention is given to the role of skills and values in political education.