Back to the Bildsamkeit or towards the Ability to Dissent; on the Discourse on the Conditions for Enabling and Demanding the Participation of Children and Young People in Politics in Germany

This paper first introduces youth social work as a target group and actor in civic education. The current state of civic education in Germany is discussed by analysing the 16th Children and Youth Report, also to subject this state later to a normative evaluation. This is provided in the first part with the discourse on education where a precise clarification of terms and approaches is undertaken. In the evaluation of the approaches themself, a distinction is made between (a) discourses that seek to hold together the components of the system in their juxtaposition against each other, and (b) ways of proceeding that seek the unity of this system in the communication of the selected categories with each other. The third method (c) first analyses the advantages and disadvantages of the first two approaches in terms of the expectations that are actually effective in the living world. It then proposes a new search for a theory-led re-development of the laws of evaluation based on normative principles. In this way, educational ideals are thematised not only according to their eligibility to be recognised but also according to their worthiness of recognition at all. The second part of this contribution deals with education in its mediation with democracy and law. Democracy is differentiated into participation, representation and deliberation. And the law is considered from the logic of its evolution and its claim to universality. Finally, the assertion is substantiated that civic education is best constituted in the mediating of democracy and law with education. In this mediation, political education appears as a by-product of political culture. In this review article, the method of discourse analysis is used.