Education for democratic rebellion: A concept inspired by Albert Camus and Erich Fromm

Democracy needs citizens who defend democratic principles against authoritarianism. In other words, it needs people who are willing and have the skills to rebel. Therefore, an important task of citizenship education is to strengthen people in this competence. However, most educational concepts have neglected rebellion and its meaning for democracy. In this article, I link Albert Camus’s theoretical reflections on rebellion and Erich Fromm’s thoughts on freedom to make them fruitful for recent concepts of citizenship education. From their arguments, I deduce the need for educational processes to devote attention to the resistance to authoritarianism, not only in the political context but also in everyday life, including educational settings. After the theoretical considerations, I discuss possibilities of embedding values and competences for rebellion in relevant concepts of democratic citizenship education like the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework for Competences of a Democratic Culture and Global Citizenship Education.