Direction: Prof. Dr. Dirk Lange 

What is civic education?

Citizens are the focal point of civic education. Through the promotion of political meaning and action competencies, a self-determined lifestyle should be made possible for them as they exist and participate in an increasingly complex society. Civic education aims to enable learners to recognize, evaluate, and have an impact on socio-political reality. Political evaluation and action competencies of citizens are a requirement for the proper functioning and stability of democratic systems. Civic education doesn’t simply aim at adapting to the system. Instead, it sees itself within the context of an historical process of democratization that assumes a fundamental ability of the existing reality to change and improve.