for Citizenship Education is not exactly trivial matter, or short haul in the history of education and citizenship. Only if one ignores the origins and cultural significance, social policy and the concept and nature of democratic citizenship can accept the reductionist view, neo-conservative, fundamentalist who deny the social dimension of man. As Aristotle said only gods or fools can live on the margins of society and citizenship. All democratic systems have acted and act known by the same logic: the values \u200b\u200bunderlying the rights, freedoms and duties citizenship should be part of the education of all citizens, without the rights of parents to choose religious and moral education appropriate for their children believe constitute an obstacle to the deployment academic training in democratic values \u200b\u200bby public authorities. Civic education is taught in American schools since the 1840's and in the levels of Primary and Secondary education in France since Jules Ferry civique instruction introduced in 1882. Today, the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations call for the development or cross-curricular, civic education and its generalization in education systems democracy is a reality. As early as 1972 in the report on education in the future, prepared by a UNESCO committee, chaired by Edgar Faure was said "the school is continuing and will continue to rely a role of civic education, what matters is not knowing the its place in teaching this type of instruction, but to what purpose serves, "encouraging the emergence of individuals with a way to really conceive their own relationships with the world, or condition to individuals subject to tax and models easier to govern?, "encourage the formation of spirits drunk with freedom and provided a critical or consecrate hierarchies?" (Learning be. Alianza Editorial / UNESCO, 1972).
What, then, with the right of parents to have their children receive religious and moral instruction in accordance with their own convictions, as provided for in art. 27.3 of the English Constitution? Is this right antagonistic to public authorities' duty to promote education of citizens in the common values, ordered according to Article 27-2 of the Constitution, on the lowest common ethical right as enshrined in the Constitutional Court and that containing both the English Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? "Our Constitution is so inconsistent as to establish two contradictory articles? It would be absurd. Occurs rather than in our view, the Constitution provides for two levels of training in values, something which is unacceptable to the approach Manichaean battle between the two cities and between good and evil that support the Catholic neoconservatives Spain: on the one hand, the plane corresponding to the family and respect and guarantees concerning their private freedoms of conscience and religion, and secondly, the plane that corresponds to society, public space and public institutions and common in which individuals and families who attend free and legitimately assume religious beliefs or moral convictions individuals which are different from each other and have to live in peace and mutual tolerance, without trying to impose one upon the other, it requires to organize coexistence and self-education of citizens from a ethical values \u200b\u200band common ground rules.
The family is a basic institution of society and not an island entire of itself, is a part of society and should not be treated as a satellite anarchic order and that disrupts social harmony and institutional capacity for coexistence. The family and the individual needs of society, its institutions and public services to ensure their own survival. This is true, but unfortunately it is possible that supporters of the doctrine of the two cities remain, as in ancient times, trying to theorize the moral superiority of the heavenly city as the only possible moral, not to any other on the earthly city, and knowing that, ultimately, societies and families of real and concrete cities of today need peremptorily that the school will provide quality training that, inevitably, must contain the social and civic responsibilities inherent in a good education for citizenship.
* Chairman of the Education and Welfare Foundation and the League Cives English Education and Popular Culture.
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