Editorial 136: September 2002

The major focus of this issue of BfK is citizenship, both in the curriculum and beyond, both in the UK and in the world. The problem with the word ‘citizenship’ is its earnestness so I was relieved to discover from Sue Unstead’s excellent article in this issue, ‘Citizenship in the Curriculum’, that it is really about values and that lots of schools are doing it already: ‘It just wasn’t called Citizenship.’

James Watson is a ‘political’ writer, one of the first in the 1980s to challenge the cosy parochialism of British children’s fiction with Talking in Whispers, his powerful novel set in Chile after Allende in which the young hero is tortured by the regime. As General Pinochet finally spends his retirement in disgrace, we can look back to this landmark novel which demonstrated that young people do want to read novels set in countries not their own. As Watson says in his article on page 10, young people are interested in ‘serious and challenging perspectives on the world’ – in becoming, in fact, citizens of the world.

Closer to home, Professor of Romani Studies, Thomas Acton, celebrates the self publishing movement which is enabling Traveller people to ensure that their history, culture and present-day lives do not continue to be excluded from books. In this issue too, Shereen Pandit concludes our series of articles on the depiction of Muslims in children’s non-fiction titles. A subheading in her article, ‘Not just prayermat and pilgrimage’ suggests there is a way to go …