Teaching the importance of the concept of citizenship to children and adolescents is a challenge for the educational system of any country, above all, if what we want is to contribute to maintaining the vital and plural debate about the construction of a healthy democratic society. Teaching what it means to be a  full right citizen to children and adolescents is a task that begins in the classrooms. And, as teachers, we must reflect on how we are educating and how we want to educate the generations of today, who will be the citizens of tomorrow.

The Spanish educational system contemplates the transmission of democratic values ​​in two different ways. The first of them is the traditional one, through subjects clearly designed for learning basic knowledge about citizenship and human rights. To this end, it maintains subjects in force during the mandatory stage such as the current “Education in Civic and Ethical Values.” However, these subjects usually have little teaching load and are not taught at all levels. They should not, therefore, be the only means of transmitting the skills that every future citizen must achieve. So the same system transfers, through the content of the rest of the subjects, the obligation to teach democratic values ​​in a transversal way. In this way, Spanish students have at their disposal the possibility of learning and understanding the importance of the responsibilities and rights that they have and will have as a citizen. The ultimate goal of education in Spain is to provide students with all the necessary tools to fully exercise citizenship. Building free and responsible citizens must always be the ultimate goal of Education.

Likewise, schools can also work on democratic values ​​through various projects, some of them of their own construction. The system allows each school to ensure the learning of these values ​​through plural activities that allow their acquisition in new ways that are close to the new generations. For the creation of these projects, the starting point of each student is also taken into account. Only the teachers at each school know first-hand what that starting point is and the social and family context that surrounds each student. In this way, teachers can develop tasks and projects that provide the necessary citizenship tools to each student. It is urgent to keep these initiatives alive, since they are what provide closeness and security when teaching how to exercise freedom and citizenship. One of these projects is Erasmus +, in which we are immersed at the European level and which also allows us to share experiences and unify forces in the important task that lies ahead of us.

The purpose of these projects is to provide students with the necessary tools to exercise their own freedom, to live full citizenship and to defend human rights at all times and places, which we already know are suffering today from numerous attacks of various kinds.

The Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset stated that “whenever you teach, teach at the same time to doubt what you teach.” This idea refers to the importance of educating freely and critically. Students must grow and learn by developing this critical spirit, because this will allow them to put into practice the tools that the educational system offers. All of this requires a large investment that is sometimes undermined by political controversies that turn Education into a currency.

Education, as the basis of every society, must be provided with lots of resources to ensure our democracy. Teachers in the classroom and outside  have an important task before them because our students are the citizens of the future and it will be  their power to protect everything built in terms of citizen and human rights. A free and critical citizenship begins in the classrooms and ends outside them. Education, therefore, is one of the great challenges of the 21st century.