The construction of the Citizen and the ‘Other’ in Schools: An Analysis of Social Studies Curricula and Textbooks used in State Schools
One aim of schooling, as the role of the nation-state, is the creation of the citizen (Dewey, 2006). However, no citizen can be created without the creation of the ‘other’ (Ahmad, 2009; Sultana, 2008; Mason, 2007). In this essay I ask ‘who is the Maltese citizen, as the selected ambassador of the culture that propels this society, and who are his/her ‘others’?’ I seek to answer these questions by looking at the state’s syllabi and books used in Social Studies in Maltese primary schools and argue how Maltese are given a monolithic identity marked by them being Christian and European. This process is inevitably violent upon the ‘other’ who lives with (or amongst) the Maltese in a context where Huntington’s (1993) “doomsday image” (Brasted, 1997, p. 8) is becoming increasingly relevant.