Governments, international organizations and academics have, in recent decades, expressed a sense of crisis in the practice of democracy based largely upon increasing levels of disengagement by citizens from even the most basic elements of civic life. One response has been to devise civics and citizenship education curricula for schools with the…

Many Asian countries have strong elements of nationalistic education in their civic education. In 1996, a year before the return of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China, a new official "Guidelines on Civic Education in Schools" was issued by the Education Department. This document proposes a curriculum framework with equal emphasis on human…