Integration of citizenship education with religious education in Lesotho secondary schools

Abstract

The current article fervently acknowledges the general agreement that Lesotho had never experienced a stable democracy ever since the ultimate attainment of political independence in 1966. Among other possible solutions proposed to the problem of Lesotho’s democratic instability, citizenship education dominates government documents and various works regarding the political discourse. Although there is this pervasive recognition of the needed political educational intervention, there is no explicit direction on how to properly introduce the envisaged citizenship education. The article valiantly attempts bridging this visible gap by carefully probing the published literature to propose the meaningful integration of citizenship education with religious education. The discussion was guided by the critical use of the post-secular theoretical framework. The article highlights that, coupled with post-Christianity, post-secular theory undoubtedly provided a workable framework for the meaningful integration of secular (political citizenship) and religious essences for the promotion of democratic stability in Lesotho. The article logically concludes by showing that the proposed integration of citizenship education in religious education is within acceptable philosophical modes of proper education.

Keywords

• citizenship
• democracy
• integration
• Lesotho
• postsecular
• religious education