English

Together with the European Commission in Bulgaria and Ucha.se we created video lessons on the approved by the Ministry of Education and Science curriculum for ‘Civic Education’ for the 11th grade. The subject enters the classrooms for the first time in the 2020/2021 school year on, and the 36 free video lessons follow the curriculum and are intended to support both students and their teachers.

The context

The introduction of the ‘Civic Education’ subject comes at a time when democracy in Europe, and in the world at large, is in decline. The growing populist slogans and nationalist trends, ruling “with a firm hand” and the anti-democratic rhetoric tendencies bring to the fore the need for active citizenship. It is civic participation, combined with the principle of representation, that are the foundations of democracy as a form of government that we need to understand and nurture. For the first time in Bulgaria since last autumn (September 2020), students entered the classrooms with one subject “richer” – civic education. It is necessary to work together to recognize the priority of civic education and to help its effective implementation as part of the educational process of the youth.

The idea

Following the topics of the civic education curriculum for the 11^th grade, we set ourselves the goal of developing video lessons that tell the lessons in accessible language. The 36 video lessons correspond to the knowledge, skills and competencies set by the Ministry of Education and Science for that subject. Videos on topics such as ‘Freedom and Human Dignity’, ‘People’s Sovereignty’, ‘Political Pluralism’, ‘Civic Participation’ and many others can serve both as support civic education teachers and as a method for self-preparation by students. Each lesson is followed by a test to try out the newly acquired knowledge. All lessons are available on the educational platform ucha.se – the most visited educational website in Bulgaria. All 36 video lessons are completely free to watch after registration on https://ucha.se/. The video lessons are just one part of our attempt to help the effective implementation of the new subject in Bulgaria. In addition, together with the European Commission in Bulgaria we are preparing a Handbook for civic education teachers – coming soon! You can watch an example video (available in Bulgarian) here:

The texts for the video lessons are written by:

• Borislav Dimitrov, lawyer
• Daniel Stefanov, political scientist
• Evelina Ivanova, methodologist
• Louisa Slavkova, political scientist
• Radoslav Stoyanov, human rights expert
• Silvia Ivanova, culturologist
• Yavor Siderov, political scientist

And adapted for the audience by the team of Ucha.se. The project ‘Video lessons on Civic Education for the 11^th grade’ is developed by the Sofia Platform Foundation, together with the European Commission in Bulgaria and Ucha.se with the support of the European Commission in Bulgaria.