Citizenship may well be one of the most complex concepts and practice to define in Lebanon, a country that is both diverse and fractured. Whilst clearly delineated in textbooks and in the constitution, no two Lebanese are likely to define what citizenship means to them in exactly the same way. If Lebanon is to ever emerge from its political, economic, and social permacrisis and polycrisis, citizenship education must be treated not as an ephemeral educational concern but as a national and urgent priority. A convergence over a collective re-imagining of the meaning of citizenship is a condition sine qua non for rebuilding a shared public life in a society exhausted by division.
For too long, civic education has been understood in narrow, shallow, and procedural terms. School students are taught how public institutions are supposed to function, what rights are formally guaranteed, and what legal responsibilities citizens are expected to fulfill. That model may have once appeared sufficient. Today, and after numerous wars and with the entrenchment of a divisive sectarian system, this model is not only useless, it is also harmful. In an age marked by globalization, disinformation, economic and climate degradation, militarization, and widening inequality, citizenship can no longer be taught as if local realities are detached from global dynamics. Lebanon’s crises do not exist in isolation, and young students need a set of tools that would allow them to define their relation with their state and with global systems.
This is why the shift from traditional civic education to Global Citizenship Education is crucial and necessary. Such an approach does not weaken one’s belonging to one’s country (whether the country of birth or host country). To the contrary, Global Citizenship Education allows students to appreciate and experience how justice, sustainability, and participation are interconnected across borders. More importantly, it invites a different understanding of power dynamics. Citizenship is not simply obedience or allegiance to institutions. It is the cultivation of what Paulo Freire described as power from within, power with, and power to, namely, the awareness of oneself as an agent of change, the ability to work collectively with others, and the capacity to influence the structures that shape social, political, and economic life.
Few places demonstrate the urgency of this shift more clearly than Lebanon. The Lebanese state has long struggled to create a unifying national framework, and nowhere is this more evident than in education. Lebanon’s historical confessional political order has produced a fragmented educational landscape in which public, private, and religious schools often transmit conflicting accounts and narratives of identity, history, and belonging. Instead of forming citizens who see themselves as part of a common political community, the system often reproduces inherited loyalties and mutual suspicion and distrust.
That fragmentation has been made worse by the profound collapse of trust in public institutions. Corruption, economic devastation, and state failure have convinced many Lebanese, especially the young, that formal politics offers little hope. The crises that intensified after 2019 did not just impoverish households economically; they also weakened belief in the very idea of the state as a legitimate organizer of collective life. In such a climate, citizenship risks becoming an empty word.
And yet this is precisely why communication matters.
Communication is not peripheral to citizenship; it is rather one of its foundations. In divided societies, people do not merely inherit political differences. They inherit stories about one another which are, alas, shaped by fear, stereotypes, selective memory, exclusion, and often hate. Strategic communication and media literacy, therefore, become essential educational tools. They help dismantle narratives of hatred, create space for intercultural dialogue, and encourage more inclusive ways of imagining the nation.
Lebanon has already offered glimpses of what this could look like. During the 2019 uprising, social media did more than circulate slogans. It created moments of connection across sectarian lines and made visible an alternative civic identity grounded in shared grievances and aspirations. However brief or incomplete that moment may have been, it showed that another political language is possible. It showed that Lebanese citizens can speak to one another not only as members of sects, but as participants in a common struggle for dignity, accountability, rights, and justice.
But symbolic moments are not enough. If citizenship education in Lebanon is to be meaningful, it must be embedded in a broader strategy of transformation.
This can only be kick-started with a robust and progressive curriculum reform. A country cannot build democratic citizenship while teaching fragmented histories and competing myths of belonging. Lebanon needs an educational narrative that does not erase difference and diverse lived experiences, but places shared values and common civic life at its center. At the same time, teachers must be trained to handle controversial questions with confidence and openness. No curriculum can succeed if educators are left unequipped to navigate disagreement, identity, and conflict in the classroom.
Media literacy must also become a core educational priority. Young people are growing up in information environments saturated with manipulation, misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and partisan messaging. Teaching them how to critically evaluate media is no longer optional. It is central to forming citizens capable of judgment rather than reaction.
Equally important is youth participation. Students cannot learn democracy in institutions where they have no meaningful voice. If Lebanon is seeking to have active citizens, it must create real opportunities for young people to practice participation through student councils, local initiatives, and decision-making spaces that treat them as contributors rather than passive recipients. Citizenship is experiential and cannot be taught through rote learning. Active and iterative methodologies are key. Project-based learning, service learning, simulations, role play, and participatory action research all move citizenship education beyond abstraction. They allow students to engage in real problems, deliberate with others, and test what democratic practice actually entails and requires. Through such methods, democracy stops being a chapter in a book and becomes a lived exercise in responsibility, empathy, and collective action.
This is a long-term process that is complex and possibly painful. Lebanon’s structural obstacles remain at the level of brutal sectarian entrenchment, institutional weakness, inequality, and deep political polarization. All these factors stand in the way of reform. However, surrendering to those realities would be the most dangerous choice of all. Citizenship education is not naïve idealism. It is a practical investment in the possibility of a more cohesive and democratic future.
What Lebanon needs today is not simply a better curriculum, but a renewed commitment to the idea that education can help transform the country. That commitment must come from teachers, parents, media institutions, policy-makers, and civil society alike. Without such a coalition, citizenship will remain rhetorical. With it, it can become formative.
Citizenship education is an act of hope and the belief that with the right tools of communication, critical reflection, and participation, citizens can help build a more just, peaceful, and sustainable society. In an increasingly uncertain world, Lebanon cannot afford to treat that hope as optional.
References
UNESCO. (2015). Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Herder and Herder.
Makdisi, U. (2000). The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon. University of California Press.
Karam, J. G., & Majed, R. (Eds.). (2022). The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution. Bloomsbury Publishing.
World Bank. (2021). Lebanon Economic Monitor: The Great Denial.
Antoine Abrass, PhD
Antoine Abrass is a Consultant for Cultural and Academic Affairs and Media Analysis at the Embassy of Spain in Lebanon, Educator, and Professor at the Lebanese University and Saint-Joseph University (USJ). He holds a PhD in Leadership and Human Resources Management. Antoine works on actively bridging cultural and academic initiatives between Spain and Lebanon, as well as contributing to institutional governance, media analysis, and the strategic management of higher education. He has held key academic positions, including Head of the Spanish Department at the Lebanese University, and actively collaborates with the Cervantes Institute in Beirut. He has also directed international methodologies in education and sports as the Co-founder and Strategic Director of VISTA GROUP.