Constitutional Education: general characterisation and its reception in the Spanish Constitutional System

Abstract

This paper analyses whether the fundamental right to education in article 27.1 of the Spanish Constitution (CE) and the aims of the educational action of the public authorities set out in article 27.2 of the CE would require or, at least, make possible the insertion in the Spanish educational system a subject of Constitutional Education, that is, training in the Constitution at the compulsory levels of the education system. To this end, we first examine, in terms of general theory, some of the fundamental issues of Constitutional Education: the characterisation of this new type of education; its differentiation from other similar disciplines whose object is not the exposition of the Constitution, but that of social coexistence; its foundation, as an instrument of a kind of paid defense of the Constitution and the constitutional order; and, finally, its status, insofar as Constitutional Education is an education for human rights and gender equality, as an instrument for the achievement of the goals of SDG no. 4. On the basis of these general questions, we conclude that our Constitution, although it does not expressly declare the compulsory nature of its teaching in Primary and Secondary Education, allows it and that the question of the implicit existence of this compulsory nature deduced from the aforementioned articles 27.1 CE and 27.2 CE in relation to articles 27.5 CE, 27.3 CE and 9.2 CE could even be legitimately raised.