More information
Description
Based on the applicant''s two-year involvement with the Legal Network for the protection of democracy we have found that there is a critical lack of legal awareness among Slovenian citizens, including youth. Reluctance and preconceptions about law partly stem from law being considered as a complex system of abstract norms, as well as from the lack of familiarity with various institutions and legal professions. It is therefore even more preoccupying that basic legal contents are missing from the formal education system. Legal content is not included in primary nor in secondary/high- schools curricula. Consequently, there is a high level of lack of legal knowledge, which makes it difficult for people to access and exercise their rights.
We believe the problem of not knowing law and its perceived inaccessibility should be addressed directly through our education system, which includes the vast majority of the youth population. We see the recent inclusion of the Active Citizenship module in high-school curricula as an excellent opportunity for including legal contents, which are still lacking. While there is a teacher''s handbook Aktivno državljanstvo, it doesn''t include any legal knowledge that would support active citizenship. Since the module is quite flexible, it allows for more autonomous approaches so teachers can for example take their students to excursions, roundtables, etc., and it is precisely here that we see an opportunity for our innovative, practical and professional contribution, which we would like to test with this pilot project.
It is for this purpose that we have designed our project Legal tours for active and informed high-school students, the aim of which is to bring law closer to them in the form of 5 different legal walking tours. The walking tours are designed as excursions with legal professionals, introducing different legal institutions.