Citizenship begins with taking responsibility for one’s actions, with productive activity; economics walks hand in hand with moral choices. This is the motto of the textbook “Citizen in 31 Hours,” intended for grades 9–12 and recognized in 2023 in Brussels with the European Innovative Teaching Award.

“Citizen in 31 Hours” is an initiative to look at political, economic, and ethical issues not fragmentarily, but fundamentally. Why is it better to earn a €300 salary than to receive a €300 benefit? Whose life should a self-driving car protect: the driver’s, the child’s, or the person with the highest probability of survival? Should we open our borders to immigrants?

These and similar questions do not fit neatly within a classroom, a general curriculum, or a single discipline. To discuss them in depth and from multiple perspectives, we need the sciences closest to people and life in society: moral philosophy, law, political science, and economics. Their counterparts at school are ethics, citizenship education, and economics.

This is where the textbook “Citizen in 31 Hours” comes to the educator’s aid. It is intended for all teachers of moral education, citizenship, and economics who teach students in grades 9–12. Integrating subjects helps connect existing knowledge with new insights, encourages students to pose the questions that interest them, and to seek answers. This motivates them to be curious not only in the classroom but beyond it.

In 2023, the textbook “Citizen in 31 Hours” received the European Innovative Teaching Award.

Textbook “Citizen in 31 Hours”

• A one-school-year program for integrated learning.

• Problems are examined on three levels — personal, societal, and global. We encourage a broad view. For example, in the topic “poverty,” we pose: a personal question — “How can I help people in poverty?”; a societal question — “Is it possible to solve poverty?”; and a global question — “Why does hunger still exist in the world?”

• The platform consists of 31 lessons on various social topics; each lesson covers part of the themes listed in the general curricula for economics, ethics, and citizenship.