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Though political consciousness is difficult to thoroughly define, an attempt nevertheless has to be made to more concretely explain it, as well as how political consciousness develops through education.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and Paulo Freire (1921-1997) have made contributions to understanding political consciousness, and critical education is essential and crucial to developing political consciousness.
Given the particular focus on 'political' it has to be accepted that being aware of political and civil processes is part of political consciousness. Being 'aware' instead of having a complete 'understanding' is sufficient for attaining consciousness about something. Obtaining a thorough understanding requires significant study and is something that a person in political activity needs to have. However, that political activity arises more in the case of a politician, adviser to politicians or advisers to government generally, a policy analyst, a lobbyist, an activist in a civil society organisation (NGO), and the like. Even then, the knowledge may well be specialists, rather than have a complete understanding of all political matters.
A voter is not expected to have a degree of understanding that is specialist or complete, as it is time consuming and generally a career path, rather than a matter of having 'political consciousness'. In this regard, 'consciousness' is having an awareness, not being an expert. As well, being aware of economic, social and cultural processes can constitute 'political consciousness', as they are expressions that take place in a polity and so effect and also cause relations to occur between and among people, and they also influence politics in its broadest sense.
We can say that awareness of political, civil, economic, social and cultural matters certainly constructs one's 'political consciousness', as well as the relations within and between these fields of awareness. Often these relations will be independent of a person's own will, and no-one can possibly be expected to know and understand the totality of these relations and structures (of society) that they combine into and produce. That degree of knowledge is for specialists. That would be 'expertise', not 'consciousness' which is about awareness generally, rather than detailed study in a scientific way. Science or scientific knowledge is not what is required to attain 'political consciousness'.
It is not even the practice of political and related engagements that matters, but rather a general awareness of political and related factors. For adequate attainment of the latter, one generally goes to high school. Furthermore, government agencies and electoral commissions, as well as civil society organisations, also produce sufficient materials for people to understand at least the political environment, and these materials are used also in high schools. The practice of political and related engagements, therefore, does not itself determine political consciousness in the broad sense (i.e. including civil, economic, social and cultural), though is certainly useful, but rather educational awakening is what gives rise to the basic sense of political consciousness.
Even 'ideology' is not required for the purposes of political consciousness. Though a set of ideas making up an ideology is useful. Clearly, not all political thinking is ideological. Not even voting is, or has to be, an ideological matter. Ideological campaigns are rather different in scope and shape than political campaigns, or kinds of civil, economic, social and cultural campaigns. However, naturally, ideology can be present.
Politics though is essentially about policies, and turning policies into laws or other forms of social regulation, e.g. soft law compared to hard law, self-regulation of economic, professional or vocational activities, compared to mandatory regulation by the State. Other forms of regulation also exist in between, e.g. co-regulation.
In politics, most people as voters want results and competent persons to manage the affairs of State, to make practical and meaningful laws, to regulate society in some way under law, with the recourse to centralised power which comes with political units. Voters are not pursuing ideologies, but looking at policies that can produce practical outcomes through centralised political power. Every political unit has some centralised power, at its relevant level (e.g. supranational, national, sub-state), in order to achieve results expected from laws that are made by a legislature of the political unit. Getting results requires some force, of whatever sort (depending on circumstances), so a political unit requires the centralisation of that force.
Ideological campaigns tend to operate at a higher level than political campaigns. Ideological campaigns are to achieve general ideological awareness about an issue, which can be different to political consciousness. For ideological awareness, philosophy (either general or specific to a subject matter) is often critical in shaping the awareness, as is understanding fundamental relationships often at an abstract or casual level, but high-level philosophical notions are not critical for having political consciousness.
Political consciousness is essentially about general awareness, not expert or scientific awareness and not deeper philosophical or ideological awareness. A generalised learning course, or generalised education, would easily be enough to attain political consciousness by members of society, and it can be attained by a obtaining a high school certificate.
Again, having political consciousness can easily be achieved through the education system. It is this sort of political consciousness that is sufficient to make an aware voter. Virtually every person has the capability to attain this political consciousness, and it is the duty of the collective (society) to instill it by making resources available, essentially distributing supramundane knowledge, through physical outlets (most often educational institutions). It would be a terrible burden to expect each individual to fend for themselves in gaining political consciousness. That would be the mark of a failed society.
The necessity to think rationally and practically about political consciousness, becomes evident. Expecting that people should attain, or be judged on, their political consciousness based on passing some farcical voter test, is essentially a fruitless bureaucratic exercise, which will not yield good outcomes compared to a holistic progressive approach through educational means. Those who expect political consciousness to arise through a set of rules and regulations in the form of a voter test and voter test regimes, would surely fail in that misguided endeavour. Their folly is easily compared to the better approach of general or mass education being the means for people having sufficient political consciousness - which is obviously a more holistic approach.
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Like 'societal development', the processes of gaining political consciousness are non-linear, interactive and complex. Changes in consciousness or understanding of issues (whether social, economic, cultural, political or civil matters) can occur at many different times, can accelerate or decelerate due to all kind of factors.
Political consciousness varies and encompasses all the stages of the process of becoming politically conscious, so it cannot be merely captured, and cannot be expressed in a simple straightforward description.
People are involved in all sorts of different processes that might impacts on their consciousness and understandings. So, there is some difficulty in showing the cause of a particular form of political consciousness or understanding.
The analysis of political consciousness though would certainly involve educational activities and how people become aware from educational activities. It is education that enables a person to develop an analysis of their situation in society.
For political consciousness to be elaborated upon using external measures requires assessment procedures under a good education system. But since consciousness is a 'state of mind', the subjective assessments of a person also have to be taken into account. In that sense, political consciousness also involves some self-assessment and reflection. That is, how the person sees herself or himself as a political being, how they see the connections between what they do or think and what they do or see in society or even just in their work. While how a person is politically involved in practice (which can be an external measure) would indicate political consciousness, not everyone, indeed not most people, are in the practice of being politically involved.
A voter does not have to be politically involved to have political consciousness. Mental capacity building through education on social, economic, cultural, political and civil issues are also indicative of political consciousness. Plus, the skill of being impartial (not active in a political entity or party) but able to discern, understand, develop policies may even be a better, and non-biased, way to develop political consciousness.
It is useful to note that thinking around political consciousness (e.g. Gramsci and Freire) also correlate with theories of education. We can go so far as even saying there is more than correlation, rather a good education and a good education system are causes of developing political consciousness.
There are different dimensions of political consciousness, including, but not limited to:
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Political consciousness in countering disparities in society, caused, for example, by exploitation of one group of persons over others, or in countering the hegemony of capitalism.
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Political consciousness as the way to advance workers’ interests (as in raising class consciousness).
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Political consciousness as being generally politically active.
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Political consciousness as in lobbying representative members of a legislature to change, make or repeal laws, or being involved in consultative processes regarding proposals for primary legislation and secondary legislation (rule making).
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Political consciousness as in policy analysis and the 'synthetic' work or formulating practical policies relevant to the times, or community or political unit, or to a place.
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Engagement in economic ventures of a cooperative nature or in any kind of enterprise (or not for profit production of goods or services) or being in a collective/cooperative ownership of the means of production relevant to one's livelihood.
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And so on.
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