Citizenship, nationalism, human rights, and democracy are four terms and concepts that are inextricably linked. In Kuwait, the status of citizen is based on nationality, gender, and age, with women, children, naturalized citizens, expatriates, and bidoon denied many freedoms, rights, and services. Osler and Starkey (2005) define citizenship as a status, feeling, and practice. In Kuwait, the denial or limitation of the first makes the latter two all but impossible. In this paper, I discuss the tensions between citizenship, nationalism, human rights, and democracy within the Kuwaiti context and then explore how these are mirrored in the tangling of terms within the Kuwaiti national curriculum. Particular attention is paid to the Constitution and Human Rights (CHR) module, which introduced a form of national democratic citizenship education to the high school curriculum (grades 10, 11, and 12) for the first time in 2006 but was withdrawn from all but grade 12 by the 2009–2010 academic year. Students’ perceptions of the concepts and their learning will form an important part of the analysis. The student voices come from student research workshops carried out as part of a case study of a Kuwaiti government school. These workshops were carried out in the spring semesters of 2009 and 2010 with grade 10, 11, and 12 classes; a total of approximately 180 students were involved. In small groups, students were asked to reflect on what they learned in school about citizenship, human rights, and democracy and to record their thoughts on posters. The grade 11 posters were selected for this paper because they provide a contrast between the 2009 students, who took the CHR module, and the 2010 students, who did not. As the contrasts between the student responses in 2009 and 2010 reflect, the CHR module shifted the focus from education for national citizenship to education for democratic national citizenship. However, the module also inadvertently brought to the surface inconsistencies and tensions between several of the concepts it was meant to educate about. This caused students to develop criticality, and, alongside their learning on human rights and politics, was a potentially strong trigger for change from below. Its swift withdrawal from the curriculum, however, shifted the focus of citizenship education back to nationalism and patriotism. It also rendered students less equipped to effect change – a result that the more skeptical may believe was intended.