"Citizenship education is a cross-cutting topic, with the purpose to empower students to become active and effective in performing their civic role" (MZOS, 2014: 3). How successful is the Croatian education system in achieving its aims to educate students to be active citizens? With the completion of the five-year implementation of the first national curriculum for Citizenship education, we decided to examine, through a case study of a secondary school in Pula, how much was it possible to capture the assigned outcomes through teaching and how the content of cross curriculum Citizenship education is viewed by students and teachers. Political culture and education are a prerequisite for effective democracy, and the current relation of ”left” and ”right” authorities places this topic at the margins of education. This is confirmed by the findings of a qualitative study conducted with students and teachers of the secondary school - Gimnazija Pula. In addition to studying primary and secondary literature sources, we applied a semi-structured interview with teachers and two focus groups with students; high school graduates and third grade students of Citizenship education - optional teaching. We examined how they perceive Citizenship education implementation and examined whether optional Citizenship education teaching achieves more predictable outcomes. What we can say is that the cross-curricular implementation was complex, unsatisfactory and full of flaws. On the other hand, optional teaching meets the expected results. The concluding discussion shows how important are the competencies of teachers for successful implementation and how our educational system is full of ideal educational goals, and not enough realistic about the possibilities for fulfilling them.