The basic thesis of this article "Teaching Civic Responses", written by Joel Westheimer, from University of Ottawa and Joseph Kahne, from Mills College, is that schools should teach social civics through educating students to be engaged citizens. Education can raise students' appreciation for democracy and therefore really become a citizen that will actually conduct meaningful things to the society. Westheimer and Kahne said that schools put too much emphasis on community service and service learning. And it seems to become an excuse for the schools to say that they teach civics through service practices.
The article explained three different types of citizens: personally responsible citizen, participatory citizen, and justice oriented citizen.
A personally responsible citizen is someone that do good deeds, such as picking up litter, donate blood, and etc. The participatory citizen is someone 'who actively participate in the civic affairs and the social life of the community at local, state, and national levels.' And last but not least, justice oriented citizens are people who explore, examine, and analyze the root of social problems. They look at not just one side but social, economic, and political forces and develop skills and missions to improve the society.
Westheimer and Kahne went further on the idea that school should teach students how to make commitment to democracy. Most of schools have community service, however, service is not directly related to democracy or social civics. It's like a "citizenship without politics—a commitment to service, but not to democracy." In other word, most of the people are personally responsible citizens, but all the good acts they cannot solve the problem at all. They are not aware of what is the root of the social problems and what are possible solutions for those problems. Therefore, the goal of the school to teach social civics is to culitvate students to become real Justice Oriented citizens and to really solve the problems.
The article ends with a good quote: "The choices we make have consequences for the kind of society we ultimately help to create." We need to be careful of the actions we take because there's always a consequence for it, no matter good or bad. I think schools has the responsibility to enable students to realize what benefit they will get out of being justice-oriented citizens.
----------------------------------------
Q: Give your opinion on best strategies for teaching civic responsibility at HIS.
I think it is really important to choose and design programs carefully. The program must interest the students, no matter if it's aiming at personally responsible citizenship or a justice-oriented level. It is really hard to engage students' attention if the program is tedious. As I said above, students need to realize why they should be both participatory and justice oriented citizens.
However, I don't see how HIS can become a justice-oriented citizen because we are not even being a participatory citizen. Even the most basic, meaningful educational opportunities like community service is taken away, so how can we develop a sense of civic responsibility?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Wow a lot of people talked about community service. We should definitely bring it back! :) Strong ending, I also agree that the school is becoming less participatory. I don't like a lot of the changes made. There needs to be more improvement in our curriculum rather than taking away important things like that.
Having an interesting class is important, but we also need to learn something!
If many students want community service, then we should definitely communicate with the teachers and tell them that we all want community service!
Yes, I agree on your opinion about that our school is lack of being a participation to citizen's
I think, what we did is just about community service.
But, I think, community service or internship program was enough to show that how much we care about our citizen's and society.
Great point about community service not equaling being a good citizen. I also enjoyed how you focused on the final quote in the article. It struck me too.
Good point about doing the community service. We need to learn about being a good citizen but we also need to have actions. Just talking about this can't improve our community. We need to let everybody learn! spreading ideas and doing actions!
Hello Tina. I think a combination of the three citizens is what we need. We can't have a bunch of one, and only a few of the other. Here at HIS, we used to do community service. Do you think people in our school knew why they were doing it? Or were they just doing it to get the community service hours and to get out of classes? If we have a solid community service program we can teach responsibility and why community service is good. You didn't say this outright, but I'm assuming you would like to see community service reenter into the HIS community. You seemed to favor the justice-oriented citizen, but do you think we would be living in a healthy environment if everyone was like that? Do you think we need a combination of each citizen? Great post Tina!
aw~~
I want community service back too!!!
I cant enojoying doing community service with classmate or school-mate anymore.
--------above-was-opinion-------------
I like how you say we should have emphasize more on citizen education
:)
Your post inspired a lot of comments. Good job! I think one of the reason for this is that your summary and opinions of the article are well articulated. You have tapped into a reservoir of feelings and shared opinions amongst your peers. How can we achieve that perfect balance? Create community service opportunities, teach the reason behind it and have it be engaging meaningful, and not tedious?
Post a Comment