I do not remember being specifically taught anything about citizenship education but I remember having assignments that involved getting out into the community and volunteering. I remember being asked what kind of person I wanted to be and whether I want to make a difference in the world. My teachers would always emphasize the importance of our actions because as Joel Westheimer said in the video “What Kind of Citizen” everyone has a role to play in history. My teachers would always tell us that we are making history and our actions can play a big role, this was especially taught in social studies and history when it was around election time. My teachers would always play the devil’s advocate to help us understand that people have different perspectives and no matter how you try you probably will not be able to change their minds.
The types of citizenship my school focused on would be the personally responsible citizen and the participatory citizen. I say this because there was never any emphasis on social change throughout the school. Teachers rarely talked about current issues and if they did, they never questioned us on how we could address these social issues and injustices. They focused on personally responsible citizens by getting us to donate to the food bank every Christmas by making a competition between classrooms on who could donate the most. Starting in middle-school every year up until grade twelve we had to do volunteer work outside of the school to help the community. They emphasized the importance of being responsible and obeying the law. Teachers rewarded students who worked hard, were responsible, honest, kind, helpful, and so on. Teachers rewarded students with an assembly where students were given student-of-the-month. At the end of every month, one student from each grade was chosen to be acknowledged for their hard work and was given some sort of gift. My school also focused on Participatory citizens because through programs like the Student Leadership Program students were able to take on leadership roles. For many projects’ teachers had their students create ways to raise money to donate to different organizations. It was very much about helping the community.
This approach allowed students to become responsible and respectful. It allowed us to understand the importance of working hard and helping the community. Though, it stopped students from asking why. Why are people hungry, why are these issues occurring? Instead of having us figure out the problem and then acting on it, we were just taught to help. Although it is good to help it would be more beneficial to ask questions to end the issues once and for all instead of just ‘putting a band-aid over it’ and calling it good. We were taught to create momentary fixes rather than permanent fixes. The approach to citizenship in any given place tells us what the people value. My school for example values helping others and working towards social change but it does not search for a permanent fix or question why issues are occurring and what can be done to solve them. It will represent what the curriculum makers value because it shows whether they want to create students who will organize programs to help people, students who will donate and do what they can to help, or students who will question society and look deeper into the problem to find a solution, or all three. All three types of citizens are good in their own way it just depends on what type of person the curriculum wants to create. In the end, the goal is to produce an honest, responsible, hard-working person, it just depends on how the curriculum creators think this is possible.
Work cited
Westheimer, Joel. What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Education for Democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 2004, democraticdialogue.com/DDpdfs/WhatKindOfCitizenAERJ.pdf.
Video reference from:
Laci's Blog 