I found the "What Kind of Citizen" article captivating, likely because it pertains to my current body of work. The organization I work full time for is a volunteer organization and an affiliate of a foundation mentioned in the article, riddled with problems relating to core mission that center around these fundamental ideas of personal responsibility, participation, justice/progressive views, and which of those really prepares people for democratic citizenship. While we do some more cutting edge work in these fields, it's only a small percentage of the overall operation.
For example, I've been actively trying to push my employer to pursue a service learning component to volunteer projects; this article justifies my rationale, in that it shows that equating volunteerism and service as synonymous with citizenship doesn't cause participants to question the status quo or learn more about the issue at hand (p. 243). While I'm talking about my work with adults, given that the DC public school system requires students to do 100 of community service before they graduate (which many of them do through my organization), this is an important issue we face in civics education. I would go as far as to say that the belief that service and "character" are all that are required of people to be good citizens, is actually a plague we have to face as civics educators.
My organization routinely measures our impact in the community in number of schools painted, meals served, parks cleaned... and while, via volunteers, we help other organizations address critical needs, we do our volunteers and the community a disservice by not taking a more participatory or justice-oriented approach to engaging people in service. But I say this from the perspective that I believe we have a huge opportunity to activate people to be better citizens; some of my colleagues might believe in the power of volunteerism simply because it's help being exchanged benevolently.
And what does this all have to do with civics education? In my opinion, my work illustrates the failure of it, the nature of people today to volunteer for warm fuzzies rather than to be "citizens," and (to me) the pervasive nature of the idea of the Personally Responsible Citizen. And it drives me to want to teach a civics related class more than any other topic available to me as a social studies teacher.
Whew, long and rambling!
Tina,
ReplyDeleteWhile this only responds to a small piece of your posting, your blog reminded me of an interview I heard on the radio the other day about the British government recently overhauling its foreign aid allocations. You mention that your organization routinely measures its progress by quantifiable things. Similarly, the government tends to measure the number of water pumps, kids in school, whatever. In this interview, the reporter asked the foreign minister whether those kind of things are actually a meaningful measure of progress. They leave so much unsaid about a person's whole experience.
Your blog, the articles, and this interview are making me think about how we can make that 100 hours of community service a more purposeful experience, if our purpose is citizenship and service learning. Is it the type of activities themselves? Or how students are matched to activities that might expand their thinking? Is it something we can improve through better debriefing? Something else?