Reflection on Teaching Civic Responsibility

In our Global Ethics class, we read an article called ”Educating the ‘Good’ Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals” written by Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahn. This article talks about what a good citizen should be and should do, and how should the ideas be taught through democratic education. The author classified citizenships into three categories: Personally Responsible Citizen, Participatory Citizen, and Justice-oriented Citizen. And then, they listed out some conflicts that appear when students try to pursue these visions.

First, personally responsible citizens act responsibly in their community, work and pay taxes, obey laws, recycle, give blood, and volunteer to lend a hand in times of crisis. Second, participatory citizens are the active members of community organizations or improvement efforts. They organize community efforts to care for those in need, promote economic development, or clean up environment, know how government agencies work, and also know strategies for accomplishing collective tasks. Third, justice-oriented citizens critically assess social, political, and economic structures to see beyond surface causes, seek out and addresses areas of injustices, and know about social movements and how to effect systemic change. These three visions are all trying to solve social problems and improve society, but just in the different ways.

“Democracy requires oppressed groups to develop political determination, that is, to organize and mobilize in order to achieve their own objectives. Education can make possible such a democracy.” This is a quote that most of my classmates found out important in this article. Democracy is an agreement for everyone. Where we can start is education. If people do not know what democracy is, then it is hard to improve the society, or to solve social problems.

I think doing community service is definitely one of the most important actions to solve the society problem and improve society. Helping each other can let all the people feel being loved.

The Stimulus Plan: How to Spend $787 Billion

The U.S. Congress passed this plan a while ago. Our teacher wants us to write about three parts of the bill that we feel actively support progressive ideals like renewable energy, changes in American education for the better, and job creation for sustainable jobs. Here are the three parts that I think are more important.



1. Education and Job Training; Aid to States. Help states prevent cuts to essential services like education.
2. Tax Cuts for Businesses; Energy. Expand tax incentives for renewable energy facilities.
3. Unemployment. Extend and increase unemployment compensation.

Education is the most important first step if we want to change the world. Educating the next generations carefully can let them learn from our mistakes, and innovate new technology.
The other part, using tax credit for wind energy and other renewable energy could reduce the gasoline needs and carbon dioxide productions. Last thing, extending unemployment benefits program could save more people from this exhausted economic crisis, and stimulate the people to consume more products. This will help the companies to produce more, and provide more jobs. I think all of the plans are good. I hope these will help our society and Earth become a better place to live.

How HIS could have less of a carbon footprint & reaction to Friedman's article

I have heard of solar panels car a long time ago. The purpose of this is to save energy and avoid pollution on earth. But this is not really helping. Because, the amount of the energy we need to use is beyond the energy that solar panels could create. I really think this will not solve the global warming issue. The only way to solve it is to reduce the amount of energy that human need. For example, a lot of rich people only care about the size of their car. They want their cars to be really fancy. The cars are heavier, and require a lot of gasoline. This will also produce a huge a mount of carbon dioxide.
I think thinking to lessen the “footprint” will just cause more problems, because people might think it is ok to waste a lot of energy, since there are ways to produce more energy. For another example, people think buying carbon credits after they took an airplane will strengthen the life of the earth, so they might also think it is ok to take many times of airplane as they want, because there are always carbon credits to buy afterward. It is kind of encouraging people in a negative way. This phenomenon will eventually require more scientists to work harder to think of more ways to produce more energy. I think changing people mind at first place, and use the energy that is necessary are what going to solve the global issues.
Since we already created a load of carbon footprint, we still need to clean it up. Rich people cannot just pay the money and expect everything is solved. I think they need to plan trees and ride bicycles more. Sharing taxi and taking city bus can also reduce carbon dioxide. People should sweat some, so they will remember how painful it is the earth is suffering!

Gender Social Experiment

Today, we had H.I.S cross dressing day, which guys have to dress like girls, and vice versa. We also went to 7-11 during Global Ethics class in our outfit, and we took pictures with the beetlenuts girls. All the passersby stared at us unusually. It felt really awkward and uncomfortable for guys to wear in female clothes. Physically, female clothes are smaller. In ethically, male do not like to do activities that girls do, such as playing dolls and doing makeups. In some religions, gender binary blurred is also known as desecrate. Cross dressing is more difficult for a guys over the girls. It is because male are inborn with aggression. Males compete for social rank and mate. Girls dress like guys do not really matter that much than guys dress like girs. The society is more used to to see girls do what guys do. I personally think cross dressing could be healthy, it is because only one day of the year when people can do crazy things. I think it was really fun today!

Ideas for Innovation

The article discuss nine ideas to innovate the world, which are:
1. Spur greater parental involvement.
2. Make schools smaller.
3. Utilize community service to foster civic engagement.
4. Teach civics effectively in schools.
5. Fund extracurricular activities.
6. Model a high school on a community.
7. Create opportunities for meaningful youth contribution.
8. Establish mentoring programs that work.
9. Ask youth for solutions.

I found out this article is quite interesting. Yes, I also believe that education is the first step to innovate the society. Parents really should spend time on what the students are doing at school. Most of the parents, even if they have time, they choose to rest from work instead of watching what kids are learning. Making schools smaller is basically also strengthening the education system. Every little kids is the leader of the future; some might be the political leader, some might be the pop culture leader.
I agree with the articles. Children even have to solve problems that the adults left out, such as global warming. Encouraging people to do community service can make the society more united. People can learn a lot from service people. I agree with that supporting more extracurricular activities can generate more ideas for innovation, because it makes the students to reach outside of the school, and to make connections. What Mr. Truchon, our math teacher does in our class is one of the most successful teaching model. We have a lot of peer to peer teaching, which I think is very constructive for students to learn!
I think our school has a lot of chances and time for students to contribute something. I think a lot of people in our school is very creative, because of these opportunities. I think one of the most important thing is every team needs a leader, especially an adult. Students all need an adult to guide and to be encourages. This is a reason why I really love my former basketball coach and baseball coach. They are all really good leaders, and give us a lot of positive feed backs.
The last point, asking kids for the answers, is the most powerful incentive for more ideas of innovation. This is why the world has a lot of conferences where they gather all the kids around the world to talk about some global issues. What we act will lead to what children will act in the future, so we need to teach them properly!