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 first few days in Ecuador
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Our group arrived on January 8th in Quito, Ecuador at around 11pm at night.
We went straight back to our cute little hotel. We woke up the next morning
and...
12 years ago
6 comments:
Being aware of our community helps us to realize what kind of social problems exists in our community. It will definitely help us to become justice oriented citizens and therefore engage our sense of democracy.
Yay to community service!!
People definitely feel loved when other people service them! :]
Since many people want community service, we should persuade the school to getting community service back!
We definitely need to get community services back. I think our school is slowly losing our traditions, the things that made us unique. Even if it is not a tradition, it is still important. New kids are more focused on themselves now because of the lack of community services.
Do you really think that just doing community service makes you an actively participating citizen? I'd say that being a good citizen is being able to address the roots of social problems, and not simply doing community service.
Dennis, it really seems like you understand what the different types of citizens are. Which citizen do you see yourself as? Do you think one citizen is better than the other or would you say it is important to have a combination of them all? Community service is very important. If we help people, out of the kindness of our heart instead of being forced to do it, then people will feel loved and appreciated and we will have a sense of accomplishment. Nice post man!
Good thoughts. People throw around the word democracy all the time without knowing what it really means. Although I'm saying this now, even I don't know anything but the surface of it. We all seem to agree that community service is good to have. It's such a shame that our school stopped it.
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