Reading Response 8

During my K-12 schooling, I experienced two types of citizenship. For better organization, I am going to break down my blog into two sections: Kindergarten – Gr. 6, and Gr. 7- Gr. 12, as each timeframe in my schooling very much focused on a separate type of citizen.

Kindergarten – Gr. 6

“The personally responsible citizen acts responsibly in his/her community by … picking up litter, giving blood, recycling, obeying laws, and staying out of debt.”

Joel Westheimer & Joseph Kahne – What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy

From Kindergarten to grade 6 I very much experienced the personally responsible citizen approach. To use the example from the quote, in Kindergarten and grades 1 and 2 we were always told to pick up litter and recycle paper and plastic. There was such a great emphasis placed on small actions like that, and how they could better ourselves by making us honest and hard working, but also how they could better society by providing citizens who “followed the rules” (of course not in so many words, as I was too young to get it like I do now). As a class, we would even go out for an entire day and pick up garbage and recycling, and then after disposing of the various items in the proper way we would receive a reward based on how much we collected. Looking back, I think that this approach really made it hard to go past our actions themselves. Just by recycling and picking up litter, we felt as though we were good citizens, and it stopped there. We had no idea what the impacts of our actions actually were, we just knew that if we did them, regardless of our own motivations, we would be good citizens, and I think that’s a problem. I think that the emphasis should have been put on our own motivations; we should have wanted to do those things because they helped, and that desire to help should have been what defined us as good citizens. The approach that I experienced during this time in my life really inhibited a higher level of thinking, and limited accountability for our actions. For example, had I gotten in trouble for littering outside, I would counter with “well I picked up three pieces of litter yesterday, so I still did something good at the end of the day” (again, not in so many words, but the essence of my justification is there). As I moved into grade 7, the ideas started to shift.

Gr. 7 – Gr. 12

“Other educators see good citizens as those who participate in the civic affairs and the social life of the community … we call this kind of citizen the participatory citizen.”

Joel Westheimer & Joseph Kahne – What Kind of Citizen? The Politics of Educating for Democracy

As I moved into grade 7, and continued on to grade 12, I experienced the participatory citizen approach. The emphasis was moved past our actions as they stood, to why we did what we did. Taking the ‘pick up litter day’ example from my earlier schooling – it was still done when I was in grades 7 and 8, but we helped organize it for the younger grades, and we actually took the time to learn about why picking up trash and recycling was good. We also took the time to learn that only by having the drive to do something (in this case pick up trash) can we actually make a difference. This initiative was shown in our organization of the event itself. By extension, we were also good citizens based on our motivations and how we acted on them. This all sounds great, but there is still a big problem – the emphasis was placed in the wrong place again. The focus was still very much on us and why we did things, when it should’ve been put on how what we did affected society around us and made positive change. In grade 12, I took a class called ‘Global Issues’ that spoke to this idea a bit. We were encouraged to make positive changes in society – “be the change” is what my teacher would finish class with almost everyday. It put everything into perspective for me, as the participatory citizen approach made it impossible to look at issues at a societal level as opposed to an individual level. It made it impossible to see that some problems are problems with society instead of problems with individuals within society. Now that I’m in university expanding my knowledge on the matter, I can learn from my own experiences and hopefully move to where I want to be as a citizen.