Active Citizenship
A few days ago, I traded a couple of emails with a friend of mine. She's a high school English teacher and I reached out to her to resolve a grammar issue that stumped my merry band of grammatically challenged hooligans. With all that's going on in the world, the topic naturally moved to the issue of the day and I vented my frustration with people who passionately voiced their opinions despite an ephemeral understanding. She replied with an elegant yet powerful paragraph framing her goals as a teacher.
Her statement was direct. "I teach active citizenship." Dynamic and seductive, who could disagree with a statement like that? But why, then, has that one statement weighed heavily on my mind since I read it? Active citizenship. What about that actually bothers me?
First, I suppose in the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I'm not a fan of democracy. I'm part of the tradition that began with Plato, believing that democracy invariably degenerates into the rule of the flatterer. Flatter the masses, tell them how smart they are and you will win your post. Sad, but true. Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all others." That is, perhaps,closer to what I believe but I'm looking for something better- something to break the cycle of Democracy- Republic- Monarchy- Despotism ad infinitum. Until I find it, the rule of the mob will have to do.
To my mind, implicit in the word 'citizen' is activity. Otherwise the proper word would be 'subject.' In De Toqueville's Democracy in America (an oft quoted but little read book), he writes of how the criminal in America is the enemy of every man because citizens have a stake. In Europe, the criminal is only the enemy of the King. Having spent a great deal of time in Europe, I know this attitude is still true. The European engagement with the poltical process is mostly centered around social services provided.
But what kind of 'activity' shall we have? What about our civic duties? Do we get to decide what they are or does the State? Civic duty is a term that has fallen out of vogue. These day, it seems that people are far more interested in what the Country can do for them instead of what they can do for their Country. Is paying taxes adequate fulfillment of my obligation to my Country? Most people think that it is. And I would suspect that most educators under the age of 50 feel that they owe the Country nothing more than a check. Is this loss of civic duty a lack of citizenship instruction or of substandard instruction?
Teaching a subject, any subject, implies that the teacher is more knowledgable about the topic than the student. In the case of citizenship, how many teachers are actually qualified to teach this topic? Naturally, this leads to a debate about what is citizenship. It's really quite simple. Citizenship is contribution to the body politic. One of my Marines, when asked why he joined the Corps, said that he enlisted because he wanted to be able to criticize the Country and he wouldn't feel comfortable doing so until he made a contribution. Who taught him that? I suspect that this 19 year old Marine didn't come up with such a thought on his own. Another example of this is my friend Baby Gator. At 25, she's as smart as anyone I've ever met coupled with a breakneck work ethic and near limitless ability. Clearly on the fast track, her major concern is that she is not contributing enough, not doing all she could for her Country. And to truly piss you off, she's beautiful to boot.
By this standard, I would have to say that the vast majority of my academic teachers and professors were not great examples of citizenship. Most of them weren't bad either but a teacher should be an exemplar of the topic he is teaching and I only had half a dozen teacher and professors who would qualify. Is this an issue of patriotism? I don't think so. I distrust overt displays of patriotism. I'm reminded of this old Cuban man who told me over a morning Cuban coffee, apropos of nothing, that if my woman started becoming very affectionate with me and telling her friends how great I was, she was definitely cheating on me. I think the principle applies to overt patriotism. But citizenship is something else. It's a matter of focus. It's a question of gratitude.
Duty is the sublimest word in the language. You can never do more than your duty. You should never wish to do any less.
-Robert E. Lee
The fact of the matter is that none of my academic instructors taught me a single thing about duty. And what is citizenship if not duty? I don't think school is where you learn to be a good citizen. I don't think it can be. Your grade is unaffected by your character or lack of it. Citizenship is about character, not cleverness, and academic institutions have been unable to teach it for quite some time. With the emphasis on grades, I think that school often teaches the wrong thing. Perhaps the pedagogy has advanced to the point where this has changed. That's possible. But watching the news and reading the paper makes me no more of a citizen than watching sports on TV makes me an athlete. I learned more about character in the judo dojo. Duty found its meaning when I had teammates on a waterpolo team who depended on me. The books I read that taught me about my duty as an American were ones I sought out myself. There is a fine line between education and indoctrination. And unfortunately, it's a line that the Education establishment doens't draw clearly enough.
posted by Kahuna6 at 7:58 PM
13 Comments:
Your point that active citizenship requires sincere commitment and understanding of the benefits of citizenship is well taken. Your assumption that grades preclude teaching students how to become active citizens, however, may be misinformed. Many teachers set up classrooms and curriculum that teach students how to engage as active community members who choose to contribute. Whether walking door to door to register neighborhood voters, proposing a parks renewal project to city council or hosting a teach-in, raising funds, and writing letters to congressmen, teachers can educate students to choose to participate in their communities. Whether this is rewarded in their grade is another thing entirely. It takes a great deal of energy to create such efforts and align them with state course content standards. Many schools simply place too much effort on high stakes testing to allow teachers any flexibility to educate beyond rigid, discipline-bound standards. Not all teachers are equipped to teach beyond the test, either, no thanks to poor teacher education programs and desperate administrators who will slap an emergency credential in the damp grip of just about any warm, sentient body, these days. At least in California.
Students do choose to contribute to their communities, often at the expense of precious hours of sleep, work requirements or even course work. It's troubling that more teachers are not given the training and leeway to work with students in a manner that lets them contribute to their immediate and greater communities.
5:05 PM
Thank you for taking the time to write your comments. I sincerely appreciate your contribution.
However, I still stand behind what I have written. Grades do determine where a student puts the bulk of his energy. Is there a grade for citizenship? Does it in anyway immpact your GPA? It doesn't matter what kind of curriculum is set up by a well meaning teacher. If citizenship is not going to be measured and counted when applying to higher institutions (or grad school), why should I, as a student, bother?
I can only speak from my own experience which I admit is limited. But I have an advanced degree so I have been through my share of schooling. Do I have a right to judge teachers? As much as a patient has the right to judge his doctor. Out of all the academic teachers, I have experienced, how many placed such an emphasis on citizenship that it affected my grade? None. If this emphasis on citizenship is as widespread as you claim, I should have had at least one teacher who exhibited it, right?
Perhaps I wasn't clear. (I probably wasn't) The issue isn't so much about active citizenship as it is active citizenship vs. good citizenship. Now we can certainly have a longer conversation regarding what is a good citizen but that's a different issue. I merely point out that activity doesn't necessarily mean goodness. I recognize the implicit assumption- that my friend believes active citizenship to be good but I don't believe she would teach it if she believed otherwise.
I'm not entirely sure of the point you wish to make. Teachers work hard often at the expense of sleep. I know that. Students do as well. I know that too. Perhaps the problem is administrative but teachers are notoriously prickly about such interference. Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard, was villified because he wished to reign in some of the faculty gone amuck. None of the professorate defended him.
The bottom line is that I don't believe school are capable of teaching character and therefore, any attempts to teach citizenship will be abortive. Character is the sine qua non of citizenship. Without character, citizen is form without substance. If I send my son to school (I don't really have a son) to learn math, English, and science, I expect him to learn math, English and science. He's not there to learn a teacher's amateur philosophy or to be indoctrinated in a political ideology. My belief is not that teachers don't do enough but try, in good faith, to do far too much.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
Thank you again for you contribution. I hope you stop by again.
8:32 PM
Because you never discuss the various manifestations of civic duty, I stumble over your pessimistic assertion that “most educators under 50 feel they owe the Country nothing more than a check.” Similarly, because it remains unclear what qualifies for you as “a contribution to the body politic,” it is difficulty for me to understand why you believe most teachers are not qualified to teach citizenship. However, I am sure you would agree that civic duty could take on many forms beyond enlisting in your nation’s military forces. Teachers take on the responsibility of providing rising generations with the core knowledge and skills necessary to actively participate in, and perhaps even improve, their communities. For example, an English teacher’s fundamental goals are to teach a student to read critically and write for a variety of purposes and audiences. Most English teachers I know, myself included, believe there is tremendous power in the written word and that being able to identify and use rhetorical devices in a given text allows us to understand how we are persuaded to believe in another’s ideas and how we can develop convincing arguments ourselves. Such skills, which fall under the nebulous category of critical thinking skills, can prevent us from being snowed into buying material items for the wrong reasons based on slick advertisement techniques or falling victim to more dangerous propaganda. Critical thinking is the keystone of active citizenship. Your friend who decided he could not criticize the Country without contributing was demonstrating just this.
Furthermore, while I agree with you that it is important for teachers to resist the temptation to indoctrinate their students according to their personal political persuasions, teachers, whether they are conscious of it or not, are indoctrinating students in American values. After all, America’s public education roots are firmly planted in this purpose—to gather children from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and teach them a common and unifying core of knowledge, mythology and skills that serves the country’s economic and political progress. Therefore, teaching children is indeed a civic duty-- it is a contribution to the larger society. In my seven years of teaching, nearly one thousand students have passed through my classroom. Equipping a thousand people with improved literacy skills, not to mention the peripheral skills, ethics, and ideas that are taught through the literature we read and the discussions generated, is a significant contribution to the Country. Therefore, I believe I am qualified to teach citizenship.
However, above and beyond what I maintain is the civic duty intrinsic in the act of teaching our nation’s youth, most teachers I know seem to have an inherent drive to improve and protect their communities, a drive at the heart of civic duty. These teachers create curriculum that models and demonstrates this value, and perhaps even provides students with the opportunity to experience civic participation. At minimum, a Humanities teacher will expose students to a variety of American leaders who have created change in their communities models the character, values and pathways necessary to become an active citizen. But many of us go beyond this level of exposure to experiential learning as well. It is not difficult for me to incorporate civic duty into a grade-based system. For example, during the last election year, my students were required to participate in a campaign effort for a candidate of their choosing running for any level of political office. A certain number of hours, an evaluation by a supervisor, a final paper and presentation all contributed to a cumulative grade.
But even better, I watch students move towards voluntary active citizenship as a result of having this value modeling for them by teachers and their curriculum. And this leads me to respond to your statements on the role that character (or according to you, lack thereof) plays in school. I think civic duty does indeed begin with watching or reading the news, and doing so is not the same as watching or reading sports. The action of educating ourselves in the activities of our nation and other nations is the beginning of recognizing the larger communities to which we belong. Therefore, we begin to care about these larger communities; we begin to realize how we influence (both positively and negatively) them, and then often, our investment in these larger communities grows. For example, over the last two years of teaching at a private school based in a low-income, African-American neighborhood, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the lack of interaction between the school and its surrounding community. My students regarded members of the neighborhood with suspicion, fear and gross generalizations. Furthermore, the community itself is in crisis, wrestling with the usual suspects that emerge in a poor neighborhood—gangs, drugs, homicide. So I started attending meetings at city hall with our district supervisor, who wants to harness the interfaith community in this district to become a force that responds to the community’s problems. This led to the idea of an interfaith teen council. All I had to do is choose 4-5 students who I have watched become increasingly conscious and concerned for the worlds beyond the small one they move through on a daily basis (home, school), who demonstrate leadership and initiative, character traits I am convinced they learned, at least partially, in school. These students started accompanying me at the city council meetings--not because their participation was required or counted towards a grade. But simply because they care and they want to live up to the expectations of mentors they respect. I think this example illustrates that schools are quite capable of helping students build character. Earning an A on a paper after a semester’s worth of Bs and Cs, being caught cheating and suffering not only concrete consequences, but also the disapproval of a teacher you respect, overcoming the fear of public speaking, these are all character building experiences that take place in schools.
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