Throughout my time in school, I can only recall a few times we had mentions of citizenship or talking about what citizenship means. It wasn’t until really middle years or early high school when I can even recall addressing the issue. Our sovereignty from the British was a big topic for history in later years and the significance of our own identity. The problem with the way I learnt it, was that we got a very eurocentric view on citizenship that really began to mold an almost ignorant view of proper citizenship. Luckily coming form a family of immigrants, it was still easy to the struggles and difficulties there are when it comes to citizenship.

In school I was given a very personally oriented citizen with some teachers taking the initiative and pushing a Justice oriented agenda. Although I graduated nearly a decade ago, it was still extremely eurocentric with little coverage of common events or why they were happening. I admit, even the example we used in class was rather eye opening as I was aware of the situation, but not the underlying circumstances causing it. Having just a personally oriented view on citizenship really makes it hard to be a progressive society and help our students taktion themselves. It does try to promote volunteering and important qualities like compassion which makes them more community oriented, but we need to challenge students to think more critically really look deeper into the issues themselves. Engagement very much is a two way street and until we can get students to actively participate and engage themselves, the shift in orientation towards citizenship will be incredibly hard to change.