The types of citizenship focused on this week in lecture and in the article was personally responsible citizen which describes a citizen who will make a good person to function well in society, to maintain their position in society and not stand out. Participatory citizen is describing as someone who goes beyond maintaining their position in society to help create and organize solutions to solve problems that are going on in our society. The last type of citizen described in the article is the justice orientated citizen, this type of citizen questions societal norms. Justice orientated citizen is a person who questions the ethical and moral reasons for the societal norms and they put themselves in the position to acknowledge an equal ethical society and how we can get there as a whole country and society. In my schooling career the main focus was creating a personally responsible citizen, to be a functioning part of society. In my high school there was a citizenship shift, it was to focus on more of a participatory citizenship. We would practice organization of our own personal dances, graduation, and school functions but also in class we focused more on the participatory citizen. I took environmental science in grade 12 and one of the projects was a community action plan. We were in groups of two and we had to come up with a project that involved ourselves, making the environment better with the community. My partner and I started a community garden so we planned our own garden then opened it up for community members to be a part of, so there was a participatory citizenship focus in my high school career.
The approach to citizenship in my school was limited to exactly what the Saskatchewan curriculum stated, there was no push to look further beyond what is written and explore the tough topics such as Indigenous education. There is no curriculum on how to teach Indigenous and treaty education because it can be taught in so many different ways and it is difficult to teach but I felt as if I missed out on important education because the citizenship of my classmates and my teachers. I went to school with three reserves all within an hour driving distance but I never learned treaty education. I would have so much empathy for an Indigenous student who walked into my old high school and it was never acknowledged what treaty land the school and all the students were on.
