From my K-12 schooling I do not remember a lot of citizenship education that was not a personally responsible citizen. I was taught to be kind, help others, give what you can, and do not argue/ fight. And then I remember being told to vote because that is a big deal. How am I supposed to vote when I do not stand for much or all the ideas that are in my head are someone else’. Because for my whole life I was taught that we must listen to what other people who are smarter than you have to say. I was never really encouraged to make my own discission I was always just told what was right and what was not so excepted. I think that this falls into personally responsible citizen because I was told to do the right thing to help fix but I was never encouraged to fix the problem myself.
In my opinion because of the way that personality responsible citizens were encouraged in my school we get a lot of people that do not what to make decisions for themselves. You think about the drop in numbers of people that vote but I would argue that volunteer hours have gone up. Why is it that we think our little bit of time is so important but that our little vote does not? It does not make sense to me why we grow up in schools always being told what to do and then when we grow up and have to make our own decisions and we ask our friends, or family, or google people get upset. In the article it says how conceptions of “good citizenship” imply conceptions of the good society. The curriculum teaches us to be a good member of society and not to do great things or make change.
The way that our system is set up to produce personally responsible citizens is a broken system that needs to be fixed. In the podcast he talks about how if we want to move forward then we have to go back. I agree that the issues with our citizens today is that they did not get a good education when they were young. That taught them how to question things and how to debate and take change into their own hands. Everyone I think agrees that we want to have Justice-Orientated citizens its just the issue of how do we get there.
Hi Chandra, I can really relate to what you said about feeling like you had to listen to people who are smarter than you which n my experience has always been people who were older than me. I was always taught to assume that older people knew all the answers and that following their advice would allow success.