Citizenship and the Curriculum – October 25

        I can honestly say I have never heard of citizenship education. After reading, watching the video and listening to the podcast, I am now a little more informed. I never recognized much of the education being about citizenship. Many activities happened in my elementary school that was mandatory to participate in. We would be scolded if we did not sing along to “O Canada.” It was mandatory that we did the Terry Fox Run and ran the entire way. It was also mandatory to participate in Christmas concerts, school plays, and school assemblies. I recall getting in trouble many times for not wanting to participate in the plays or assemblies. When I moved onto high school, we were still expected to sing “O Canada” every morning, even to the instrumental version. We still needed to do the Terry Fox run, but we also needed to do service hours for one class. We were expected to donate bottles and cans to the food drive and always aim for a higher number every year.

        My schools balanced between personally responsible citizens and participatory citizens. We were told we needed to participate and be responsible to better our future selves. We would go and volunteer yearly with different non-profit organizations for our Christian service hours. As we chose where we went, we did not choose to do it or not, as we would fail then. From grades 9-11, they would donate their cans and non-perishable foods, as grade 12’s would organize the whole food drive. While in my senior year, we donated over 22,000lbs of food to the food bank, which set a school record for us, and we beat out competing schools. During my time in school, I do not think that justice-oriented citizens were pushed on us or even brought up. We never questioned anything, and a lot of topics went unaddressed. We grew up thinking that we needed to be a part of everything and do things for everyone else when that is not always the case. I was never taught in school that it is ok to be a bit selfish sometimes and do things that make you happy; it was always to please others and put them before yourself.

        When schools make things mandatory, for example, the Christian service hours, it does not always make people want to help/volunteer. A lot of students only did it because it was worth almost half of their grade. Only one out of the four years did I ever enjoy my volunteering, and that’s because I was able to do it with my friends around. When the curriculum pushes something too much, it can stop students from wanting to do anything. Schools want to create a “good student,” they base a lot of the curriculum around that. In this case, they want to make the “good student” by having them volunteer and participate in mandatory activities.