Blog 8: Curriculum and Citizenship

In my K-12 schooling I cannot remember doing or learning any examples of citizenship. In my elementary years we would go to old folks’ homes to sing to them but it was something we had to do and we never thought anything of it. It just seemed like a nice this to do and many kids also did not like doing it because it felt like we were pressured to. As for in my high school we had to volunteer for credit towards our gym mark so most kids just did score keeping and that’s what I did and to me it did not seem like much. I however in my girl guides and brownies would go to old folks’ homes and would go around and pick up garbage so that would fall under a personally responsible citizen. I have also always thought about giving blood but never seem to find the time to go and do it. I have also donated clothes willingly as I no longer need the clothes and I did that as I thought other need it more then I will as I will never use them again but I feel I learned this more from my parents rather then schooling.

As for the other two which are Justice oriented and participatory citizenship, I have no really experienced throughout my schooling. I personally feel as if they put more of a focus on a personally responsible citizen just from my experiences I have reflected on early in my post. But I can see high school as a whole possibly giving us the example of a Justice oriented citizen just because they challenge us to think out side the box in certain classes and get into the social problems within out world and to think critically. But other then that I personally don’t feel anything was ever not forcefully but pushed or shown to us by our teachers. But with how school is set up it also can limit each of us to become our own citizen as we are pushed in certain directions, they want us to go in. I just feel that the curriculum is almost to jam back for lack of better words. There is not much wiggle room to help define and shape these citizenship values on students throughout their education journey. I personally feel as if not matter how much one wants to add citizenship into the curriculum it goes unnoticed or as in my experience I was almost too young to even understand what they were trying to do or achieve at that time.