Citizenship

I was always taught that a “good” citizen was obedient. A “good” citizen picks up the trash. A “good” citizen does what the majority legal party tells them to do. A “good” citizen can’t be a leader because a leader was not a normal citizen. A “good” citizen helps out the poor, the elderly, and volunteers their time to help them.

In K-12, there were examples of this “good” citizenship. Each month, our school focused on a certain virtue. These virtues were kindness, generosity, fairness, etc. Each week, a teacher can nominate a student from their class to receive a mention of their virtuous nature. Being a “good” citizen was turned into a sort of contest. Who could hold open the most doors? Who could stay inside during recess and clean up? Whoever could would receive a mention in the morning announcements. At the end of the month, they would hand out a certificate to everyone who got a mention. My Grade 6 teacher would do the same, except instead of a topic virtue, she would simply mention their name. She would only choose one student per week. At the end of the month, they would be given a golden star picture (made out of construction paper) with their name on it with “Keep up the good work”, or something to that effect. We would also have penny races. We were seated in rows. If your row was good, you received a penny. If your row misbehaved, then you would get a penny taken away. Being a good citizen there meant being obedient and not weigh others down. The punishment you would receive was not limited to the penny, either. It was the groaning and anger you got from the others in your row. In other words, if you misbehaved, the teacher could turn the class against you. My teacher in this grade was extremely kind, let me say. She was open to our ideas, was easy-going, was go-with-the-flow, and was a fun teacher. However, I don’t think she realized the full consequences of her penny race trick, even if it did work to keep students quiet and if it was, to be honest, a fun way of getting students to sit in their seats and be quiet. I mostly enjoyed the penny race, but then, I was obedient to the teacher. I’m not sure how trouble-makers would have felt.

This is called “personally responsible citizenship”. This is described when a “citizen acts responsibly in his/her community by, for example, picking up litter, giving blood, recycling, obeying laws, and staying out of debt” (Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J. 2004). In terms of curriculum, it definitely emphasized doing things the way you were taught. For example, you do math equations EXACTLY as the teacher did (show all work, do X number of steps only, don’t skip these particular steps, etc.). Once the teacher got to English, however, they would be shocked by how much people didn’t want to say their ideas. Students are taught that there was one answer for questions, so it didn’t matter to them how “interesting” their idea was if they thought that meant they were wrong. Being wrong was a humiliation, also. Students lack creativity and a proper voice and identity in that sort of situation. They also lack the ability to understand situations complexly. I’d say it was a major hit to the curriculum because the curriculum asks students to learn things at deeper levels. A personally responsible citizen is simply too scared to do that.

A personally responsible citizen, then, is driven by fear. Their main goal is to appease the higher authorities, despite the fact that higher authorities do not make up society. The other citizens make up society. Therefore, it would be natural to rebel and disagree and protest if it meant to improve the lives of those around you. You would still be a good citizen to others even if you can’t be a “good” citizen to the party that holds the most power.