Citizenship Education and the Role of Teachers

I read a publication in my Curriculum class a couple weeks ago called “Educating the ‘Good’ Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals”1, written by Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne, which illustrated what they called the three kinds of citizenship that exist in our society. These three categories are then used as a model within which to educate our kids. The first category of the kinds of citizens that we can educate our students to become is the Personally Responsible Citizen. This is the kind of citizen that conducts his/her self in a personally responsible way: honest, caring, and just. The second type is the Participatory Citizen. This is the person who knows how government agencies work, and who decides to become an active member of his/her community. Lastly, there is the Just-Oriented Citizen, who sees beyond the established structures to identify social problems and find ways of fixing those problems.

What we see when looking at the guidelines of the No Child Left Behind principles, as well as the Character Education Program, under the Safe Schools and Citizenship Education principles (the information on this can be found in the Education website). Under both of these principles, the main focus is to teach students to be caring, respectful, fair, trustworthy, responsible, and giving. They are also taught civic virtue and citizenship2. These qualities are mostly outlined under the Personally Responsible Citizen.

There is nothing wrong with teaching our students to be just and responsible citizens, but are we short-changing them by not teaching them to go beyond that? Shouldn’t we also foster the kind of thinking that can elevate them to become more Participatory and, or Just-Oriented citizens as well? I believe our job as teachers has to go beyond teaching the basics, which are obviously very important, but maybe we can go a step further and encourage our students to think, and to question, and to get the most out of their education so that they can influence society in a positive way.



1. Westheimer & Kahne. "Educating the Good Citizen: Political Choices and Pedagogical Goals"
April 2004, PS Online www.apsanet.org.
2. www.ed.gov