Civics

Voting

Voting is an important component of civics. Voting is a great power of citizens of every society. Voting involves studying candidates on the ballot to understand each candidate's position and qualification. Voting also includes understanding the propositions that are on the ballot. Voting directly affects how government functions by selecting the candidate to work in the government.

Taxation

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society, reportedly said by Holmes in a speech in 1904. Money provided by taxation has been used by states and their functional equivalents throughout history to carry out many functions. Some of these include expenditures on war, the enforcement of law and public order, protection of property, economic infrastructure (roads, legal tender, enforcement of contracts, etc.), public works, subsidies, and the operation of government itself.

Governments use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, health care systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, and public transportation. Energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities.

Governments use different kinds of taxes and vary the tax rates. A nation's tax system is often a reflection of its communal values and/or the values of those in power. To create a system of taxation, a nation must make choices regarding the distribution of the tax burden—who will pay taxes and how much they will pay—and how the taxes collected will be spent. In democratic nations where the public elects those in charge of establishing the tax system, these choices reflect the type of community that the public wishes to create. In countries where the public does not have a significant amount of influence over the system of taxation, that system may be more of a reflection on the values of those in power. Wikipedia entry of taxes

Jury duty

Jury duty is a responsibility of a citizen to participate in the legal process. Usually given people to people once a year after a drivers license is issued.

Townhall meeting

The Townhall meeting is another example of civics. Townhall meetings allow government representatives and members of civil society in specific voting districts meet face to face to review issues and show support or opposition to initiatives. Meetings are publicly announced and attendance is open unless otherwise stipulated.

Government

Of special concern are the choice of a form of government and (if this is any form of democracy) the design of an electoral system and ongoing electoral reform. This involves explicitly comparing voting systems, wealth distribution and the decentralization of political and legal power, control of legal systems and adoption of legal codes, and even political privacy — all seen as important to avoid social (civil) dystrophy or a lapse into some undesirable state of totalitarianism or theocracy. Each of these concerns tends to make the process of governance different, as variations in these norms tend to produce a quite different kind of state. Civics was often simply concerned with the balance of power between say an aristocracy and monarchy—a concern echoed to this day in the struggles for power between different levels of rulers—say of the weaker nation-states to establish a binding international law that will have an effect even on the stronger ones. Thus world government is itself properly a civic problem. Also, it is the study of duties and rights of citizenship and right to an ID.

On smaller scales, modern human development theory attempts to unify ethics and small-scale politics with the urban and rural economies of sustainable development. Notable theorists including Jane Jacobs and Carol Moore argue that political secession of either cities or distinct bio regions and cultures is an essential pre-requisite to applying any widely shared ethics, as the ethical views of urban and rural people, different cultures or those engaged in different types of agriculture, are irreconcilably different. This extreme advocacy of decentralization is hardly uncommon, and leads to the minimal theory of civics – anarchism.

Civics refers not to the ethical or moral or political basis by which a ruler acquires power, but only to the processes and procedures they follow in actually exercising it.

Recently, the concept of global civics has also been suggested as a way of applying civics in the highly interdependent and globalized world of the 21st century. Many people feel that increasing knowledge and awareness of individual citizen's rights can enhance global political and economic understanding. Nations such as the United States have been criticized for minimizing public civics education opportunities in the past several years.

Examples of different types

Most civic theories are more trusting of public institutions, and can be characterizing on a scale from least (mob rule) to most (the totalitarian) degree of trust placed in the government. At the risk of extreme oversimplification, an historical view of civic theory in action suggests that the theories be ranked as follows:

Rationale for civic education in the United States

The promotion of democratic values has been an important concern for policy-makers - to impact people´s political perceptions, to encourage political participation, and to foster the principles enshrined in the Constitution (e.g. liberty, freedom of speech, civil rights). The subject of “Civics” has been integrated into the Curriculum and Content Standards, to enhance the comprehension of democratic values in the educational system. Civic literature has found that “engaging young children in civic activities from an early age is a positive predictor of their participation in later civic life”.

As an academic subject, Civics has the instructional objective to promote knowledge that is aligned with self-governance and participation in matters of public concern. These objectives advocate for an instruction that encourages active student participation in democratic decision-making environments, such as voting to elect a course representative for a school government, or deciding on actions that will affect the school environment or community. Thus the intersection of individual and collective decision making activities, are critical to shape “individual´s moral development”. To reach those goals, civic instructors must promote the adoption of certain skills and attitudes such as “respectful argumentation, debate, information literacy”, to support “the development of morally responsible individuals who will shape a morally responsible and civically minded society". In the 21st century, young people are less interested in direct political participation (i.e. being in a political party or even voting), but are motivated to use digital media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook). Digital media enable young people to share and exchange ideas rapidly, enabling the coordination of local communities that promote volunteerism and political activism, in topics principally related to human rights and environmental subjects.

Young people are constructing and supporting their political identities in the 21st century by using social media, and digital tools (e.g. text messaging, hashtags, videos) to share, post, reply an opinion or attitude about a political/social topic and to promote social mobilization and support through online mechanism to a wide and diverse audience. Therefore, civics' end-goal in the 21st century must be oriented to “empower the learners to find issues in their immediate communities that seem important to the people with whom they live and associate”, once “learners have identified with a personal issue and participated in constructing a collective framing for common issues”.

Current state of civic education in the United States

According to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, one of the purposes of Civic Education is to “foster civic competence and responsibility” which is promoted through the Center for Civic Education’s We the People and Project Citizen initiatives. However, there is a lack of consensus for how this mission should be pursued. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) reviewed state civic education requirements in the United States for 2012. The findings include:

The lack of state-mandated student accountability relating to civics may be a result of a shift in emphasis towards reading and mathematics in response to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

Students are also demonstrating that their civic knowledge leaves much to be desired. A National Center for Education Statistics NAEP report card for civics (2010) stated that “levels of civic knowledge in U.S. have remained unchanged or even declined over the past century”. Specifically, only 24 percent of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders were at or above the proficient level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in civics. Traditionally, civic education has emphasized the facts of government processes detached from participatory experience. In an effort to combat the existing approach, the National Council for the Social Studies developed the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. The C3 Framework emphasizes “new and active approaches” including the “discussion of controversial issues and current events, deliberation of public issues, service-learning, action civics, participation in simulation and role play, and the use of digital technologies”.

Civic education in the United States in the 21st century

According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, among teens 12–17 years old, 95% have access to the Internet, 70% go online daily, 80% use social networking sites, and 77% have cell phones. As a result, participatory culture has become a staple for today’s youth, affecting their conceptualization of civic participation. They use Web 2.0 tools (i.e. blogs, podcasts, wikis, social media) to: circulate information (blogs and podcasts); collaborate with peers (wikis); produce and exchange media; and connect with people around the world via social media and online communities. The pervasiveness of participatory digital tools has led to a shift in the way adolescents today perceive civic action and participation. Whereas 20th century civic education embraced the belief of “dutiful citizenship” and civic engagement as a “matter of duty or obligation;” 21st century civic education has shifted to reflect youths' “personally expressive politics” and “peer-to-peer relationships” that promote civic engagement.

This shift in students' perceptions has led to classroom civic education experiences that reflect the digital world in which 21st century youth now live, in order to make the content both relevant and meaningful. Civics education classrooms in the 21st century now seek to provide genuine opportunities to actively engage in the consumption, circulation, discussion, and production of civic and political content via Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging, wikis, and social media. Although these tools offer new ways for engagement, interaction, and dialogue, educators have also recognized the need to teach youth how to interact both respectfully and productively with their peers and members of online communities. As a result, many school districts have also begun adopting Media Literacy Frameworks for Engaged Citizenship as a pedagogical approach to prepare students for active participatory citizenship in today’s digital age. This model includes critical analysis of digital media as well as a deep understanding of media literacy as a “collaborative and participatory movement that aims to empower individuals to have a voice and to use it.”

Criticism of civic education

Sudbury schools contend that values, social justice and democracy must be learned through experience as Aristotle said: "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." They adduce that for this purpose schools must encourage ethical behavior and personal responsibility. In order to achieve these goals schools must allow students the three great freedoms—freedom of choice, freedom of action and freedom to bear the results of action—that constitute personal responsibility. The "strongest, political rationale" for democratic schools is that they teach "the virtues of democratic deliberation for the sake of future citizenship." This type of education is often alluded to in the deliberative democracy literature as fulfilling the necessary and fundamental social and institutional changes necessary to develop a democracy that involves intensive participation in group decision making, negotiation, and social life of consequence.