Robyn Affentranger
Civic Participating Essay
Article:
Reiss, Dawn. "Teaching Civic Engagement Is Essential." District Administration Vol. 48. Issue 9. May 2012. 57-61. Web. 25 Apr. 2015. http://www.districtadministration.com/article/why-teaching-civic-engagement-essential
Introduction:
Reiss says “If schools don’t test students’ civic knowledge and skills, they become afterthoughts in education, especially in schools where many pupils are at risk of failing the subjects that are tested. Yet in the schools where students are tested in civics, teachers tend to focus on the basic facts of government instead of teaching students principles they can apply as engaged citizens.” Therefore the answer to this problem is to train civics
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The subject---teaching civics to students---is being analyzed using the seven steps for rhetorical analysis from textbook:
Step 1: Read the article over thoroughly: Following the first step, I read the article twice and made notes.
Step 2: Place the article in rhetorical context: Rhetorical means to in write in a persuasive manner whereas context is the setting of any event. The rhetorical context therefor is the situation or setting that surrounds your act of writing---- the what, the purpose, the audience, and the situation.
Step 3: Summarize the article:
• Subject: The subject of this article is the importance of teaching civic engagement in school. The New York Times defines civic engagement as working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference . . . promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. The need to teach this is what the article is about;
• Purpose: The purpose (what the article is trying to accomplish) is to argue in favor changing our educational curriculum to one that teaches civic engagement in
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Fordham Institute, an education-policy think tank within a nonprofit organization. “We know that if you test kids on their civic knowledge they do pretty poorly, but it’s probably been that way for a long time . . . (but recently) you’ve started to hear people say it’s important to focus on college, career and citizenship.”;
• Marcie Taylor-Thoma, vice chairperson of the Maryland Commission for Civic Literacy which was created in 1997 to promote civic education by developing programs to educate students and by preparing resources to assist civics educators. “There’s a tie in to participation that comes from learning about civics at a young age and through higher education. Successful people are those who understand how government works and what it means to be a citizen”;
• Peter Levine, Director of Research at CIRCLE, who has written a variety of books including: “Reforming the Humanities and Engaging Young People in Civic Life”. Levine says that in inserting the No Child Left Behind Act. in 2003, civics is no longer an important test. “Colleges aren’t saying they need civics for admissions . .
A democracy can not function without people engaging in it by carrying out tasks that include voting. If one does not know much about an activity or group, they are less likely to participate in it, revealing that education on government involvement is exceedingly important. The appeals to logic help the readers understand the necessity of civic learning and how crucial it is to get students to take part in and fully comprehend what a democracy
...adults compared to older adults were less likely to respond that voting was extremely important for good citizenship (133). He concludes that it is too late for the generation of young adults that do not feel voting is an important civic responsibility, however, that it is not too late to convince them that politics matter by showing them that they are giving their opportunity to make important decisions that may impact their lives to others who have different ideas. One may agree with Wattenberg’s idea that habits follow people throughout their lives instead of changing as they cycle in life. His personal accounts are an impactful way to illustrate the importance of building a sense of duty at a young age and carrying that responsibility throughout one’s life.
Americans and Britons had a stronger sense of civic duty and and civic competence, believed they could “do something’ about an unjust law, and that citizens should be active in one’s community. While Americans lagged behind Austria, the Netherlands, West Germany, and the United Kingdom in voter participation, they seemed to be much more involved in other areas such as campaigning, being active in the local community, and contacting government official. But in “Bowling Alone,” Robert Putnam states that not only has voter turnout declined, but so has citizen participation in politics and government. This is because they are more self-reliant now. People do not vote because they do not care. They believe the democratic values this nation was built upon do not exist
4Lopez, Hugo and Benjamin Brown. 2006. Civic Engagement among 2-year and 4-year College Students. Somerville, MA: The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
It is our civic right and duty to actively participate in governmental affairs. This recent election really highlighted the divide in opinion regarding the importance of governmental participation. “To many, our democratic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter,” West writes in his essay entitled The Deep Democratic Tradition in America. Young people feel unimportant and irrelevant, which explains the lack in turnout from young voters ages 18-29. However, it wasn’t just young voters that didn’t turnout. Millions of eligible voters didn’t show up for the 2016 elections. A democracy without active participants is a democracy bound for
Becoming a critical reader means learning to recognize audiences, writers, points of view and purposes, and to evaluate arguments. In addition to the rhetorical triangle, structure of an argument, and rhetorical appeals, you should look at the following devices used by authors when performing critical analysis. Keep in mind too that these are only some of the devices, and that authors may use other rhetorical devices as well.
To make matters worse, civic participation, like voting, simply becomes a way for citizens to “console themselves”(9). For it remains an expression of free-will by the people in which they feel like they influenced politics, but in reality, they were just choosing a selection from predetermined options. Tocqueville writes all of this as a warning to Americans of the dangers of allowing themselves to focus too much on material goods because all of this is fake and detrimental to American democracy and humanity. Ultimately, Tocqueville does believe that these issues can be avoided as long as citizens engage in civic association with one another to the extent that they then are forced to challenge the norm and think critically about the nature of political life.
"most students are already rhetorically savvy but unaware of their critical processes..." Author Jane Fife puts the three rhetorical analysis pieces to work, ethos pathos and logos, in an attempt to teach rhetorical analysis in a classroom. Fife uses a collaboration of all three types of rhetorical analysis. While the author does make good use of the first two pieces of rhetorical analysis, Pathos, and Logos, Fife strays away from the use of Ethos in her article. Fife applies the rhetorical appeals of Pathos and Logos to teach rhetoric to her class and the reader. However, her use of examples in a classroom backed up with little evidence to prove her authority surrounding the subject causes her readers to doubt her claim that Facebook and
Education is the foundation of American society. It empowers the youth of America to become the successful leaders this country needs for the future. Education has been one of America’s top priorities since 1965, when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed. Now, education is controlled by the No Child Left Behind Act, which was launched in January 8, 2002. This act was passed with intentions from the government to provide Americans with a more superior education system. However, The No Child Left Behind Act carried many flaws which were left unseen to a vast majority of the public. This act limited American students by not allowing them to demonstrate their full academic potentials while proceeding in school. While the act was still fairly fresh, there was already evidence to prove that it had already gotten off to a bad beginning. For the crucial math and science courses, statistics showed minimal improvements which had begun around the time period in which the No Child Left Behind Act was passed. The act was also supported by a number of educators who voiced themselves by testifying against having the right to teach at their own free will. Teachers across America claimed that because of this new act, they felt a constant heaviness upon their shoulders from the state government to “Teach the test.”
However, through this course I have also come to recognize that due to the negative perception that is placed on our generation, the political objectives of young people will likely never be given adequate consideration by public officials should we continue to practice engaged citizenship while disregarding electoral participation. My personal definition of citizenship is recognizing the privileges we have as citizens of the United States and contributing to one’s community in whatever way they are able to do so. A responsible citizen is not simply an observer of the political process, but rather an informed
Green, Donald. "Youth Voting” THE CENTER FOR INFORMATION & RESEARCH ON CIVIC LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT. Tufts University, 2012. Web. 02 Oct 2013. .
To achieve civic engagement is undertaken in many diverse ways. These are determined by several factors, amongst them the purpose of the civic engagement, the people involved in it, the funds to be involved amongst others. The...
The recent decline in young people’s participation in political and civic activities has resulted in a revival within the field of civic education. Formal education institutions are not the only ones concerned about youth engagement, however. A number of community agencies and nonprofits are active at the local level throughout the country. They are working to engage young people through a variety of methods, few of which have been researched to determine their effectiveness. One such community e...
..., Robert D. Putnam’s theory that civic culture is enough to sustain democracy is not accurate because situations like the backsliding of Weimar Germany away from democracy can happen even with the presence of a high civic culture. Instead of focusing on improving the numbers of people that a part of associational memberships, read newspapers and other media outlets, the number of people that turnout for national elections and the amount of informed voters there needs to be a focus on improving the quality of Civic Participation. There needs to focus on eliminating polarized cleavages within society and eliminating media bias in favor of bipartisan coverage in order to achieve the ‘right’ civic participation. There also needs to be a stable economy where people are not worried about not
Citizenship education has become a keystone of democratic governments such as those found in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Other forms of state government (autocracies, oligarchies, monarchies, theocracies, et al.) impose limitations on the rights of its citizens, so therefore the majority of their population will never need to learn what it takes to actually participate in government, and they just learn to follow the mandated laws or else face the consequences. The ability to actively function in a democratic society is not instinctual; it is in fact a learned skill. In her research, L. Alison Molina-Giron (2016) describes how the study of citizenship has become fundamental to democracies because “citizenship education must prepare youngsters to [actively participate]… in their nation’s civic and political life. Indeed, democracy not only