What Is Civic Engagement And Civic Education?

The most serious danger American now face, greater than terrorism, is that our country’s future may not end up in the hands of a citizenry capable of sustaining the liberty that has been American’s most precious legacy. If trends continue, many young Americans will grow up without an understanding of the benefits, privileges, and duties of citizens in a free society, and without acquiring the habits of character needed to live responsibly in one (William Damon, 2001).
This is not the condition only for America but almost in the whole Asia, especially in Pakistan. Novel social and political realities lead almost all countries to turn their focus on the civic engagement and civic education as well. Novel political and social veracity within

Perhaps the numbers of definitions of civic engagement and scholars and professional who have their concern with it are same. This shows that still there is no proper and standardized definition of civic engagement. Making the issue difficult further is that terms and concepts (e.g. democratic participation citizenship, and community engagement) frequently used interchangeably to indicate civic engagement. It tends to be conflated with campus programs and initiatives that fall under the headings of community based learning and service learning. Several colleges and universities have renamed their community service or service learning offices civic engagement but have not altered the programs or services they offer (Jacoby, 2009). Universities have used a mixture of terms to portray their civic engagement actions and the ways these actions link to knowledge. Some of the most extensively used are community engagement, Civic education, community based research and learning, service learning, community experiences and philanthropy education. Irrespective of the phrase used if part of the reason of the actions is to teach or to enhance the understanding of civic life, the work usually can be titled as civic engagement (Cress, 2010). The civic engagement can be characterized through service learning actions if the notion of civic engagement is prolonged to include non-political engagement with the community. When investigators describe civic engagement as behavior changes around political involvement, service learning does not appear to play a role but when the definition is lingered to comprise no- political community involvement a connection between the two, service learning and civic engagement begins to emerge (Prentice,