Our Future Environment

How to foster a sense of shared identity or ideals is difficult to answer when Americans, and “potential Americans” appear, act and think differently because they are from, or choose to identify with, different countries with different social practices and ideals. Schlesinger (1998), Putnam (2007), and others argue that a “cult of ethnicity” is set to create socio-cultural splits among Americans and immigrants and creates a people who have disbelief in or little understanding of democracy and civic engagement, individual participation, and shared identity. Although these arguments have supportive evidence, I would add that Americans and immigrants alike, regardless of cultural or ethnic background, do not act in ways to support a shared identity or political participation because there are many social, economic and political forces pushing each person to consider personal preference over shared identity or civic engagement.
These arguments led me to ask how do we bring American identity and political culture back into mainstream discussion, discussion that can combine diverse voices and the roots of the country into a whole American identity?
This paper focuses on how to reinvigorate a discussion of what American political culture and identity is and can be into a spatial combination of online and offline public school civic course environments. I pull apart this proposal by describing and analyzing opposing paradigms of youth engagement and the ideal citizen, online and offline participation, and past and present uses of civic education and technology in New York City public schools.  By focusing on civic engagement I do not intend to define American identity as solely a civic one. I argue that youth, both recent immigrants and American born, must be internally motivated and encouraged to participate in a public political sphere as a step towards a future American identity and political culture.

Filed under: fostering identity, social justice on May 24th, 2008