I want to make a claim that an outdoor leisure environment, whether it takes the form of a public park, a private beach, or a green backyard, is correlated with a greater degree of understanding and empathy for our natural landscape. Marcelo Bonta writes of his concern about children of minority or heterogeneous race […]
Filed under: future, fostering identity, natural landscape on June 21st, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Past civic education courses in the United States included some type of civic course. A Carnegie/Circle report on the Civic Mission of the Schools noted that in 1949 a course called “problems of democracy” appeared on 41.5 percent of high school transcripts. Students in those courses learned about government by discussing contemporary issues, often supplemented […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 30th, 2008 | No Comments »
A dutiful model exists in the Facebook/ABC deal to encourage youth participation in politics. Facebook is an online social networking tool that is increasingly used by older age brackets and offline and traditional media outlets, it currently has over 60 million users worldwide (Stone, 2007). Between May 2006 and May 2007, Facebook users newly enrolling […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 29th, 2008 | No Comments »
The dutiful citizen model favors participation in government centered and sanctioned activities. This model includes the following beliefs and activities: obligation to participate in government centered activities; voting is a core democratic act; one becomes informed about issues and government by following mass media, and one joins civil society organizations and/or expresses interests through parties […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 28th, 2008 | No Comments »
Youth will shape how the public engages in the future public sphere. Civic or political participation among the young is lower (11%) when compared to those 38 and older (~18%) (Jenkins, Andolina, Keeter, & Zukin, 2003). Civic participation in non-political groups is found to be more appealing to youth. Campbell, Galston, Niemi, and Rahn (2003) […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 27th, 2008 | No Comments »
Civic engagement can be defined as engaging in any volunteer or community minded group. Here we will emphasize the role of civic groups in the political and advocacy realm. Volunteering oversees or localized groups that focus solely on social justice without policy implications are not included. These organizations certainly should exist but do not always […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 26th, 2008 | No Comments »
The cultural national identity argument claims that Americans are united by an inherited Anglo protestant culture (Huntington, 2004). Cultural proponents do not deny that Americans share a commitment to certain principles, “liberty, equality, democracy, individualism, human rights, the rule of the law, and private property” (Huntington, 2004, 59). For Huntington, the American creed was not […]
Filed under: fostering identity on May 25th, 2008 | No Comments »
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 […]
Filed under: fostering identity, social justice on May 24th, 2008 | No Comments »
For the next few days I’ll post the paper for my American Political Culture and National Identity course. Although the natural environment isn’t mentioned, I think the ideas about fostering identity and desire will be needed when thinking about how to create a desire for a positive future environment among youth.
The paper has changed since […]
Filed under: fostering identity, social justice on May 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »
This is a paper proposal slightly off topic for this blog, but, the idea of civic engagement and youth participation is increasingly central to bringing environmental justice to the forefront of American minds.
The authors and discussion topics so far approached in this course have centered on how we define American national identity and […]
Filed under: fostering identity, observations and opinions, social justice on May 16th, 2008 | No Comments »
