Unit 1: Citizenship in Young Students

       As I read about civic education and citizenship in our schools I found myself constantly coming back to the age of my students.  As a first-grade teacher, many of the ideas presented in the readings seemed out of reach for myself and my students to address. 

      While reading, What Kind of Citizen? about the three kinds of citizens, personally responsible citizen; the participatory citizen; and the justice oriented citizen (Westheimer, J. & Kahne, J.

2004), I found that most of my time teaching is spent teaching my students to be personally responsible citizens.  They often learn about how to put things away themselves, take care of their own needs, and follow the rules (laws) of the classroom.  As teachers, we encourage and organize ways for students to give back to the school and community through fundraisers and recycling programs but all of these are adult created and adult coordinated.  As the article says, there is a current push toward teaching students to be not just participatory citizens but also justice oriented citizens.  As I read about the studies they completed I still found myself envisioning the success of this with six year olds. 

       Once I moved to Young Children's Everyday Civics I found that I was not alone in teaching young students just to be personally responsible citizens and often for many of the same reasons that I had already encountered.  There were challenges to teaching civics and citizenship to young students, first, the field of social studies uses frames of analyzing citizenship education based on studies of older students and second, predetermined adult ideas (and ideals) of what it means to act civically dominate our conceptions of civic education for young children (Payne, 2018). So, I wondered what needed to change about practices already in place to ensure advancement in teaching young students to move beyond personally responsible citizens. 

       As I thought about my own teaching and what could be changed I found that many of the lessons and expectations for students to be personally responsible citizens do not need to change.  I would argue as well that for young students it is imperative to spend a large amount of time teaching students the expectations of being personally responsible citizens.  Without the foundations, just as anything else in learning, we cannot move onto the other steps.  Participatory citizens are personally responsible citizens with an added layer.  Without the groundwork in early years, students will not be able to successfully navigate other types of citizenship. 

       This being said, once students have a strong hold on the basics, as the article discussed we can move beyond, but not from an adult perspective.  Students are already in many ways participating as responsible citizens in a community in some form during lunch, recess, and other interactions.  Payne states, while we know that young children can and do deal with issues that face the larger public (e.g., questions about race and racism) (Doucet & Adair, 2013), we also observed how their everyday relationships and interactions highlighted a different vision of being civic and more caring and relational idea of the common good (Payne, 2018).  This tells me that we can use the systems already in place and amend them to fulfill the needs of citizenship education in some cases.  Young students must be given the opportunity to learn to be personally responsible citizens but adults can grow their understanding of citizenship by capitalizing on the systems and ideals the students already have in place.