an essay on good citizen

Essay on Good Citizen

Students are often asked to write an essay on Good Citizen in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Good Citizen

Defining a good citizen.

A good citizen is someone who respects others and their property. They are involved in their community and work to make it a better place.

Characteristics of a Good Citizen

Good citizens are responsible and respectful. They obey laws, pay taxes, and help their neighbors. They also participate in community activities.

The Importance of Being a Good Citizen

Being a good citizen is important for a healthy society. It encourages respect, kindness, and cooperation. It also helps to create a positive environment for everyone.

250 Words Essay on Good Citizen

The essence of a good citizen.

Being a good citizen, an often understated role, is a crucial aspect of any functioning society. It transcends the mere act of abiding by the law and delves into the realm of moral and social responsibilities.

Understanding the Role

A good citizen understands the intricate balance of rights and duties. They are aware of their fundamental rights but do not overlook their duties. They contribute to the community, respect diversity, and promote social harmony. They are the pillars of democracy, ensuring the government’s accountability by actively participating in the electoral process.

Embracing Social Responsibility

A good citizen is a socially responsible individual. They contribute to society by volunteering, helping others, and working towards the betterment of the community. They are environmentally conscious and strive to protect and preserve natural resources. They understand that the actions of today will shape the world of tomorrow.

Upholding Moral Responsibility

In addition to social responsibilities, a good citizen upholds moral responsibilities. They are honest, trustworthy, and respect the rights and beliefs of others. They stand against injustice, not just for themselves, but for others as well. They foster a sense of unity and mutual respect in the society.

In conclusion, a good citizen is an amalgamation of many qualities – law-abiding, socially and morally responsible, and an active participant in the democratic process. They are the backbone of a flourishing society and play a pivotal role in shaping a prosperous nation.

500 Words Essay on Good Citizen

Introduction: the concept of a good citizen.

A good citizen is a cornerstone of any thriving society, embodying the values, norms, and principles that bind a community together. The concept of a good citizen has evolved over time, reflecting the changing social, cultural, and political contexts. However, core elements such as participation, respect for laws, and social responsibility remain constant.

Active Participation in Society

One of the hallmarks of a good citizen is active participation in societal affairs. This includes voting, volunteering, engaging in civic discourse, and staying informed about local and global issues. Active participation ensures that citizens have a say in decisions affecting their lives, fostering a sense of ownership and commitment to societal wellbeing. It also promotes democratic values, as citizens who participate actively are more likely to uphold the principles of democracy such as fairness, equality, and justice.

Adherence to Laws and Respect for Authority

Adherence to laws and respect for authority are also integral to being a good citizen. Laws are designed to maintain order, protect citizens, and uphold societal values. A good citizen understands the importance of these laws and respects them, not out of fear of punishment, but out of respect for the collective good. This respect extends to authority figures who enforce these laws, recognizing their role in maintaining societal order.

Social Responsibility and Empathy

A good citizen is socially responsible, understanding that their actions have implications for others. This responsibility manifests in various ways, from environmental stewardship to advocating for social justice. Good citizens also demonstrate empathy, recognizing and respecting the diverse experiences, perspectives, and needs of others in their community. This empathy fuels a commitment to inclusivity, ensuring that all members of society feel valued and heard.

Continuous Learning and Self-Improvement

Finally, a good citizen is committed to continuous learning and self-improvement. They recognize that to contribute effectively to society, they must continually expand their knowledge, skills, and understanding. This commitment extends to understanding different cultures, histories, and political systems, fostering a more inclusive and tolerant society.

Conclusion: The Role of Good Citizens in Society

In conclusion, a good citizen is an active participant in society, respects laws and authority, is socially responsible, empathetic, and committed to continuous learning. These qualities contribute to a more cohesive, inclusive, and progressive society. Being a good citizen is not a passive role but requires ongoing effort and commitment. It is a role that each of us, as members of our respective societies, should strive to fulfill. By doing so, we can contribute to the betterment of our communities and, ultimately, the world.

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What Does it Mean to Be a Good Citizen?

In this section.

"We don't agree on everything—but we do agree on enough that we can work together to start to heal our civic culture and our country." CPL's James Piltch asked people all over the US what it means to be a good citizen .

What Is a “Good Citizen”? a Systematic Literature Review

• Open Access
• First Online: 01 September 2021

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• Cristóbal Villalobos 23 ,
• María Jesús Morel 23 &
• Ernesto Treviño 24  

Part of the book series: IEA Research for Education ((IEAR,volume 12))

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4 Citations

The concept of “good citizenship” has long been part of discussions in various academic fields. Good citizenship involves multiple components, including values, norms, ethical ideals, behaviors, and expectations of participation. This chapter seeks to discuss the idea of good citizenship by surveying the academic literature on the subject. To map the scientific discussion on the notion of good citizenship, a systematic review of 120 academic articles published between 1950 and 2019 is carried out. The review of the literature shows that good citizenship is broadly defined, incorporating notions from multiple fields, although these are mainly produced in Western countries with comparatively higher income levels. Additionally, although there is no single definition of good citizenship, the academic literature focuses on three components: the normative, active, and personal dimensions. This systematic review informs the estimation of citizenship profiles of Chap. 3 using the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016.

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Reflections on the Good Citizen

• Citizenship norms
• Good citizenship
• Systematic review
• International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS)

1 Introduction

The concept of “good citizenship” is part of a long-standing discussion in various academic fields, such as political science, education, sociology, anthropology, evolution, and history, among others. In addition, good citizenship involves various components, including values, norms, ethical ideals, behaviors, and expectations of participation. Finally, the idea of good citizenship is related to diverse contemporary issues, such as patterns of political participation, the meaning of democracy and human rights, the notion of civic culture, equal rights, and the role of technology in the digital era (Bolzendahl and Coffé 2009 ; Dalton 2008 ; Hung 2012 ; Noula 2019 ).

In this regard, the notion of good citizenship can be considered as a concept with three basic characteristics: multidisciplinary, multidimensional, and polysemic. Therefore, the definition of good citizenship is a topic of constant debate and academic discussion. This chapter seeks to discuss the idea of good citizenship, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of this phenomenon and its social, political, and educational implications. In this way, this chapter aims to map the academic discussion and literature regarding the notion of good citizenship, presenting the key debates about the limits and possibilities of this concept in the framework of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016.

In order to organize this complex debate, we start from the premise that any notion of good citizenship is composed of the interaction of two definitions. On the one hand, it involves a certain notion of membership, that is, of belonging to a community. As Stokke ( 2017 ) shows, the definition of who is (and who is not) a citizen is, in itself, a subject of debate, since the definition of citizenship implies political, social, cultural, and legal components. On the other hand, the definition of good citizenship always implies a conceptual position regarding how citizens are expected to act and what they are expected to believe (the “public good” component). In this sense, the debate focuses on the types of behaviors that should be promoted and their ethical-political basis, which is highly dynamic depending on the cultural and historical context (Park and Shin 2006 ). Finally, in order to answer the question about the meaning of good citizenship, it is necessary to first decide who qualifies as a citizen, and how they are expected to behave.

Considering these objectives, the chapter is structured into five sections, including this introduction. The second section describes the systematic review methodology used to select the literature and analyze the discussion regarding the concept of good citizenship. The third and fourth sections describe the results of the analysis, mapping the main trends and characteristics of the academic discussion on good citizenship and exploring its different meanings. Finally, the fifth section presents the conclusions, focusing on the conceptual challenges and methodological limitations to be considered in future research.

2 Methodology

2.1 the systematic review.

We conducted a systematic review to map the academic discussion on good citizenship. This review seeks to identify, evaluate, and analyze the publications in relevant fields of study, in order to determine what has already been written on this topic, what works and what does not, and where new studies are needed (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ). Through the definition of eligibility criteria, the systematic review is an explicit and reproducible methodology that allows for both an evaluation of the validity of the results of the selected studies (Higgins and Green 2011 ) and the objective valuation of evidence by summarizing and systematically describing the characteristics and results of scientific research (Egger 1997 ). In this regard, the systematic review, unlike other forms of literature review, allows for recognizing “gray” spaces in the literature, describing trends in academic research, and analyzing conceptual and methodological aspects of studies.

2.2 Procedure

The systematic review was conducted using five academic databases, including the main journals in the fields of education, social science, and the humanities. These databases are: (i) Journal Storage, JSTOR ( https://www.jstor.org ); (ii) Educational Resource Information Center, ERIC ( https://eric.ed.gov ); (iii) Springerlink ( https://link.springer.com ); (iv) WorldWideScience ( https://worldwidescience.org ); and (v) Taylor & Francis Group ( https://www.tandfonline.com ). For each search engine, the keywords used were: “good citizen” and “good citizenship.” Additionally, each search engine was tested with other related concepts, such as “citizenship norms,” “citizenship identities,” or “citizen norms.” The results showed that articles containing these latter concepts represented no more than 10% of new articles. For this reason, we decided to concentrate on the two keywords described above.

Considering the importance of these key concepts, the search was limited to those articles that contain these terms in the title, abstract, and/or full text. Of the five search engines, only two had the full-text option in the advanced search and only one allowed searching by keywords, then all results were filtered manually. The search was conducted from May to July 2019, obtaining 693 academic articles.

The search was restricted to those academic articles written in English and published between 1950 and 2019, as a way to study contemporary conceptualizations of good citizenship. We discarded letters to the editor, responses to articles, and book reviews. As a result, we obtained 693 articles to which, based on a full-text review, we applied an additional criterion, excluding those articles about other subjects or from other disciplines. Included in the first search exclusively for having the word “citizenship” in the abstract, there is a wide range of articles including studies on biology, entomology, and film studies. Similarly, with this search strategy we retrieved articles on a related topic but not specifically about citizenship (e.g., leadership, public participation, social values, and immigration), articles on the concept of corporate or organizational citizenship, and articles on social studies in the school curriculum and its contribution to the education of citizens.

After applying the abovementioned selection criteria, we analyzed the abstracts of the articles to verify that they were related to the general objective of the study. As a result, all articles were selected that sought (directly or indirectly) to answer the question, “what is a good citizen?” Specifically, this involved incorporating studies that: (i) study or analyze citizen norms in conceptual, historical, political, educational, or social terms; (ii) generate models or analytic frameworks that define variables or dimensions that should make up the concept of a good citizen; (iii) explore factors on how good citizenship occurs, studying the educational, institutional, and cultural factors that would explain this phenomenon; (iv) relate the expectations (or definitions) of a good citizen with other dimensions or aspects of the political or social behavior of the subjects. The research team, which was comprised of two reviewers, held a weekly discussion (six sessions in total) during which the selection criteria were discussed and refined. This analysis resulted in the selection of a total of 120 articles (see list in Appendix A ).

2.3 Analytical Strategy

The data collected in a systematic review may allow for a wide variety of studies, but the analysis depends on the purpose and nature of the data. Given that the review included quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as both theoretical and demonstrative essays, such heterogeneous literature does not allow for statistical analysis. As a result, the recommended methodology is to carry out a narrative synthesis and an analysis that focuses on relationships between different characteristics and the identification of gaps (Grant and Booth 2009 ; Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ).

The narrative synthesis is a process that allows for extracting and grouping the characteristics and results of each article included in the review (Popay et al. 2006 ), and can be divided into three steps: (i) categorization of articles; (ii) analysis of the findings within each category; and (iii) synthesis of the findings in the selected studies (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ). The first step towards the narrative synthesis consisted of reading, coding, and tabulating the selected documents in order to describe their main characteristics. A set of categories was designed to classify documents according to four dimensions: general characteristics, purpose, methodology, and results.

To analyze these categories, we transformed data into a common numeric rubric and organized it for thematic analysis, using the techniques proposed by Popay et al. ( 2006 ). The first category was used to summarize the quantity and characteristics of the published studies, while the thematic analysis focused on systematically identifying the main, recurrent, and/or most important concepts of good citizenship.

3 The Concept of Good Citizenship in Academia

Despite being a topic of interest for several decades, academic production on good citizenship tends to be concentrated in the second decade of the 21st century. Since 2009, there has been an explosive increase in the number of scientific papers published on this topic (Fig.  1 ). Although an important part of this growth may be due to the global pressures of academic capitalism to publish in academic journals (Slaughter and Rhoades 2009 ), it could also be the case that academic communities have cultivated a growing interest in studying this issue.

Academic papers by year of publication

Although few in number, the earliest articles published represent a landmark for the discussion. Thus, for example, the text of Almond and Verba ( 1963 ), which analyzes through interviews the perceptions of individuals in communities in five countries (United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Mexico) and highlights their different participation profiles, has been repeatedly cited in the discussion with 263 references (as of August 2019), according to Google Scholar. Another classic text is Ichilov and Nave ( 1981 ), which aims at understanding the different dimensions of citizenship by surveying young Israelis. To this end, it generates the following five criteria, which have been widely used in academic discussions: (i) citizenship orientation (affective, cognitive, or evaluative); (ii) nature of citizenship (passive or active); (iii) object of citizenship (political or non-political); (iv) source of demand (mandatory or voluntary); and (v) type of guidance (support principles or behavior).

The selected articles are geographically concentrated in two aspects: by institutional affiliation and by the location of their studies. Considering the institutional affiliation of the authors, 32.77% of the articles were produced in the United States, a figure that rises to more than 60% when the countries of Western Europe and Australia are included. This bias is maintained, although to a lesser extent, when analyzing the countries where the studies were carried out. Moreover, more than 50% of the studies were carried out in the United States, England, and the democracies of Western Europe. Africa (4.24%) and Latin America (2.54%) were the regions least represented in the studies. These characteristics, which tend to be representative of global academic production in the social sciences (Connell 2007 ), may encourage certain notions of good citizenship that are anchored in Anglo-Saxon traditions, such as the liberal conception of citizenship studied by Peled ( 1992 ), or more recently, the conception of active citizenship (Ke and Starkey 2014 ), both of which have had an important influence on academic discussion about good citizenship.

Finally, the third characteristic of academic production is related to the multiple research fields and diverse purposes of the studies that deal with the concept of good citizenship. Research on good citizenship is published in multiple disciplines. Of the articles included in the review, 82.29% are concentrated in three disciplines: education, political science, and sociology. However, there are also articles associated with journals of history, philosophy, anthropology, and law. Additionally, we identified six main objectives from the articles reviewed (Table  1 ). The most common objectives are related to bottom-up research, which seeks to gather information on how diverse populations understand good citizenship, and top-down research, which seeks to conceptualize and/or define the idea of good citizens based on conceptual, historical, or political analysis. In addition, there are a wide variety of studies that seek to explain good citizenship, as well as studies that use the idea of a good citizen to explain other behaviors, skills, or knowledge. In other words, in addition to being multidisciplinary, research on good citizenship has multiple purposes.

In sum, although the academic discussion on good citizenship has been mainly developed during the last two decades in the most industrialized Western countries, the academic research is a field of ongoing and open debate.

4 Understanding the Meaning of “Good Citizenship”

As an academic field with a lively ongoing discussion, the notion of good citizenship is associated with different sets of ideas or concepts. Some keywords were repeated at least three times in the articles reviewed (Table  2 ). Only those articles that used a keyword format were included. The most frequent concepts are related to education, norms, social studies, political participation, and democracy.

This indicates that, first, studies tend to associate good citizenship with civic norms and citizen learning, highlighting the formative nature of the concept. Second, studies that associate good citizenship with other dimensions of citizenship (such as knowledge or civic attitudes) or contemporary global problems (such as migration) are comparatively scarcer.

Another way to approach the concept of good citizenship is by analyzing the definitions proposed by the authors in the articles studied. Most of the articles propose characteristics or aspects of good citizenship (in 43.8% of the cases) that, instead of creating new definitions, are often based on existing political, non-political, liberal, or philosophical concepts. In this regard, many papers define good citizenship based on specific behaviors. In contrast, other authors (18.6%) refer to citizenship rules when it comes to voting or participating in politics, thereby seeking to relate the concept of the good citizen with a specific civic attitude—participation in elections. Finally, a large group of studies define good citizenship in terms of the values, virtues, or qualities of a good citizen (22.6%). Within the group of studies that propose new definitions, it is possible to identify two main categories: studies that propose types of citizenship, such as Dalton ( 2008 ), distinguishing between “duty” and “engaged” citizenship, and works, such as Westheimer and Kahne ( 2004 ), which differentiate between “personal responsible citizenship,” “justice-oriented citizenship,” and “participatory citizenship.”

Finally, the meaning of good citizenship can be analyzed by studying the variables used in the studies. Among the quantitative studies included in the review, only 28.3% use international surveys such as ICCS, the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the United Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy (CID) Survey, and the European Social Survey (ESS). Each of these surveys contained a slightly different definition of good citizenship and the variables used to measure the concept (Table  3 ).

In general, the indicators used to measure citizenship in the different surveys share certain similarities. Variables associated with rules (such as obeying the law or paying taxes) are present in all surveys. Additionally, variables related to participation also have an important presence, especially (although not only) related to voting in national elections. To a lesser extent, surveys include variables related to solidarity (supporting people who are worse off than yourself) as well as attitudes related to critical thinking and civic culture (knowing the history of the country, thinking critically).

5 Discussion and Conclusions

The concept of good citizenship can be considered an umbrella term, which includes ethical, political, sociological, and educational aspects and discussions about who qualifies as a citizen and how they should act. The systematic review has shown that good citizenship is broadly defined, although these notions are mainly valued in Western countries with comparatively higher income levels.

For this reason, the definition of good citizenship used is, in large part, highly dependent on the research objective of the academic endeavor. In our case, the analysis is based on ICCS 2016, which defines good citizenship in relation to notions such as conventional citizenship, social movement citizenship, and personal responsibility citizenship (Köhler et al. 2018 ). The variables included in ICCS 2016 are related to the three main dimensions of good citizenship: normative, active, and personal. These three components of good citizenship have been essential in the academic discussion in the last seven decades, constituting the central corpus of the concept, although this definition does not incorporate current discussions on good citizenship, which focus, for example, on the notion of global citizenship (Altikulaç 2016 ) or the idea of digital citizenship (Bennett et al. 2009 ). These latter concepts are part of the ongoing debate on good citizenship, although it seems that more work is needed to better understand how these notions of citizenship are related to the ways in which individuals or groups in society relate to power and exercise it to shape the public sphere.

This systematic review has mapped the academic discussion to date on good citizenship. However, despite its usefulness, this review has a number of limitations. Firstly, it summarizes and analyzes the academic discussion, ignoring the gap between the scientific debate on good citizenship and the social discussion related to this subject. Secondly, it focuses on English-language literature, which may result in a bias towards publications produced in Western countries. In spite of these limitations, the review allows us to study the process of defining the concept of good citizenship, and to identify the main debates related to this notion, which is the central focus of this book.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their research sponsors, the Center for Educational Justice ANID PIA CIE160007, as well as the Chilean National Agency of Research and Development through the grants ANID/FONDECYT N° 1180667, and ANID/FONDECYT N° 11190198.

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Cristóbal Villalobos & María Jesús Morel

Center UC for Educational Transformation, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Ernesto Treviño

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Correspondence to Cristóbal Villalobos .

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Centro de Medición MIDE UC, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Diego Carrasco

Centre for Political Research, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Ellen Claes

University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Kerry J. Kennedy

The following list of publications is the reviewed references for the systematic review conducted in this chapter.

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Villalobos, C., Morel, M.J., Treviño, E. (2021). What Is a “Good Citizen”? a Systematic Literature Review. In: Treviño, E., Carrasco, D., Claes, E., Kennedy, K.J. (eds) Good Citizenship for the Next Generation . IEA Research for Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75746-5_2

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Education Articles & More

How to inspire students to become better citizens, educators can help boost civic engagement among young people..

The political turmoil of the last few years has many of us worried about the future of our country and our planet.

But here’s the good news: Thanks to new trends in education, the next generation may be more engaged, thoughtful, respectful, and compassionate citizens.

Research suggests that the growing emphasis on social-emotional learning (SEL) in schools can lay the foundation for more active civic engagement among our youth. In a 2018 study of almost 2,500 students, researchers found that those with greater emotional and socio-cognitive skills—such as empathy, emotion regulation, and moral reasoning—reported higher civic engagement.

Among this group of eight to 20 year olds, being more empathic (more upset when others are treated unfairly) and more “future-oriented” (more aware of how decisions impact their future) predicted a host of important civic behaviors and attitudes: volunteering; helping friends, family, and neighbors; valuing political involvement (e.g., keeping up with current events and taking part in rallies); engaging in environmentally conscious behaviors; demonstrating social responsibility values; and prioritizing other civic skills like listening and summarizing conflicting views. In other words, students with certain SEL skills also seemed to be more oriented toward social, community, and political issues.

And when students help others and practice civic behaviors, they may feel better, too. In a recent one-week study of 276 college students, participants experienced greater well-being on days when they engaged in certain types of civic activities, like helping friends or strangers and caring for their environment by recycling and conserving resources. According to the researchers, these kind and helpful behaviors also seemed to be meeting young adults’ basic needs for autonomy, connectedness, and competence—to feel free, close to others, and capable.

By its nature, social-emotional learning can support the democratic structures and processes that raise up all voices in our schools, empowering students to be more engaged in their world. So how can we thoughtfully apply these skills in our own classrooms? Here are several research-based ideas and resources to consider.

1. Re-examine your disciplinary practices

Researcher Robert Jagers and his colleagues found that Black and Latino middle school students who perceived more democratic homeroom, classroom, and disciplinary practices had higher civic engagement, particularly when students perceived an equitable school climate.

Similarly, researcher Peter Levine argues that teachers who truly want to educate students about democracy face massive barriers if the school environment is “unjust or alienating.” Harsh, authoritarian, and less-inclusive climates can ultimately weaken their community engagement, turnout in elections, and trust in government .

More and more research suggests that exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) can be alienating and counterproductive, and restorative practices (strategies that focus on learning from mistakes and repairing relationships rather than punishing students) may offer a more humanizing, equitable, and respectful alternative. In this context, students come together to learn to navigate conflicts, process their feelings, and collaboratively problem-solve a way forward.

When reviewing disciplinary practices at your school, also consider the following: Who is being disciplined? How often, and why? (If your school is like many others in the U.S., your students of color are disproportionately disciplined for the same or similar infractions when compared to white students. How is your school addressing that difference?) Are preventive strategies your number-one priority (e.g., relationship and community building)? How do you model and practice communication strategies for resolving conflicts ?

2. Facilitate meaningful dialogue among diverse learners

Research suggests that students in an “open classroom climate,” one that grows out of respectful dialogue and exposure to varying opinions, tend to have greater civic knowledge, commitment to voting, and awareness of the role of conflict in a democracy.

But perhaps you don’t feel prepared to teach students how to discuss and resolve tensions—especially around charged topics like racism. You may want your classroom to feel like a “safe space,” but how, exactly, do you foster and sustain one?

Start by preparing yourself. We all have different comfort levels with conversations about race, and being uncomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean that we are unsafe (or shouldn’t venture into that territory). Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, has created the free online Let’s Talk handbook that can help you outline some of the vulnerabilities that make you feel less effective as a facilitator (along with your strengths!), and discover specific strategies for addressing strong emotions in your classroom.

More Resources

Not Light, But Fire , a new book by educator Matthew Kay, encourages teachers to be more focused and deliberate when discussing race in high school classrooms. Kay shares personal anecdotes coupled with practical strategies for facilitating meaningful classroom dialogue.

The Let’s Talk! handbook can help you navigate and understand your own uncomfortable emotions during heated conversations. It also features practical steps for leading reflective classroom discussions.

Learn the elements of compassionate listening , and seven ways to teach listening skills to elementary students . You can also adapt our Greater Good in Action Active Listening pair practice for children or teens in your classroom.


For example, when you sense confusion or denial of racism, this Teaching Tolerance tool recommends that you “ask questions anchored in class content or introduce accurate or objective facts for consideration.” Or, if students respond that they feel blamed, remind them that “racism is like a smog; we all breathe it in and are harmed by it. We may not have created the system, but we can do something about it.”

3. Use advisory time to encourage group cohesion and connectedness

If you value opportunities for meaningful dialogue, but think there isn’t time in your schedule for yet another priority, consider advisory or homeroom time in secondary schools (and classroom meetings in elementary schools). This time in the day or week can be thoughtfully structured for relationship and skill building. In this setting, students can learn how to actively participate in supportive dialogue with their peers over a sustained period of time.

In the Jagers study mentioned above, the featured homeroom routines included establishing social norms and contracts, group problem solving, and fun group activities to build connection and trust. For example, many teachers support their students in jointly creating a group “constitution” or agreement that highlights 1) the group’s values (e.g., responsibility, respect, fairness, and honesty) and 2) the concrete behaviors demonstrating those values. Further, students might lead or assist the teacher in proposing activities, like fostering a small class pet, developing solutions to pressing problems at school (e.g., creating a recycling program), or simply enjoying social time together (yoga in the gym or a “get to know you” game).

Of course, students can also share greetings, personal interests, and feelings with one another. My daughter’s high school “mentor” group (designed to include multiple ethnicities and viewpoints) meets daily and sticks together for four years. Every Wednesday morning, they check in with each other, share how they are feeling, and receive “support” and “resonance” from their peers and teacher-mentor, as needed—a wonderful opportunity for fostering empathy and a sense of belonging.

During advisory or circle time, many students across the country also plan to participate in service activities in their schools and communities, which is a great way to promote volunteerism and civic responsibility.

4. Feature engaging civics lessons, activities, and projects in your curriculum

Of course, there are plenty of opportunities for further civics education in social studies and history classes.

Teaching Tolerance’s website includes quizzes, videos, stories, and lessons for helping children to understand and value the voting process even though they aren’t active voters yet.

Facing History and Ourselves offers a plethora of ready-made lessons and resources for secondary teachers for discussion within the following units: Standing Up for Democracy , Identity and Community: An Intro to Sixth Grade Social Studies , and Universal Declaration of Human Rights . You may also be interested in exploring civic dilemmas .

The Morningside Center for Social Responsibility regularly features lessons on current issues, such as Overcoming Hate: A Circle on the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre or Caravan: Why Are People Leaving Their Homes? .

In the Action Civics program, for example, students “ learn politics by doing politics .” They identify an issue they care about (e.g., homelessness, teacher pay, the opioid crisis), research it, and design a plan of action to advocate for that issue at a local level. Project-based learning like this—that is experiential, situated in the real world, and powerfully linked to students’ interests—makes politics come alive for them.

There are a number of different teaching strategies and activities (debates, Socratic seminars , and mock trials, as well as the National Model United Nations ) that give students the opportunity to actively practice civic behaviors, attitudes, and values while learning more about social studies, history, and political science. Many of these approaches help students learn how to paraphrase main ideas, develop an evidence-based argument, and anticipate counter-arguments while they practice conducting themselves respectfully and professionally in a group context.

With these ideas and resources in mind, it’s time to revitalize civic learning in our schools, and SEL skills can help serve as the building blocks. When students actively practice these skills in their schools, they are likely to feel a stronger sense of personal agency in their communities and in the larger world. There may be no more meaningful work right now than supporting a thriving democracy and more informed, responsible, and caring student citizens.

About the Author

Amy L. Eva, Ph.D. , is the associate education director at the Greater Good Science Center. As an educational psychologist and teacher educator with over 25 years in classrooms, she currently writes, presents, and leads online courses focused on student and educator well-being, mindfulness, and courage. Her new book, Surviving Teacher Burnout: A Weekly Guide To Build Resilience, Deal with Emotional Exhaustion, and Stay Inspired in the Classroom, features 52 simple, low-lift strategies for enhancing educators’ social and emotional well-being.

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The Many Ways to Be a Good Citizen

From the revolutionary era to today, "doing your part” has meant different things for different americans.

An unidentified woman from Cuba, one of the 196 people from 24 countries, reacts during naturalization ceremonies in Miami, July 1, 2009. Photo by J. Pat Carter/Associated Press.

Christine Woyshner

In clubs and associations, american “joiners” shaped a nation.

Stephen Kantrowitz

African americans asserted their citizenship long before the law backed them up.

Gary Scott Smith

Without a church, could a fledgling u.s. have survived how the country’s citizens made it possible.

Backers of Women’s Suffrage Compromised Perfection for the Sake of Progress

Kevin Boyle

From a bridge in selma, alabama, outrage fed action.

William A. Link

A “new and strange thing” for black students, after the civil war.

Beth Bailey

What is citizens’ service, in the era of the volunteer military.

The Kids Are All Right

May 1, 2017

The news these days is filled with images of citizens marching, protesting, and organizing on behalf of one cause or another. Americans, indeed, have organized since the founding of this nation; the visiting Frenchman Alexis d’Toqueville noted their propensity to do so in the 1830s. But in the past, unlike today, Americans relied on associations that spanned the nation to make social, political, and economic change across the nation and in local communities.

The period from the end of the Civil War to the mid-20th century was a particularly robust time of organized civic activism. There wasn’t a town, city, or hamlet that remained untouched by civic organizations. Voluntary associations were founded by people who were black, white, native-born, immigrant, men, and women—from the middle and the lower classes—in a variety of types: fraternals, veteran’s groups, women’s clubs, civic associations, study clubs, ethnic groups, and even secret societies, such as the Masons. In this “nation of joiners,” to borrow a phrase from eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the average person was able to unite with others in local face-to-face meetings as well as state and national conventions.

The work volunteers carried out affected local communities as well as national legislation. Both the National PTA and the Black Panthers, for example, worked to institute school lunches over the course of the 20th century. From America’s founding into the 1960s, clubs, organizations, and associations allowed the average citizen to meet others, make change, and learn important skills such as leadership and organizing.

Times have changed, and now most Americans no longer meet in these broadly-focused face-to-face groups, preferring to gather online, and focusing on single, though important, issues. Perhaps current resistance efforts in the public square can draw on the models of the national voluntary organizations of the past—with local, state, and national offices, modeled on the federal government—to achieve their goals.

Christine Woyshner is a professor of education at Temple University. She researches the history of American education, with a focus on civic voluntary organizations. She has authored or edited six books, including  The National PTA, Race, and Civic Engagement, 1897-1970  (The Ohio State University Press, 2009).  

During the Civil War African Americans didn’t just demand citizenship. Against rejection, denial, and insult, they redefined it.

When the Civil War began, free black people had good reason to wonder whether the United States of America was even a good idea: It was the land of the Fugitive Slave Law, which left them vulnerable to enslavement; of the Dred Scott decision, which denied them national citizenship; and of state laws and constitutions, North and South, that excluded them or even threatened them with enslavement. Yet when South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter and Lincoln called for volunteers, black men in cities across the free states assembled to volunteer their service.

They were refused, curtly and sometimes violently. The United States was a white man’s republic, and this was to be a white man’s war.

When the Union finally did come calling at the end of 1862, free black communities debated whether to participate. Some seized the opportunity to prove their worthiness and their patriotism, hoping to claim the citizenship they had long sought. Others urged a more defiant stand. Resist enlistment, they said, until the government promised equal pay, equal treatment, and black officers. But even those who chose to serve soon became dissidents as well, for the government soon broke its promise of equal pay. For more than a year, soldiers and their families protested, refusing to accept unequal wages. Many endured hardship. Some faced courts martial. A few were executed by their own army for their resistance.

These soldiers and protesters established African Americans’ claim to two kinds of citizenship—the citizenship of patriotic service, and the citizenship of principled dissent. With the first, they made it impossible to deny that African Americans participated in the destruction of slavery. With the second, they hitched that commitment to the principle of equality before the law. Constitutional amendments would soon write these ideas into the nation’s organic law. But African Americans were there first.

Stephen Kantrowitz teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of  More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889  and  Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy .

“In the six thousand years since the creation of the world,” founding father James Wilson declared, nothing like the American republic had ever been created. What made this fledging republic so special? According to Thomas Jefferson, the United States was “new under the sun” because it rejected the outdated ideology, allegiances, and patterns of the Old World. Prominent among these arrangements was the long-standing practice of establishing a church and supporting it with government revenues. By not having a national established church, the United States broke with 1450 years of Western tradition, stretching back to the Roman Emperor Constantine.

One reason Western nations had established churches was to ensure that their citizens obeyed the laws and followed traditional moral norms. The critical question then was: Could a republic that had no official, tax-supported church survive? Jefferson called this arrangement the “fair experiment,” and he and other founders insisted that the United States could flourish only if its citizens lived by high moral standards. As George Washington argued in his Farewell Address, religion and morality were “indispensable supports” of “political prosperity.”

Ordinary Americans, therefore, had a vital role to play in their new nation’s success. Although they fell short in many ways, most notably their treatment of Indians and the practice of slavery, their moral practices and commitment to the common good enabled their country to survive British, French, and Spanish challenges to undermine their autonomy. Through their participation in congregations, voluntary organizations, and government at the local level—and by caring for their neighbors—many Americans in the early national period put the needs of others before their own, and worked to help the poor, vulnerable, and sick. Their virtuous conduct, self-sacrifice, and compassion helped the United States become a great nation and serve as model of democracy and civic responsibility for other countries.

Gary Scott Smith chairs the History Department and coordinates the Humanities Core at Grove City College, where he has taught since 1978. He earned his M.Div. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in History at Johns Hopkins University. In 2001 he was named Pennsylvania Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. He is the author or editor of eleven books including, most recently, Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents  (Oxford University Press, 2015) and  Suffer the Children: What We Can Do to Improve the Lives of the World’s Impoverished Children  (Cascade Books, 2017). Smith is also an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

After the Civil War, the issue of women’s suffrage became completely entangled with the campaign for the 15th Amendment. In effect, radical Republicans sold out women’s rights activists in the name of passing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing black male suffrage. As a result, the women’s rights movement suffered a dramatic split between activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Sojourner Truth, who refused to support an amendment that did not include suffrage for women; and other activists, such as Lucy Brown, Henry Blackwell, and Frederick Douglass, who were willing to defer the vote for women for the sake of enfranchising black men. Ultimately, both sides in this debate were thwarted: The Republicans did not honor their commitment to women’s suffrage and the 15th Amendment did not protect the franchise for black men. 

Teaching this material this semester, I was struck by the story of an 1867 Kansas referendum that would have enfranchised both black men and women, had it passed. Brown, Blackwell, Cady Stanton, and Anthony all campaigned for the Kansas referendum. That took a good deal of courage. They were treated horribly by misogynistic Republicans. In an attempt to taint the suffrage campaign with immorality and illegitimacy, for example, Republican spokesmen charged that Lucy Stone and Henry Ward were practitioners of “free love”; the “grounds” for this false accusation being that Stone had refused to take Blackwell’s name when the couple married. It took even more courage for the suffrage activists to decide how to make the best of an impossible situation—with Brown and Blackwell agreeing to sideline women’s suffrage for the sake of the 15th Amendment, and Cady Stanton and Anthony forming an ill-advised alliance with the likes of southern Democrat and racist, George Train, who viewed white women’s suffrage as a way of outvoting black men.

This episode to me epitomizes the complexity of racial and gender politics, and the way that competition for rights can obstruct the larger goal of equality under the law. It also illustrates the willingness of committed citizens to compromise perfection for the sake of progress, even at the cost of personal friendships and movement solidarity.

Susan E. Gray is Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Public History Program at Arizona State University. Recent publications include a co-edited volume,  Contingent Maps: Re-thinking the North American West and Western Women’s History  (2014), and a 2015 essay in  The Public Historian , “Indigenous Space and the Landscape of Settlement: A Historian as Expert Witness.” Gray is now completing  Lines of Descent: Family Stories from the North Country , a multi-generational biography of a mixed-race family, for the University of North Carolina Press. She has held major fellowships from the NEH, the Fulbright Foundation, and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard University. From 2003-2012, Gray served as co-editor of  Frontiers: A Journal of Women Stories .

It started with ferocious footage on TV: film of Alabama state troopers wading into a long line of marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, knocking people down and pummeling them as they scrambled to their feet, tear gas wafting over a panicked retreat.

People had seen worse during the Freedom Rides in 1961, in Birmingham in 1963, in the Mississippi delta in the blood-soaked summer of 1964. But there was something particularly appalling about this assault on the civil rights movement, in the spring of 1965. Maybe it was just one brutalization too many. Maybe it was the purity of the marchers’ purpose. Why were people being beaten when all they wanted was to secure their right to vote?

Outrage fed action. The next morning, Monday, March 8, there were pickets outside the Justice Department, demanding that the federal government intervene on the protesters’ behalf. In Detroit, supporters announced a sympathy march that would draw 10,000 people. From Atlanta, Martin Luther King called on the nation’s clergy to join him in Selma. By Tuesday, 450 had arrived. That night one of the newcomers, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was beaten to death by white thugs.

News of his murder pushed protests to a fever pitch. Over the next few days 1,500 people rallied in New Haven, 2,500 in Poughkeepsie, 3,500 in Louisville, 15,000 in Harlem, another 15,000 in Washington’s Lafayette Park, and 25,000 on the Boston Common. Down in Selma the clerics kept coming. “There is a time,” a rabbi told a reporter, “when man must choose between man’s law and God’s law.”

Or fuse them together. Lyndon Johnson hadn’t wanted to make voting rights a priority. But the pressure was too intense to resist. On Monday evening, March 15, the president went before a joint session of Congress to introduce legislation guaranteeing African Americans’ access to the ballot.

He did something else too. “It is not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice,” he said, in his speech’s final stretch. “And we shall overcome.” They were just song lyrics. But when LBJ repeated them he made himself one with the movement, just as thousands of ordinary people had done in the eight days since 600 Americans had crested the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to demand that the nation protect its most fundamental right and the democracy upon which it rested.

Kevin Boyle teaches modern American history at Northwestern University. His book, Change Is Gonna Come: America in the 1960s , is to be published by W.W. Norton next year.

Until 1865, the United States had an enslaved population of about four million people, and the world’s wealthiest and most powerful slaveholder class. The Civil War brought this economic and social order—and system of racial control—tumbling down. The 14th and 15th amendments made freed people enfranchised citizens, in theory. But what did citizenship for former enslaved people really mean?

The northern white abolitionists of the American Missionary Association, or AMA, attempted to answer this question—and put promises into practice—by founding universities for black people, and by working to make them beacons of racial egalitarianism. Unlike many black schools, AMA colleges taught a classical curriculum that was intended to foster leadership and citizenship for former slaves. Some of the most prominent future leaders from the black community came from AMA institutions like Atlanta University and Fisk University in Nashville.

Atlanta University, founded in 1869, provided a refuge from the prevalent racism and white supremacy that enveloped the South. To some extent, the AMA educators there were creatures of their time. Although white women played a leading role, white men controlled the school. Black people did not begin teaching at Atlanta University until the 1890s, and white women ran the school until the 1920s. Nonetheless, AMA schoolmen also practiced, for the day, an unusual concept of racial equality. They encouraged students to shed the heritage of slavery, teaching racial equality. Classes were integrated—something strictly prohibited in Southern schools—with the children of white teachers present in classes and the dining room.

The educators’ quiet efforts made an impression on their students—a new generation of American citizens. Edmund Ware, a Yale graduate and abolitionist, served as the black college’s president for much of its early history. Soon after he arrived on campus in the late 1860s, one student took note of the courtesy with which Ware treated him. “It was a new and strange thing to us to see a white man carrying wood and making fires for us, who had been taught, by precept and example, that it was our business to do the like for his kind.” “However you may be mistreated in the city or elsewhere,” Ware was said to have informed students, “I want you to know that the moment you set foot on these grounds you are free men in a free country.”

The AMA’s impact on the struggle for African American citizenship is often underestimated, yet it was lasting. “This was the gift of New England to the freed Negro,” W. E. B. Du Bois, who attended Fisk University and taught at Atlanta University, wrote in The Souls of Black Folk (1903). “Not alms, but a friend; not cash, but character.” The AMA’s educational efforts were the “finest thing in American history, and one of the few things untainted by sordid greed and cheap vainglory.”

William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. He is a historian of the South whose work includes The Paradox of Southern Progressivism, 1880-1930 (1992), Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (2003), Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath (2013), and Southern Crucible: The Making of an American Region (2015). He is currently writing a study of the life and times of Frank Porter Graham.

At the dawn of the 1950s, as the United States tried to come to terms with its new role of superpower in a Cold War world, American adults worried about the younger generation. Were those who had not borne the weight of the Great Depression, and of war, sufficiently strong and resolute? Were they capable of acting as democratic citizens in a dangerous world?

Their worries inspired a lot of pessimistic debate. The new Department of Defense—with a sense that much was at stake—joined forces with a maker of instructional films, and in 1951 the movie  Citizenship and Service  joined  What to Do on a Date  in the darkened high school classrooms of postwar America. Citizenship and Service  offered the following definition of citizenship: it is “the earning of rights by fulfilling responsibilities,” with military service the “heaviest” obligation of all. In war after war, young American men had taken on that obligation. Whether voluntarily or through the force of conscription, they had fought, killed, and died as citizen soldiers.

World War II was, in many ways, the fullest expression of that logic of citizenship. Millions of ordinary citizens—including those who served in the “citizen’s” military—endured hardships that ranged from disruption and upheaval to some of the most horrible combat in human history. The conflict—a total war—became the model of citizenship fulfilled, a time widely accepted as THE moment “when all Americans did their part.” But there are problems, of course, with that model of citizens’ service. What of women, who bore no military obligation? Were they lesser citizens? And war: was it the ultimate expression of the nation? In a nation whose wars are now fought by a professional all-volunteer force, does citizenship still entail rights earned through obligations?

Beth Bailey is Foundation Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies at the University of Kansas. Her publications include  America’s Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force . 

American citizens have done their part when they let youth lead the way—even when the public dismisses their demands as “unrealistic.”

On February 3, 1964, approximately 464,000 Black and Latinx (mainly Puerto Rican) students boycotted school and protested racial segregation and poor, overcrowded conditions in their schools. This was not in the Jim Crow South. It was in New York City. Led by Bayard Rustin and Milton Galamison, roughly half of all NYC students that day participated in the boycott. They marched out of roughly 300 of the city’s 860 public schools, and rallied at the Board of Education building in Brooklyn.

They demanded not just racial integration, but also textbooks that reflected African American and immigrant experiences, resources for a meaningful education, greater diversity among teachers, and reforms in pedagogical training. The school boycott focused on de facto segregation. The government ignored historical housing patterns to guarantee continued racial segregation. It didn’t need overtly racist laws or police chiefs, like “Bull” Connor in Birmingham, the boycotters said. Although the Central Board of Education failed to address the protestors’ demands for integration, the boycott helped to lay the foundation for a new movement—demanding community control for the schools they attended.

The struggles continue to this day; in 2009, New York reported the country’s highest concentration of Black and Latinx students in intensely-segregated public schools (with less than 10 percent white enrollment). Today, youth here continue to lead education organizing efforts, fighting the over-policing of schools and demanding a meaningful college preparatory education. Student groups now frequently mention the 2006 “Penguin Revolution” in Chile—when thousands of high schoolers pushed for education reform—and the plights of students in South Africa, and even Palestine. Like their predecessors in the 1960s, these young Americans want to shift the debate from being about themselves—whether they are good students, whether they are low-income, whether they “work hard enough”—to being about their schooling, and their place as citizens of the United States.

Celina Su is Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. Her publications include  Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx  (Cornell University Press) and  Our Schools Suck: Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education  (co-authored, NYU Press). She has served on New York City’s participatory budgeting Steering Committee since its inception in 2011, and she currently leads the URBAN Research Network, a coalition of more than 1,800 scholars, activists, and artists committed to community-engaged research, social change, and democratizing knowledge production. Her honors include the Berlin Prize and the Whiting Award for Excellence in Teaching.

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Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Global Citizen — The Importance of Being an Active and Responsible Citizen

The Importance of Being an Active and Responsible Citizen

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Defining good citizenship, importance of good citizenship, role of college students in shaping communities.

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Essay on Responsibilities of a Good Citizen for Students [500+ Words]

December 10, 2020 by Sandeep

Essay on Responsibilities of a Good Citizen: Responsibility of a good citizen is to sacrifice everything for the motherland. Respecting the culture & heritage of their own country is one of the duties of a citizen. He or She must always keep in mind to raise the future of his country. Unity & prosperity must be the priorities of a good citizen.

Essay on Good Citizen 500 Words in English

Below we have provided the responsibilities of a good citizen essay, written in easy and simple words for class 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 school students.

We are born and raised in a single country, sometimes different countries., regardless of location, we incorporate the values of our respective cultures in the way we act and treat other people. Being a citizen of a country, however, is much more than some words and a stamp on endless paperwork. Along with it, one bears an ideology that connects them to other citizens of that country, regardless of their race, religion, or gender. Being a citizen gives a person all the rights to which the constitution says they are entitled.

This is why the process of citizenship of any country is a long and complicated one since it means that the person will legally have a voice in matters of the country. It also means that they will have to abide by the laws of that country, out of respect for the nation as a whole, as well as to uphold law and order. To be a responsible citizen, the person must educate themselves about their country and culture. This begins by conversing with people and understanding their way of life. It also involves an awareness of the country’s history and heritage.

This would mean reading about important figures in the country’s history, crucial events that led the country to where it currently stands, and other aspects such as the history of art and literature. It is also crucial that people who want to be responsible citizens know the diversity of different socioeconomic groups in the country. They must learn about the situation in the country in regard to equality in terms of race, religion, gender, and several other factors. One must learn about how minority groups are treated in the country, and if they are discriminated against, then the person must be an advocate to protect their rights.

A responsible citizen must always stay updated with the news. This does not mean simply reading the headlines on the front page of a newspaper- it means reading the articles thoroughly to understand the state of the nation. In an age where fake news is rampant, one must also not limit themselves to a single news source. They should try understanding an issue by learning about it from different news channels and articles by different newspapers. They will always provide different perspectives on the same issue, and this knowledge will allow the person to gain a better understanding of what their stance ought to be.

One must also learn about their own purchases- in an age of globalization, the products we use can be made in one country with materials from another. As a responsible citizen, one must not completely boycott products from other countries but should try to use local goods and services as much as possible. By doing so, the person is helping the economy of the country as well as financing local households. Volunteering and contributing to community development efforts is an important step in helping the country progress. One does not have to have widespread connections with major NGOs to volunteer- simply helping a disabled neighbour with their groceries also counts.

One can volunteer in local homeless shelters, orphanages, animal shelters, retirement homes, as well as other educational institutions like struggling schools and nurseries. If one does not have the time in their schedule to volunteer physically, they can instead choose to donate to charity. However, one must always donate wisely, because some charities are dishonest and lack transparency in terms of what actually happens with the funds from the donation. Therefore, always research the charity before donating to it.

However, supporting the community isn’t limited merely to volunteering with organizations or donating- it also involves supporting art, music, and cultural activities. One should support local artists by promoting their work and also stay on the lookout for shows, exhibitions, and other cultural events. By attending and promoting them, the person will not only develop a healthy sense of what truly constitutes entertainment but also allow the culture of the country to flourish in all areas truly. Being a good citizen involves being cooperative, friendly, considerate, and dedicated to fostering a positive environment in the community.

Good Citizenship and Global Citizenship Essay

Introduction, good citizen needed to make a global citizen, global citizenship needed to make a good citizen, works cited.

The 21st Century has witnessed integration and increased cultural interaction among people on a previously unprecedented scale. This frequent interaction between people from varied countries and cultures has risen mostly as a result of the advances that have been made in transport and communication technologies.

As a result of this interaction, there has been the major integration of economies and cultures in a process known as globalization. As a result of globalization, governments are increasingly being required to link together different levels of their activities: national and global. This has resulted in the building of a global citizenry which sees the world as their “country”.

However, the global citizen continues to be heavily influenced by the traditional notion of citizen, a term that is “wrapped up in rights and obligations and in owing allegiance to a sovereign state” (Lagos 1). This paper shall argue that it is hugely necessary for one to be a good citizen so as to become a global citizen. To reinforce this claim, this paper shall analyze the extent to which it is necessary to be a “good citizen” in order to be a “global citizen”, and vice versa.

The world is full of social injustices mostly perpetrated by the stronger members of the society against the weaker ones. A defining characteristic of a good national citizen in such an environment is his/her concern about the injustices that occur within their boundaries.

This concern normally manifests itself in protests and public demonstrations calling for action by the government in place to counter the perceived injustices. A report by the World Bank demonstrates that the global citizen shows the same concern for the welfare of the globe and is moved to free their fellow men from dehumanizing conditions (1). As such, it takes a good citizen to make the global citizen who will be keen to decry social injustices against other human beings.

Core to the agendas of the good citizen is the preservation of peace in his country. A good citizen will strive to preserve peace especially within the boundaries of his/her country. This is mostly because the citizen recognizes the destruction and loss that war culminates in. For this reason, the good citizen seeks to mobilize against all wars through peaceful demonstrations and advocacy against wars.

The United Nations declares that peace is a precondition of global citizenship. The global citizen views war and strife as being contrary to his/her agenda. A good citizen who is committed to preserving peace is therefore needed to make a global citizen.

One of the attribute that a good citizen in any democratic society should possess is an understanding of public policies in his/her country. An understanding of this policies will result in enlightenment on one’s country position on issues such as energy, free trade, agriculture and the environment to name but a few.

It is only by understanding the public policies adopted by one’s country that a person can act so as to shape certain conditions such as protection of natural habitat. A global citizen is also concerned with the protection of the environment and establishment of free trade. It would therefore take a good citizen who is well versed with public policies to make a global citizen.

A good citizen is concerned about the impact that his individual actions and daily personal choices have on the country. This is an ideal that is also desirable in the global citizen since as a global citizen should make his/her decisions bases on an awareness of the impact that the decisions will have on the planet. A good citizen who is aware and conscious of the impact that his actions have on a larger scale is therefore needed to make a global citizen.

The international community is characterized by a rich diversity of cultures among its people. The global citizen is therefore prepared to operate amicably in this intercultural environment. The global citizen realizes that there should be unity in diversity and nobody has the right to impose their ideology on anybody or any group of persons.

An ideal citizen should also demonstrate this values and pay respect to people from different cultures and strives to live harmoniously with them. The good citizen should recognize that differences may exist within members of the country and this should not be a cause of strive. By acting as a global citizen who operates in a multicultural sphere, a person can be a good citizen and exist harmoniously with other citizens of varied backgrounds.

Lagos documents that while globalization is acclaimed for having opened up the world and led to the emergence of a “global village”, the same force has paradoxically resulted in localization and local communities have taken greater and greater importance (9). In such an environment, it is the global citizen who holds the separate entities together and seeks to iron out the differences that the various local communities seek to advance.

For a citizen to pass for a good citizen in such an environment (the environment where local communities have taken great importance), he must have the global perspective of the global citizen. It is only by taking the global perspective that a citizen can give fair consideration to ideas with which they disagree.

Global citizenship is increasingly working towards making the planet sustainable for all people. The efforts directed to this end are mostly in the form of advocacy for conservation of the environment, reduction of pollution and the reliance on renewable sources of power. A good citizen is supposed to work towards the preservation of the country’s resources for future resources. As such, the good citizen has to be a global citizen who is concerned with making the planet sustainable.

As a global citizen, one is expected to be non judgmental and overlook the religious differences that divide humanity. The UN states that the global citizen should have values such as “rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”. A good citizen should also have these values enshrined in them. A good citizen should avoid engaging in religious discrimination since this threatens unity among the citizens of the nation.

This paper has demonstrated that being a global citizen is intrinsically connected to being a good citizen. As such, being a global citizenship implies a responsibility to be a good citizen. However, there are instances where being a global citizen may cause one to be a “bad citizen”.

For example, a global citizen is not expected to advocate for war or side with any party during war. Good citizenship calls for one to back their country when it is involved in a war. Acting as a global citizen in such instances can therefore prevent one from being an ideal citizen.

Lagos indicates that a citizen obtains a certain amount of protection from his/her country in return for abiding to some restrictions that the government may impose on him/her (3). A good citizen is therefore required to abide by some laws and allow some bureaucratic control from his/her nation.

A global citizen on the other hand does not have any kind of protection and has some amount of degree from bureaucratic control. Lagos states that the hallmark of global citizen is the lack of allegiance to any body of laws to control the individual. In this light, being a global citizen goes contrary to what being a good citizen entails.

This paper set out to argue that to a large extent, it is necessary to be a “good citizen” in order to be a “global citizen” and vice versa. The paper performed a detailed analysis of how a person may be obligated to be a good citizen so as to qualify as a global citizen and vise versa.

This paper has shown that global citizens borrow most of their rights and obligations from the traditional “citizen” who is defined by a civic engagement to a nation existing in a particular geography. In particular, the paper demonstrates that values such as tolerance, civic education are innate in both the good citizen and the global citizen. However, the paper has also shown that global citizen differs significantly from the citizen and in some instances, being a global citizen may cause one not to fulfill his role as a good citizen.

Lagos, Taso. Global Citizenship- Towards a Definition . 2002. Web.

The World Bank. “Global Citizenship- Ethical Challenges Ahead”. Conference on Leadership and Core Values . 2002. Web.

UN. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 2010. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2024, January 31). Good Citizenship and Global Citizenship. https://ivypanda.com/essays/good-citizenship-and-global-citizenship/

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Good Citizenship and Global Citizenship." January 31, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/good-citizenship-and-global-citizenship/.

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How to Be a Good Citizen – 10 Ways to Show Good Citizenship

We should all aspire to be good citizens of our country, and of the world.

The concept of citizenship was born in the city-states of Ancient Greece; specifically, in Athens. Greek education at the time was designed to instruct citizens in the values, intellectual frameworks, and habits-of-mind required to be free men. That is, to actively participate in the political system that shaped their lives and guaranteed their freedoms.

Today, being a citizen means that you’re part of a group, and that you have legal and political rights within that group. It brings with it both privileges and obligations. I would argue that we each have a duty, or an obligation, to be good citizens. After all, a nation is only as healthy as its individual citizens.

Nonetheless, in modern times, people generally aren’t educated on how to be good citizens. Therefore, I asked myself the following questions: “What does it mean to be a good citizen?”, and, “How do you become a good citizen?” In this post I’m going to share with you the answers that I came up with.

Below you’ll find 10 ways to be a good citizen.

1. A Good Citizen is Patriotic.

Patriotism is having and showing devotion for your country. It means having an attachment to certain national cultural values and showing critical loyalty to your nation. Some ways to show patriotism include the following:

• Brush up on your country’s history.
• Read up on social studies.
• Obey the rule of law.
• Pay your taxes.
• Learn the national anthem.
• Fly your country’s flag.
• Don’t litter or engage in acts of vandalism that deface your environment.
• Travel around your country and talk to your fellow citizens.
• Cheer for your country’s team in sports events (World Cup, I’m looking at you).

At the same time, keep in mind that patriotism should not be confused with nationalism. Nationalism is thinking of your nation as being superior to others, and worthy of dominance. Patriots are proud of their country, but they understand that other people are also rightly proud of theirs.

Look at the words of a church hymn written in 1934 by the American Lloyd Stone to the melody of Finlandia by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius :

This is my song, Oh God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is; Here are my hopes, my dreams, my sacred shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

A good citizen loves their country—a good citizen is a patriot.

2. Model the Personal Qualities of Good Citizens.

The personal qualities of a good citizen include the following:

• Honesty – tell the truth.
• Integrity – be morally upright.
• Responsibility – be accountable for yourself and your actions.
• Respectfulness – treat others how you want to be treated.
• Compassion – show fellowship with your compatriots who are down on their luck by volunteering and/or making donations to charities.
• Kindness – be friendly.
• Tolerance – be tolerant of other races and religions.
• Courtesy – be considerate of others.
• Self-Discipline – have self-control and cultivate the ability to follow through on what you say you’re going to do.
• Moral Courage – stand up for what you consider to be wrong and defend those who cannot defend themselves.
• Love of Justice – be fair and ask that others be so as well.

Imagine what your country would be like if all its citizens strived to achieve these personal qualities. Start by adopting them yourself.

There are two ways in which you can develop the characteristics listed above. In my post on How to Develop Your Character – Benjamin Franklin’s Thirteen Virtues , I explain that at the age of twenty Benjamin Franklin resolved to always do right and avoid any wrongdoing.

The way in which he planned to achieve this was by creating a list of 13 virtues. He also created a plan for developing those virtues. I recommend you do something similar.

In addition, in his youth George Washington captured 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior . They were rules for comporting oneself in a way that would be respectful of others, and of the self. Look through the rules and come up with your own set of rules of behavior.

3. Be a Productive Member of Society.

A good citizen contributes to their nation by being productive. They’re productive employees, business owners, artists, public servants, caregivers, and so on. Good citizens share their skills, talents, and abilities with others. They make a positive contribution to their nation.

4. Be Active In Your Community.

A good citizen is active in their community. They participate in the social life of their city or town, and they look for ways to make their communities a better place to live. That is, if they see a problem in their community they look for ways to solve it.

Here are some ways to be active in your community:

• Shop locally.
• Attend community events – keep your eyes open for events that are happening in your area such as festivals, community theatre, a gallery opening, and so on.
• Join a local club that’s devoted to an activity that interests you, such as running, cycling, or kayaking.

Here are some ways to better your community:

• Participate in a community-driven cleanup project.
• Help plant a community garden.
• Organize a campaign to raise money for new playground equipment.
• Help out your neighbors.

Instead of being cooped up in your home glued to a technological device, get out there and become an active member of your community. It will make you a better citizen.

5. Keep Yourself Well-Informed.

Read to educate yourself about the important issues facing your nation. In 1761, John Adams implied that one of the reasons to emphasize literacy is that it makes people better citizens. Look at the following quote:

“Every man has in politics as well as religion a right to think and speak and act for himself. I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?”

If you’re asking yourself what you should read to keep well-informed, here are some suggestions:

• Various news sources that cover local, national and global news.
• Books on important world issues.
• Biographies of people who have helped shape the world.
• History books.
• Political science books such as Rawls’ A Theory of Justice , Plato’s The Republic , and Mill’s On Liberty .

6. Be Vigilant.

A country depends on a well-informed and civic minded population to safeguard the people’s individual freedoms and political rights. A good citizen remains vigilant in order to ascertain that the government is doing all of the following:

• Meeting its obligations to its citizens;
• Acting appropriately within its sphere and jurisdiction; and
• Adhering to the limits of state action.

To do this, a citizen must have the basic skills necessary to be able to assess arguments logically and critically.

In addition, if a citizen believes that the government is overstepping its bounds or failing in its duties, the citizen must speak up. In the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

7. Participate in Your Nation’s Political Life.

If you want to be a good citizen, you should be politically active. There are many ways to this. Here are some ideas:

• Identify an issue you care about and pursue it.
• Attend rallies and events.
• Go to city council meetings.
• Join a political organization.
• Volunteer for a political campaign.
• Vote! Do your part to elect capable, civic minded leaders.
• Run for political office.

As a citizen, you have the right to have your voice heard. Exercise that right.

8. Be a Mentor.

Today’s kids are tomorrow’s citizens. Help shape the citizens of the future by mentoring kids. Some ideas on ways you can mentor kids are the following:

• Talk to your own kids about civics and teach them to be good citizens.
• Join a school-based mentoring program and tutor kids who aren’t doing well academically.
• Get involved in an organization such as Big Brothers Big Sisters.

A while ago I published a post on how to leave a legacy . A great legacy to leave your nation is to play a part in forming good citizens who will contribute to the nation’s well-being.

9. Be Well-Rounded.

The third point in this blog post indicates that a good citizen has to be productive. That is, they need to have the knowledge necesary to produce in today’s world — technical skills, legal skills, medical skills, and so on. However, a good citizen should also be well-rounded.

A well-rounded person is better at creative problem solving and innovation than a person who is not well-rounded. In addition, they can make contributions not only to a country’s GDP, but also to the cultural wealth of their nation.

Here are some of the qualities of a well-rounded person:

• They’re well-read .
• A well-rounded person is cultured .
• They’re well-educated .
• They develop not only their mental faculties, but also their emotional, physical, and spiritual faculties.

10. Order Your Corner Of the World

Your home is a microcosm of your country. If you want to live in a clean, healthy, prosperous, happy nation, start by creating these circumstances at home.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius once said the following: “To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order; we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

Do things like the following:

• Keep a clean and organized home environment.
• Eat healthy meals.
• Keep to a budget and don’t go into debt.
• Pay your bills on time.
• Don’t waste water or electricity.
• Create a list of simple rules for your family to follow.
• Set personal development goals and strive to achieve them.

Start small- create order at home. Good homes lead to good neighborhoods, which lead to good cities, which lead to good states, which lead to good countries, which lead to a good world.

I, for one, am making an effort to be a good citizen of Panama, and of the world. How about you? Live your best life by being a good citizen.

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Lesson Plans

Teaching citizenship unit.

The “Teaching Citizenship Unit” provides some structure and materials for parents and teachers interested in teaching young Americans how to be involved and effective citizens. Specifically, getting young Americans used to doing the small things which, when done on a day-to-day basis, keep our democracy strong.

The Unit has 4 Lessons. Each Lesson has multiple topics. In time, the Lessons and supporting materials and activities will be grade-level specific. Currently, they are general in nature but can be used as a starter-kit and modified.

Lesson Plan 1 - Terms & U.S. Democracy Basics

Lesson plan 2 - importance of being involved in our democracy, lesson plan 3 - how to be an effective citizen, lesson plan 4 - performing citizen actions, lesson 1 – terms & u.s. democracy basics.

Ensure students learn the basic terms needed to understand the material in the rest of the Teaching Citizenship Unit.

1 – Terms and Definitions

• Citizenship Terms and Definitions Worksheet – ( Word version – PDF version )
• Terms & Definitions Wordsearch ( regular – answer sheet ) ( diagonal – answer sheet ) ( diagonal & reverse – answer sheet )
• Terms & Definitions Spelling Quiz
• Terms & Definitions Vocabulary Quiz – ( Word version – PDF version )

2 – Democracy versus Autocracy

• Democracy versus Autocracy Worksheet.

3 – U.S. Constitution Basics

• Overview of US Constitution
• Constitution for Kids

4 – Public Officials – Roles & Responsibilities

Teaching Points

• Handout the Responsibilities of Elected Offficials .
• Remind the kids that the country is run on a daily basis by those we elect and and by those who are appointed and hired by those we elect.
• Discuss some of the powers and decisions our public officials make and the importance to the country.
• Homework – Handout the Elected Officials Worksheet

KEY POINT – Elected officials and the individuals they appoint have a great deal of influence over the laws and direction of the country. Materials

5 – Citizens – Rights and Responsibilities

Specifically citizens responsible for

• Understanding heritage of country
• Staying involved in democratic process
• Promoting a sense of community
• Supporting individuals with special responsibility for keeping country strong
• Keeping themselves and their families strong
• Understanding how our government works

6 – Special Interest Groups

Teaching Point

• Ask the kids to identify other organizations they believe might be SIGs. Clarify what their cause is and ask what things each of the SIGs might do that was in their best interest but not in the best interest of the country overall.

KEY POINT – Special interest groups are concerned about their cause and not necessarily the country.

• Special Interest Groups – Info Sheet
• Matching SIGs to Causes Worksheet

Teaching Citizenship Unit Lesson 2 – Importance of Being Involved in Our Democracy

Help students recognize that:

• they are citizens in a democracy,
• our democracy is worth keeping, and
• their active involvement in our democracy is critical for it to survive.

1  – Appreciating the U.S. Democracy

• Ask kids to make a list of the nice things about the United States.
• opportunities,
• conveniences and comforts,
• goods, and services
• diverse, generous, and hard-working people
• diverse land
• Discuss what each category means and add new points. Contrast what we have against other societies.KEY POINT – We are fortunate to live in the United States

Things To Appreciate About the U.S. Worksheet  – Ask the kids to pick 1-3 things from the list they particularly appreciate and explain why they are important to them.

2  – Impact of Not Staying Involved

If citizens don’t pay attention to their responsibilities, special interest groups will fill the void.

We make uninformed decision, we don’t elect individuals who have our interests at heart – special interest groups fill the void – they influence our elected and public officials. Elected officials don’t actin our interest, we become disillusioned and less involved and the cycle continues.

In a democracy, the citizens choose those to govern them.

Teaching Citizenship Unit Lesson 3 – How to be An Effective Citizen

Have students:

• recognize that taking care of things that are important requires constant vigilance,
• understand what a  citizen action  is and the six types of  citizen actions , and
• believe in, the impact of a single positive action.

1 – How to appreciate things we value

• Ask the kids how one should/can appreciate something they value and make a list of their answers on the board. Then explain/summarize that the way to appreciate things is to “Take Care of Them.
• Then for each item they listed, have them describe: a) how to take care of it and b) what happens to it if they don’t take care of it.KEY POINT – One appreciates something by taking care of it.
• Pass out the “ Things I Appreciate Worksheet ” and ask the kids to list 5-8 things that are important to them. For example: parents, a bike, their eyes, a sibling or friend, their bedroom, a pet, a special place, etc.

2 – Citizen Actions

• Ask students who they think is responsible for keeping the country strong and free. For each group they mention like president, law enforcement, etc. ask them what each group’s role is in keeping the country strong.
• If “citizens” didn’t come up in #1, ask the students what each citizen’s role is in keeping the country strong.
• Introduce notion of a  citizen action  using content of the “ 100 Citizen Actions ” section of the site and review 4-6 citizen actions as examples and ask the students to explain how each of the examples helps keep the country strong..
• Have the students identify other examples of  citizen actions. KEY POINTS – Each citizen is ultimately responsible for the strength of a democracy. Citizens take care of the country by doing small things, called  citizen actions , on a day-to-day basis.

3 – Citizen Action Categories

• List and explain each of the 6 Citizen Action Categories. Specifically, why the citizen actions in each of the categories help keep the country strong and free.
• Help the students organize the various examples of citizen actions into these categories.
• Have each student identify 1 or 2 new  citizen actions  and the citizen action category they fit into..
• For each of those citizen actions, have them explain why that action would help keep the country strong.
• Email  any creative new  citizen actions  to Good Citizen for possible inclusion on their site.

Complete the  “Heritage” and “Democratic Process” Actions Matching Worksheet.  Worksheet Answer  Key .

Complete the  “Special Groups” and “Government” Actions Matching Worksheet.  Worksheet Answer  Key

Complete the  “Sense of Community” and “Individuals and Families” Actions Matching Worksheet . Worksheet Answer  Key .

4  – The Impact of a Single Act

• Have the kids pick a  citizen action  (either one from the developed list or a personal one) and write an essay on why and how that action act can make a difference to the country. Have them use a personal story or observation if possible.
• Show the kids the movie “Pay It Forward”, if time permits and/or read a few stories from the Individual Stories page in the Pay It Forward website – http://www.payitforwardmovement.org/individuals.html . If computers are available have the kids read them. Another alternative would be to print out a packet of 4-6 of these stories. The stories are inspiring and wonderful!
• Complete the “ Matching Citizen Actions to Categories ” worksheet.

Teaching Citizenship Unit Lesson 4 – Performing Citizen Actions

To give students an opportunity to perform a few citizen reactions  and share their experiences with the class.

1 – Identify Citizen Actions to Performed

• Have each student choose 2-3 citizen actions that they will perform. Do this by going to the  Citizen Actions  page and selecting the appropriate grade level under “By Grade Level For Younger Americans.”
• Read the descriptions of each citizen action to the students.
• Discuss each one and ensure the students are clear on how to perform each of these.
• Discuss that they will be writing a brief summary of their experiences performing each of the citizen actions. Suggest that they keep notes each time they perform the citizen actions. Suggest that they discuss their assignment with their parents.
• Homework: Give the kids a few weeks to complete this assignment – the time should depend on the citizen actions selected.

2 – Write About Each Citizen Action Performed

3 – Share Experiences with Class

• 100 Citizen Actions
• Permissions

Ashland High School senior is local Daughters of the American Revolution essay winner

SHERBORN — An Ashland High School senior has been selected as this year's Framingham chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution local essay winner.

Emily Umholtz was selected from among seven area Good Citizen winners and selected by judges not affiliated with the DAR. She is a Student Council representative, a 2024 class officer and has been a captain for two years for ultimate frisbee.

Her future plans include attending college to major in chemistry, with a sub-focus in law and justice.

Umholtz was honored in February during the DAR's Good Citizen Award Ceremony at The Sherborn 1858 Town House.

Each year, the Framingham chapter of the DAR invites seven schools to participate in its Good Citizen Program.

Other students selected as Good Citizen winners by their schools included Alivia Toure, of Bellingham High School; Lunah Semprum, of Framingham High School; Reese Holmes, of Holliston High School; William Adamski, of Hopedale Junior-Senior High School; Caroline Kane, of Hopkinton High School); and Robert Lyons Jr., of Milford High School.

Each school’s faculty and student body committee choose one student from their senior class to become their school’s Good Citizen; students are recognized and awarded by the Framingham chapter of the DAR. Each Good Citizen must have and maintain the qualities of dependability, service, leadership and patriotism.

During the ceremony, Master Sgt. Andrew Baumgartner, of West Point Military Academy, served as guest speaker. He spoke of his love of education and his experiences during his years of service.

Also speaking was Vice President General of DAR Paula Renkas.

News | St. Clair County news briefs: DAR scholarship…

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News | St. Clair County news briefs: DAR scholarship winner announced; road work underway; more

DAR scholarship winner announced

The Ottawa Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution in Port Huron recently announced the DAR Good Citizen Essay Scholarship winner for the 2023-2024 school year is Rachel Case.

Case, a senior at New Life Christian Academy in Kimball Township, is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Case, of Columbus Township, according to a news release.

“She is a high-achieving student and leader and a young woman of character who’s active in student government and athletics,” the organization said. “She plays violin in an orchestra, has bred and raised animals for 4-H and competed in forensics in Science Olympiads. In the fall, she’ll either attend the University of Michigan or Hillsdale College, where she has been awarded Merit Scholarships to study Biomedical Science.”

Case attended Ottawa Chapter’s April meeting, where she introduced herself and read her essay. She received a commemorative pin, a certificate of achievement from the chapter and a $300 scholarship. Her essay will now be judged at the state level.

DAR Good Citizens Scholarships are in their 90th year. They’re given to encourage and reward the qualities of good citizenship. The award recognizes and rewards high school seniors who possess the qualities of dependability, service, leadership and patriotism in their homes, schools and communities.

DAR is a nonprofit, nonpolitical women’s volunteer service organization dedicated to promoting historic preservation, education and patriotism. For more information about DAR and the Good Citizen program, email [email protected] or visit ottawa.michdar.net.

Foundation to host annual Cinco de Mayo dinner

The Algonac Clay Community Foundation will host its annual Cinco de Mayo scholarship and grant dinner on May 2 at Fred Quant VFW Post 3901, located at 1005 Pointe Tremble Road in Algonac.

The event will include a 50/50, a cash bar, food, raffles and wagon of cheer, a flyer for the event states. All funds support local kids and community groups.

The doors will open at 5:30 p.m., food will be served at 6 p.m. and the program will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tickets, which cost $25, are available at Algonac City Hall, Amiels Enterprises Inc. or the Clay Township offices.

New date added for lighthouse painting class series

A new date has been added for the Ira Township Yellow Brush Michigan lighthouses painting class series.

The new session will be from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. May 4 at Ira Township Hall, located at 7085 Meldrum Road. During the session, attendees will paint a Michigan lighthouse.

The cost of the class is $35, and those interested are asked to preregister for supply purposes and to reserve a seat before May 2.

Those interested can register at the township offices from 7 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Those unable to register in person can drop off payment with the specific class on the memo line of the check in the drop box located in the township parking lot or mail it to Ira Township Parks and Recreation, 7085 Meldrum Road, Ira Township, MI 48023.

For more information, call Anna at 586-339-3969 or email Babisz at [email protected].

Concert series presents Devin Scillian, Arizona Son

The Festival Concert Series at First United Methodist Church of Port Huron, located at 828 Lapeer Ave., will be featuring Devin Scillian and his band Arizona Son as its closing concert for the 2024 season on May 4.

“Devin is equally at home on your television, on your bookshelf and on your iTunes,” a recent press release states. “Children, teachers and parents know him as a writer. Television viewers know him as their evening news anchor. And music lovers know him as the winner of the prestigious Detroit Music Award for Best Country Performer. An accomplished musician and songwriter, Devin has released four albums of his original songs. He and his band Arizona Son make frequent appearances on the summer concert circuit. Devin and his band have opened for the likes of Toby Keith, Reba McEntire and LeAnn Rimes.”

The performance will take place at 7:30 p.m.

“We are delighted to honor the many requests to bring a country musician to our series,” the release states. “Please come and join us for an evening of wonderful music.”

Adult tickets cost $17 in advance and $20 at the door and student tickets cost $5. They can be purchased by visiting the Port Huron Music Center or calling First United Methodist Church.

For more information, call First United Methodist Church of Port Huron at 810-985-8107.

PHN girls basketball finishes first in state for academics

Port Huron Northern High School’s girls basketball team recently finished their season with the achievement of holding the highest GPA average in the state, according to the Michigan High School Athletic Association.

“Their weighted team GPA is 3.986382979, placing them at ‘#1 in the State for BCAM (Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan) All-Academic Teams,’” Port Huron school officials said in a news release. “This achievement was not exclusive to the girls teams throughout the state. It also qualified as the highest GPA of all of the boys teams throughout the state, making this team truly #1 All-Academic.”

The team was recognized on April 15 at the Port Huron Schools’ Board of Education meeting. Many of the team members were not able to attend the recognition because they are also players in spring sports that were taking place that same evening.

“We celebrate the exceptional academic achievement of these students who are so multifaceted with their talents,” Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Catherine Woolman said. “They serve as true role models to other athletes across our district and the entire state. We take pride in their accomplishments with how they represent Port Huron Schools in the both the classroom and their basketball program.”

Roadwork underway

Area motorists will see a handful of road and intermittent lane closures as various projects are completed throughout St. Clair County.

All projects are weather dependent. Here’s a look at what’s ahead:

• Clay Township: Stone Road between High and Swartout roads will have intermittent lane closures starting April 29 due to asphalt paving.

• Fort Gratiot Township: Brace Road between M-25 and Parker Road will have a full road closure from April 29 to May 1 due to a crossroad culvert replacement.

• Ira Township: Arnold Road between Church and Meldrum roads will be closed through May 3 due to a crossroad culvert installation and road widening project.

• Port Huron Township: Maywood and Riverwood Heights drives will have intermittent lane closures during the week of April 29 due to chip seal patching.

• Port Huron Township: Michigan Road between Lapeer Road and West Water Street will have intermittent lane closures during the week of April 29 due to a ditching project.

• Wales Township: Stapleton Road between Dunn and Webb roads will have a full road closure from April 30 to May 2 due to Asphalt crushing.

• Wales Township: Fox Road between Sparling and Webb roads will have a full road closure on May 1 and 2 due to asphalt crushing.

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Guest Essay

Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe

By Matthew Waxman and Adam Klein

Mr. Waxman served in senior national security roles in the George W. Bush administration. Mr. Klein served as the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2018 to 2021.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous time for the United States and our allies. Israel’s unpreparedness on Oct. 7 shows that even powerful nations can be surprised in catastrophic ways. Fortunately, Congress, in a rare bipartisan act, voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key intelligence power that provides critical information on hostile states and threats ranging from terrorism to fentanyl trafficking.

Civil libertarians argued that the surveillance bill erodes Americans’ privacy rights and pointed to examples when American citizens got entangled in investigations. Importantly, the latest version of the bill adds dozens of legal safeguards around the surveillance in question — the most expansive privacy reform to the legislation in its history. The result preserves critical intelligence powers while protecting Americans’ privacy rights in our complex digital age.

At the center of the debate is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Originally passed in 1978, it demanded that investigators gain an order from a special court to surveil foreign agents inside the United States. Collecting the communications of foreigners abroad did not require court approval.

That line blurred in the digital age. Many foreign nationals rely on American providers such as Google and Meta, which route or store data in the United States, raising questions as to whether the rules apply to where the targets are or where their data is collected. In 2008, Congress addressed that conundrum with Section 702. Instead of requiring the government to seek court orders for each foreign target, that provision requires yearly judicial approval of the rules that govern the program as a whole. That way, the government can efficiently obtain from communication providers the calls and messages of large numbers of foreign targets — 246,073 in 2022 alone.

Since then, Section 702 has supplied extraordinary insight into foreign dangers, including military threats, theft of American trade secrets, terrorism, hacking and fentanyl trafficking. In 2022 intelligence from 702 helped the government find and kill the Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, one of the terrorists responsible for Sept. 11. Almost 60 percent of the articles in the president’s daily intelligence briefing include information from Section 702.

Although Section 702 can be used only to target foreigners abroad, it does include Americans when they interact with foreign targets. Not only is such incidental collection inevitable in today’s globalized world; it can be vital to U.S. security. If a terrorist or spy abroad is communicating with someone here, our government must find out why.

Some of what is found via Section 702 is therefore sent from the National Security Agency to the F.B.I. The F.B.I., which investigates threats to national security in the United States, can then check that database for Americans under investigation for national security reasons.

We agree that those queries raise legitimate privacy concerns. And those concerns are especially acute for public officials and journalists whose communications with foreign officials and other potential intelligence targets may be sensitive for political or professional reasons.

It is also true that the F.B.I. has broken the rules around these 702 database checks repeatedly in recent years. Agents ran improper queries related to elected officials and political protests. The wiretaps of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser, also involved numerous violations of FISA rules. The Page wiretaps involved traditional FISA orders, not Section 702, but the bureau’s many errors there raised understandable doubts about whether it can be trusted to comply with other FISA rules.

Fortunately, there are ways to prevent abuses of Section 702 without compromising its critical national security value. The bill passed by Congress contains numerous reforms that will dramatically improve compliance. It sharply limits the number and ranks of F.B.I. agents who can run 702 queries, imposes strict penalties for misconduct and expands oversight by Congress and the courts.

Some of the bill’s critics argued that the F.B.I. should be required to obtain a warrant from a special FISA court before using the information collected under 702 when investigating Americans who may be involved in terrorism, espionage or other national security threats. But requiring such a warrant would have been unnecessary and unwise.

Getting a FISA court order is bureaucratically cumbersome and would slow down investigations — especially fast-moving cybercases, in which queries have proved especially useful. It would cause agents to miss important connections to national security threats. And because this information has already been lawfully collected and stored, its use in investigation doesn’t require a warrant under the Constitution.

Another problem is that the probable cause needed for a warrant is rarely available early in an investigation. But that’s precisely when these queries are most useful. Database checks allow an agent to quickly see whether there is a previously unnoticed connection to a foreign terrorist, spy or other adversary.

Balances struck between security and privacy need continual refinement. Recent years have shown Section 702’s great value for national security. But they have also revealed lax compliance at the F.B.I. The latest reauthorization boosts privacy without blinding our country to threats in today’s dangerous world.

Matthew Waxman is a Columbia University law professor who served in senior national security roles in the George W. Bush administration. Adam Klein is the director of the Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas, Austin, and served as the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board from 2018 to 2021.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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Who is Kristi Noem? What we know about the Trump VP contender and why she killed a dog

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been a topic of online chatter after excerpts from her upcoming memoir were published by The Guardian on Friday.

In her book " No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward ," Noem details how she put a dog down for being "untrainable."

The story caught the attention of politicians on both sides of the aisle.

"Dogs are a gift from God," tweeted Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of "The View" and former Donald Trump White House staffer. "They’re a reflection of his unconditional love. Anyone who would needlessly hurt an animal because they are inconvenient needs help."

 The Democratic National Committee called the excerpts from the book "horrifying" and "disturbing."

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Amid the backlash, Noem responded that she understands "why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story" but defended the decision to kill the dog.

"We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm," Noem said in a post on X. "Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years."

Noem is a contender to become Trump's running mate. Here's what we know about the governor.

Who is Gov. Kristi Noem?

According to the governor's website , Noem is also a rancher, farmer and small-business owner.

She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 and in 2018 was elected South Dakota's first female governor.

Today, she is also a New York Times bestselling author. In January 2022, she published her first book, "Not My First Rodeo: Lessons from the Heartland," and the website says she was reelected governor with the "largest vote total in the history of South Dakota."

Could Kristi Noem run with Donald Trump?

The governor is a contender to become Trump's  running mate, but recent polling from New River Strategies, which was published by Politico , says only 14% of Americans consider her a good choice for the Republican ticket.

The report also says that 86% of 2020 Trump voters report liking or loving dogs and that 39% of them do not believe she would be a good choice for vice president. Only 22% said she would be.

Why did Kristi Noem kill her dog Cricket?

According to The Guardian, Noem said she killed her dog because of its “aggressive personality” and called the dog "untrainable."

In her book, she writes that the dog's name was Cricket and that she was a 14-month-old wirehair pointer. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals , puppies become adolescent dogs at ages 6 to 12 months or 18 to 24 months.

The American Kennel Club rates the dog breed as "love-dovey" when it comes to how affectionate the dogs are with families.

In her post on X, Noem said South Dakota law says dogs that attack and kill livestock can be put down.

"Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did," she wrote.

She added: "Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor."

What is Kristi Noem's new book?

According to its description, Noem's book "No Going Back" shares "eye-opening realities of DC dysfunction, lessons from leading her state through unprecedented challenge, and how we seize this moment to move America forward."

On X, she said the book "is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned."

It's set to release on May 7.

Some people outraged by the controversy are already dropping negative reviews of the book on GoodReads .

Contributing: Tim Reid, Reuters

Julia is a trending reporter for USA TODAY. She has covered various topics, from local businesses and government in her hometown, Miami, to tech and pop culture.   You can follow her on  X, formerly known as Twitter ,  Instagram  and  TikTok : @juliamariegz

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An NPR editor who wrote a critical essay on the company has resigned after being suspended

FILE - The headquarters for National Public Radio (NPR) stands on North Capitol Street on April 15, 2013, in Washington. A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal reviews resigned on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A National Public Radio editor who wrote an essay criticizing his employer for promoting liberal views resigned on Wednesday, attacking NPR’s new CEO on the way out.

Uri Berliner, a senior editor on NPR’s business desk, posted his resignation letter on X, formerly Twitter, a day after it was revealed that he had been suspended for five days for violating company rules about outside work done without permission.

“I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems” written about in his essay, Berliner said in his resignation letter.

Katherine Maher, a former tech executive appointed in January as NPR’s chief executive, has been criticized by conservative activists for social media messages that disparaged former President Donald Trump. The messages predated her hiring at NPR.

NPR’s public relations chief said the organization does not comment on individual personnel matters.

The suspension and subsequent resignation highlight the delicate balance that many U.S. news organizations and their editorial employees face. On one hand, as journalists striving to produce unbiased news, they’re not supposed to comment on contentious public issues; on the other, many journalists consider it their duty to critique their own organizations’ approaches to journalism when needed.

In his essay , written for the online Free Press site, Berliner said NPR is dominated by liberals and no longer has an open-minded spirit. He traced the change to coverage of Trump’s presidency.

“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed,” he wrote. “It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad and the dire threat of Republican policies. It’s almost like an assembly line.”

He said he’d brought up his concerns internally and no changes had been made, making him “a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love.”

In the essay’s wake, NPR top editorial executive, Edith Chapin, said leadership strongly disagreed with Berliner’s assessment of the outlet’s journalism and the way it went about its work.

It’s not clear what Berliner was referring to when he talked about disparagement by Maher. In a lengthy memo to staff members last week, she wrote: “Asking a question about whether we’re living up to our mission should always be fair game: after all, journalism is nothing if not hard questions. Questioning whether our people are serving their mission with integrity, based on little more than the recognition of their identity, is profoundly disrespectful, hurtful and demeaning.”

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo revealed some of Maher’s past tweets after the essay was published. In one tweet, dated January 2018, Maher wrote that “Donald Trump is a racist.” A post just before the 2020 election pictured her in a Biden campaign hat.

In response, an NPR spokeswoman said Maher, years before she joined the radio network, was exercising her right to express herself. She is not involved in editorial decisions at NPR, the network said.

The issue is an example of what can happen when business executives, instead of journalists, are appointed to roles overseeing news organizations: they find themselves scrutinized for signs of bias in ways they hadn’t been before. Recently, NBC Universal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde has been criticized for service on paid corporate boards.

Maher is the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation. NPR’s own story about the 40-year-old executive’s appointment in January noted that she “has never worked directly in journalism or at a news organization.”

In his resignation letter, Berliner said that he did not support any efforts to strip NPR of public funding. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism,” he wrote.

David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://twitter.com/dbauder