K-12 education in the U.S. is designed to transmit to our
young people the knowledge and skills that our society deems important. Community-based
youth development programs are often designed to teach knowledge and skills
that are not addressed in school, and sometimes to give young people
experiences that take them out of their neighborhoods into the wider world. But
knowledge and skill development are still the goals. But if one of our larger
social goals is to expand opportunity rather than perpetuating inequality, schools
and community-based youth development programs must focus more explicitly on
helping young people build their social networks.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Guardians and Pathways
By interesting coincidence, a
couple of reports relating to civic participation were released on September 15
in different parts of the world. First, a collaborative in the United Kingdom
called Pathways through Participation released a report called “Pathways
through Participation: What creates and sustains active citizenship?” A few
hours later, as part of the 2011 National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC) in
Philadelphia, “Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools” was released
by a partnership that included NCoC, The Campaign for the Civic Mission of
Schools and CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning
and Engagement.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)