Responsible Adult Citizen






 * 'Tis education forms the common mind,
 * Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
 * Alexander Pope, 1734, Epistle to Cobham, 149-50.

Introduction
Education, training, and life experiences toward becoming a responsible adult citizen begin while one is a very young infant. Parents and other caregivers play a major role in these early years of development. What tends to happen is that the "adult responsibility characteristics" of the parents and other caregivers are acquired by the child. This sets a pattern—sometimes a vicious circle—that is hard to break.

… … … Work in progress.

Education for Becoming a Responsible Adult Citizen of the World
People who write about and/or talk about goals of education often include the goal of helping children to become responsible adult citizens. Think in terms of being a responsible adult citizen of one's community, state or province, country, and the world.

The idea of being a responsible adult citizen is used in many different disciplines. For example, here is a sentence paraphrased from a science education article:


 * Science teachers play central roles in educating, inspiring, and guiding students to become responsible scientifically literate citizens.

Notice the emphasis on scientific literacy. Many disciplines stress the idea of literacy within their discipline. I think of this in terms of reading, writing, speaking, and listening with understanding and insight within the discipline.

In terms of education, we need to think both discipline-specific education and interdisciplinary education. Consider the issue of sustainability. My recent Google search on this term produced over 40 million hits. Quoting from a Wikipedia article:


 * Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. For planet earth, it is thus the intent to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. One of the most often-cited definitions of sustainability is the one created by the Brundtland Commission, led by the former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Commission defined sustainable development as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Sustainability relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment.

It is easy to see that sustainability is a huge and difficult topic that cuts across all of informal and formal education.

A Key Idea
Sustainability is a problem important to all people and that cuts across many different curriculum areas. Thus, it is a topic than could and should be integrated throughout the curriculum at all grade levels. It is a problem that needs to be attached by all people, using both a top down and bottom up approach.

At a bottom up level,what can a school (for example, an elementary school) be doing to reduce its carbon footprint, reduce energy consumption, make more efficient use of its resources, and so on? All children, teachers, another staff, parents of the students, and so on can be involved.