content of an intro course on active citizenship at Tufts

(Macon, GA) Next year, I will teach the introductory course (“Education for Active Citizenship”) for the Tisch Scholars for Citizenship and Public Service program at Tufts. Most of the Scholars’ work involves conducting community projects of their choice, beginning in our “host communities” of Medford, Somerville, and Boston’s Chinatown. The purpose of the introductory course is to convey the concepts, skills, and information that students will need to be effective Tisch Scholars for the next several years.

Designing the course is challenging because so much could be included: various (often conflicting) conceptions of good citizenship; social theories and philosophies that might prove relevant to the Scholars’ projects; information about our local communities, their current issues, and organizations; the skills and values that students need if they are to work well in community settings; and questions of personal identity and ethics (such as how to think about one’s own privilege as a student at a selective and expensive private university). Each of these topics could fill a whole course. The good news: students have several more years of undergraduate study ahead of them, so a major goal is to help them choose wisely the subjects that they will study next to become good citizens.

I am thinking about asking my class to begin building a public website about our host communities. This product would be a genuine public resource, not just an educational exercise for the students’ benefit. They would not produce all its content in a semester, but would rather begin a cumulative project of producing and revising text, data, maps, and images–to be continued by successive classes.

Each week, the class would operate a little like a traditional newsroom, developing and assigning story ideas. Since we need an overall focus for the readings on the syllabus and for students’ mini-research projects, I am thinking of asking them to investigate population changes. in our host communities.

The demographics of Somerville, Medford, and Chinatown have changed and continue to change rapidly because of a combination of gentrification, de-industrialization, immigration, and social policies (such as the construction of highways and subway lines). Some of the most wrenching issues in the history of greater Boston have been related to demographic change, and today’s shifts in population are relevant to policy issues–from education to carbon consumption. The mass movements of people also raise complex theoretical and moral questions. So I think population movements in our host communities would be a good theme for the first year of work, after which annual themes might include: power dynamics, economic conditions, assets for learning in the host communities, or cultural and linguistic diversity.

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About Peter

Associate Dean for Research and the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life. Concerned about civic education, civic engagement, and democratic reform in the United States and elsewhere.