8.1.1 Citizenship & Ideology



Image of young adults by Soer21 courtesy of Pixabay
Imagine a typical Grade Twelve class.

Juanita is an honours student who is secretary of her grad committee and vice-president of her student council; she plays first trumpet in the school band and helps with the junior high homework club after school.

Matthew hopes to become a mechanic and spends as many hours as possible with a small machine shop where he works as an apprentice.
Lillia lives on her own, has a baby, and works at Costco after school to pay her bills.

Benlita is a recent immigrant to Canada who attends an art program at the Mennonite Centre for New Canadians where she practises her English skills. She uses her new English skills to help her parents adapt to their new nation.

Awasis has moved recently to the city from a small Métis settlement. He misses his small town where everyone knows each other, but he is adjusting quietly to his new life while helping his younger brothers do the same.

Which of these students would you say are "model citizens"? Does one of them seem more like a leader to you than the others? Each one belongs to a community and has accepted various roles and responsibilities that come with belonging. Although Juanita may seem to have taken on more leadership roles, all these students are leaders in their own way. Each one has accepted responsibility for belonging.

If you were to ask each of the five young adults in the photo to tell you what "citizenship" means, you would get five different answers. Our understandings of what it means to be a citizen of a community, nation, or the planet depend on the experiences, beliefs, and values and that shape our collective identity. Just as our worldviews shape our identity and ideology, they also shape our ideas about how to act as citizens both in times of peace and in times of crisis. The students in the Grade 12 class-Juanita, Matthew, Lillia, Benlita, and Awasis-are all Canadian citizens. They each have an important role as citizens in their communities and their nation. Each has a different worldview and a different idea of what citizenship and leadership means.

Read the quotations below. Do you agree with any of the following definitions of citizenship?

  1. To me, it means having an national identity, not just being patriotic, but being able to identify with my country of origin with pride.
  2. Reciprocal belonging ... the city, province, country, world belongs to me and I belong to it.
  3. Reciprocal responsibility ... I am responsible for the city, province, country, world and "it" is responsible for me.
  4. Citizenship is formally adopting and/or accepting the laws of the country in which you permanently reside, and in return, you are afforded all the rights and freedoms of the country in which you permanently reside.
  5. Citizenship means being a part of something really big-responsibility, respect, empathy, and caring on a grand scale.



In this section, you will look at how our individual and collective identities influence our understandings of citizenship through an exploration of the issue question:

How does my worldview influence my ideology?


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