“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

–Albert Einstein

Should students be required to participate in the community?

On the one hand, there’s the argument that if a school values citizenship, it expresses it strongly by declaring that civic engagement is required.  Often people need external incentives (like counting hours, getting grades, etc.) to do something we already want to do.  Students often talk about the personal benefit that comes from engaging in the community, even when they don’t feel like it.  They say that when we go out of our zone of familiarity, when we are exposed to new voices, new places, new stories–we expand, we gain rich knowledge and perspective, we are capable of a stronger analysis and deeper empathy.  We come to understand ourselves better.  We also contribute to the web of relationships that makes for healthy democratic life.  Parker expects all this and supports it for all students.

But is this a reason to require it?  The main danger of civic engagement as requirement is that it may be counterproductive.  If people see their part in community life as something separate from real learning spaces, from the thinking and questioning and growing that expand our humanity, we put citizenship in a useless corner.  Bracketing civic engagement as a “program” can make it feel inauthentic and disconnected.  It is more accurate to think of it as a “practice” that is integral to all our learning, just like critical thinking, empathy, and curiosity.

These are times when we need less fragmenting and compartmentalizing, and more creative, courageous commitment to the common good.  

Our country is terribly strained by polarization, defensiveness, racism, and hatred.   When teachers and students are connecting intellectual work with real-life questions and struggles in the world around us, they infuse public life with intelligent collaborative power.  

Whether this takes the form of films featuring undocumented students fighting for their future, letters to the editor demanding tougher restrictions on environmental pollution, investigations into mental health resources in the city, or countless other civic learning projects, students’ engagement strengthens the kind of public accountability that improves life for everyone.  

At national, global, and local levels, we are hurting for intelligent, respectful citizenship.  It gives me great hope to see students and teachers striving to develop social responsibility at individual and collective levels, and I am honored to support this work at Parker.

Shanti Elliot, Director of Civic Engagement