e-mail me at billdeg@umich.edu

6/15/2008

a definition

I've often returned home after conferences with ideas and energy. This weekend, spending time at the American Democracy Project meeting, I've found not only ideas and energy but also motivation to keep focusing on community service pedagogies at Dearborn. I actually came back to my room last night after the last session and did some brainstorming on directions I hope to take in the piece I'm writing based on last year's service learning dfata. I also spent several hours working on a presentation for our writing program faculty on civic literacy. Letting info from various sessions and various readings sink in, I came to a working definition of 'civic literacy' I'm kind of happy with. Here goes:

Civic Literacy: the skills, values, habits, and knowledge needed for full(er) citizenship. Skills include written and oral/interpersonal communication, collaboration and collective decision-making, critical-analytic thinking, organization, and persuasion. Values include responsibility for the common good, belief in deliberative rhetoric, and engagement with and across difference. Habits include participation in the public sphere, voting, critical consumption of media, and cultivation of the life of the mind. Knowledge includes--but isn't limited to--history, current events, and community issues.

2 comments:

Nels P. Highberg said...

Nice definition!

Anonymous said...

i return home from conferences with strata of hangovers and the cell phone numbers of egghead hussies scribbled on a napkin from a bar where we tippled and canoodled.