Individual Responsibility and Civil Involvement with Others
Definition
Individual responsibility and civil involvement with others are traits that grow with the opportunities to share mutual tasks in a democracy. These tasks should be accomplished in a orderly fashion for the welfare of the group. The work should encompass personal independence and individual rights while accommodating the responsibility necessary to maintain group orderliness.
Checklist of Observable Behaviors
___ 1. Reliability
___ 2. Trust (competency, commonality, propriety, intent)
___ 3. Self-control
___ 4. Sensitivity to group needs and group problems
___ 5. Promoting the best interests of the group (accountability) (key
words: comprise and accountability)
___ 6. Consciously and voluntarily following all procedures adopted
by the group (key words: following group procedures)
___ 7. Positive participation
___ 8. Patience
___ 9. Cooperative learning techniques
___ 10. A behavior appropriate to the situation
___ 11. Sense of community within a classroom or a school, or
fostering stronger ties for the student with the community
beyond the school; community service and involvement
___ 12. Civil non-participation when appropriate (against your
beliefs)
___ 13. Contributing one’s own identity and uniqueness to the
group process
Reference
Good, C. V. (1973). Dictionary of education. New York: McGraw Hill.
General Example
Several key areas of learning can help educators focus on encouraging a sense of social responsibility and civil engagement: cooperative learning techniques, nonviolent management or resolution of conflict, multicultural education, environmental education, global education, the creation of a sense of community within a classroom or a school, and fostering stronger ties for the student with the community beyond the school (La Farge, 1992, p. 348).
A teacher might use a specific person as an example who could illustrate individual responsibility and civil involvement with others. A good example of these skills is Mahatma Gandhi, who was the personification of responsibility. Starting from the fact that he was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts, the teacher might focus on the idea of responsibility.
As a moralist, Gandhi was preoccupied with personal integrity and individual responsibility. He had great difficulty in coming to terms with the need for collective discipline and the moral compromises required by membership of the state. Gandhi claimed that every citizen was responsible for his actions and that responsibility was in no way diminished by what others did or did not do.
However, in his opinion it was wrong to say that what an isolated individual did had no wider consequences. For Gandhi it was the citizen’s sense of moral responsibility for his own actions that ultimately determined the character of the state. Men were responsible for one another, and if one of them turned delinquent, the rest could not disown their equal responsibility for his behavior. Even as a wrongdoer must search his conscience, the others must probe theirs.
The slow and painful task of cultivating and consolidating the sense of humanity, and thereby laying the foundations of a truly moral community, was an essentially collective responsibility. In Gandhi’s view the citizen is responsible for the actions of his government. The citizen is a party to its actions and partly responsible for their consequences. A citizen cannot hide behind the façade of collective responsibility, for it is composed of and does not replace individual responsibility (Parekh, 1989).
Classroom Example
The teacher can involve high school students in activities in which they can play the teacher role. For instance, the students may create hands-on science activities. By demonstrating them to younger students, the high school students show individual responsibility in their work because they are playing the teacher role. This activity provides opportunities for civil involvement with others through engaging the younger students in the hands-on activities.
References
La Farge, P. (1992). Teaching social responsibility in the schools. In S. Staub & P. Green (Eds.), Psychology and social responsibility: Facing global challenges (p. 348). New York: New York University Press.
McLaughlin, J. (1999). Ocean Exhibits [Video]. INTIME: Integrating New Technologies Into the Methods of Education. [On-line]. Available: http://www.intime.uni.edu
Parekh, B. C. (1989). Gandhi’s political philosophy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
http://fp.uni.edu/model/democracy/indi.html
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Social Responsibility - Articles
Social Responsibility and Accountability: Summary
by Manfred Davidmann
Contents
Social Responsibility and Accountability
Social Responsibility of Those Who Govern, Direct, Lead or Manage
Countering Antisocial Behaviour
Social Benefits and Costs
Worldwide
http://www.solhaam.org/teachings/sclacc.html
A Code of Social Responsibility as a Social Contract
Keith Rankin
Social Responsibility Conference
Massey University, Albany Campus; 12-15 February 1998.
http://keithrankin.co.nz/krnkn_SocResp.html
by Manfred Davidmann
Contents
Social Responsibility and Accountability
Social Responsibility of Those Who Govern, Direct, Lead or Manage
Countering Antisocial Behaviour
Social Benefits and Costs
Worldwide
http://www.solhaam.org/teachings/sclacc.html
A Code of Social Responsibility as a Social Contract
Keith Rankin
Social Responsibility Conference
Massey University, Albany Campus; 12-15 February 1998.
http://keithrankin.co.nz/krnkn_SocResp.html
Social Responsibility - People
On the basis of this analysis, the MLPC has adopted the slogan For Us, Accountability Begins at Home. At its centre is the recognition that when society is being held back and every avenue to solving its problems is obstructed, the working class and people take up their own social responsibility to change the situation.http://www.cpcml.ca/Tmld2006/D36142.htm
September 27, 2006 - No. 142
Inquiry Into Canada's System of Government
Conception of Accountability in the
Federal Accountability Act
- Sandra L. Smith, National Leader, Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada -
September 27, 2006 - No. 142
Inquiry Into Canada's System of Government
Conception of Accountability in the
Federal Accountability Act
- Sandra L. Smith, National Leader, Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada -
Social Responsibility - Meeting of Asian Political Parties
36. We believe governments should nurture political cultures that enable citizens to exercise civic and social responsibility to realize their potential to lead meaningful lives. And for this purpose, we see our own role as that of bringing our governments and citizens together in partnership.
1st ICAPP: Conference Declaration
Part of
Asian Declaration 2000
Manila, Philippines
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ASIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
17-20 September 2000
http://www.idcpc.org.cn/icapp3/2004-06/23/content_2369370.htm
1st ICAPP: Conference Declaration
Part of
Asian Declaration 2000
Manila, Philippines
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF ASIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
17-20 September 2000
http://www.idcpc.org.cn/icapp3/2004-06/23/content_2369370.htm
Social Responsibility - Bon Menzies - Australia
Though Whitlamite nostalgia can be a poor guide for contemporary public policy, it is at least understandable that Labor’s true believers remember those years fondly. But when they start indulging in Menzies nostalgia something very odd is going on. In his first speech to Parliament after becoming leader, Kevin Rudd said:
…this modern Liberal Party, is that it is not the Liberal Party of old. If you go back and read what Bob Menzies had to say about social responsibility and social justice, there is no way that Bob Menzies would fit into the world view that we are now being offered. You see, the member for Kooyong recently delivered a speech on Bob Menzies?Ĵ legacy within the Liberal Party on these questions of social responsibility. It is quite clear when you read that clearly that there has been an ocean of change between that Liberal Party and what it stood for, despite our criticisms of it and our disagreements with it at the time, and the market fundamentalism which has overtaken the current Liberal Party.
It’s another example of the strange meme that recontructs the conservative Robert Menzies as some kind of left-leaning social democrat. In a fiscal fact-checking exercise sadly lacking among those making this claim about Menzies, today I visited the economics library at Melbourne University to see just how the Menzies government’s spending levels compared with that of John Howard’s government.
http://andrewnorton.info/2006/12/some-whitlamite-nostalgia-of-my-own/
…this modern Liberal Party, is that it is not the Liberal Party of old. If you go back and read what Bob Menzies had to say about social responsibility and social justice, there is no way that Bob Menzies would fit into the world view that we are now being offered. You see, the member for Kooyong recently delivered a speech on Bob Menzies?Ĵ legacy within the Liberal Party on these questions of social responsibility. It is quite clear when you read that clearly that there has been an ocean of change between that Liberal Party and what it stood for, despite our criticisms of it and our disagreements with it at the time, and the market fundamentalism which has overtaken the current Liberal Party.
It’s another example of the strange meme that recontructs the conservative Robert Menzies as some kind of left-leaning social democrat. In a fiscal fact-checking exercise sadly lacking among those making this claim about Menzies, today I visited the economics library at Melbourne University to see just how the Menzies government’s spending levels compared with that of John Howard’s government.
http://andrewnorton.info/2006/12/some-whitlamite-nostalgia-of-my-own/
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