Civic Action

What forms a successful community? Great leaders? Strict rules? Harsh punishments? Well, according to Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne, it is the democratic ruling system and the teamwork from all the members of a community. Ranging from personal responsible citizens to participatory citizens to last, justice-oriented citizens. All of them play different roles in their society and if they all engage properly, we might have ourselves a perfect society.

First are the personal responsible citizens. They are the cores of a smooth-running society. These citizens make up most of the community’s populations. So what are their tasks? Well, quite simple actually. First of all, and it is actually the easiest one, act responsibly in his/her community. He or she needs to be employed, need to pay their taxes, need to obey the law and even do things like recycle and give bloods to their society. An example of them will be the foot soldiers in an army. Without these educated, philanthropically aware citizens, no community could function properly.

Second are the participatory citizens. They don’t make up more of the population like the first kind of citizen, but their tasks are as important as the first citizens. They are the leader, organizer, commander, chairman, manager…etc of our community. We all know the importance of leaders. He/she has the ability to make things more effective. Having just the first type of citizens, the personal responsible citizens, will be helpful, but not as effective. Lets use a scenario to see the big picture. There’s a flood that destroyed a village. Most people over there are starving and shelter less, so personal responsible citizens started gathering foods and tents for those citizens. BUT, they don’t have proper equipments to get to the village, no safe rout and most of all; don’t have a clear understanding of the situation. Even though their effort will save lives, but it won’t be effective. So there is when participatory citizens comes in. They will first understand the situation and then organize a safe rout for the food and shelter transportation. With their help, the rescue will be far more effective and more lives will be saved.

Last group are the justice-oriented citizens. They are the most educated of all. They go into the core of a problem. When 1^st and 2^nd type citizens solve the problem, they think of ways to prevent the problem from the beginning. They question our system for any possible holes in it, which makes it near perfect. They are pretty much like the critics in some ways. But instead of destroying their target’s self-esteem, they improve their target.

So how could Hsinchu international school adopt this kind of system? First, democratic system. By far, most of the voices from 70~80% of the school are not heard. The idea of SRC is great IF the SRC are actually collecting comments from the rest of the school body. After all, if they want to represent the students’ voices, they should actually ask the students what they think, right? Second of all, we need more love for our school. Higher spirit in a way, almost like patriotism, but toward our school. If we love our school, it is easier for our to give back to the school. So instead of abusing our rights to go to 7-11, we should use it wisely, and even clean up our trash after we finish eating or drinking whatever we got from 7-11. Also, community services are great ways for us to contribute back to our society. Like the personal responsible citizens, we need to encourage students to give more. But most of all, we need a leader. Having no principle can cause many problems. Students looses faith, parents looses faith and even the teachers looses their faith. If all those things are fized, I believe HIS will become a far better school then now.