Should Universities Help Students Become Good Citizens?

 
Academic Matters is an educational journal published by the the Ontarion Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA). Last Fall's issue was devoted to "The Engaged University" and one of the lead articles is by Professor Janice Stein of the University of Toronto.

Stein is often seen on local television discussing foreign affairs since she holds an appointment at the Munk Centre for International Studies. I'm a fan of hers because she often seems to make a lot of sense when discussing the Middle East and international politics.

Her article is titled The University as Citizen. In it she says,

I argue that universities have two fundamental civic obligations, obligations that flow directly from what universities are. The first is to help their students to become good citizens. The second is a broader obligation to the public: to share knowledge, explore issues, and create safe space for debate and discussion of public issues.

I don't have a problem with the second obligation, although I wouldn't have made it so specific. I would have left off the last three words on the grounds that a university should also be a place where science can be explored. Investigations of cosmology, for example, aren't necessarily "public issues."

I want to question Janet Stein's first obligation. Is it true that universities have a direct obligation to teach students how to become good citizens? And what exactly is a "good citizen?" Who decides?

Notice that I added the word "direct" here because I think that is Prof. Stein's intent. Later on in her article she gives examples of what a university should be doing.

Educating students to be better citizens is the easier of the two challenges, though by no means easy. In the last decade, universities across North America have broadened and deepened their commitment to the civic education of their own students and to students in the broader community. My own university, the University of Toronto, runs special programs for students in some of the most challenged neighbourhoods in the city. It works closely with high schools across the city to provide opportunities for students that have special interests, special needs, and special gifts.

My university also asks its students to do more, to consider actively how they can become better citizens. It encourages students to volunteer and provide assistance to people in neighbourhoods without shelter. Students work with university leaders to provide environmentally-friendly and healthy food in its cafeterias across campus. Those in classes on democratic theory go out into neighbouring communities to work with neighbourhood associations. Students studying global politics look at successful examples of social innovation and then go to their local communities to see how the global translates into the local. Students in the Faculty of Law work in neighbourhood legal clinics and with Legal Aid. Students and faculty increasingly understand that education is not only a classroom activity, that what happens outside the classroom is important. Learning and active citizenship are increasingly intertwined.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't object to students doing these things if they're so inclined. I also wouldn't object to students who would oppose some of these things on the grounds that they are not the most effective use of our resources. There's nothing wrong with social activism. It's a perfectly legitimate way for university students to behave. I just don't want it to become a goal of the university that every students should do this.

And I certainly don't want my university to be taking a position on what kinds of activities are example of "good" citizenship and which ones might be bad. Do all members of the university community agree, for example, on the right kind of food that should be served in our cafeteria? Not in my experience. Some of the students who want to dictate what I can or can't eat in the cafeteria don't necessarily qualify as "good citizens" in my book.

The main problem is whether this form of activity should be valued higher than all other activities in the university. Should community involvement of students really be an important obligation of a university?

I believe that education is an important goal of a university. I like to think that what we're trying to do is to teach students how to think critically. If that makes them better citizens then I count that as a beneficial spin-off but not a primary goal. For all I know, teaching students to think for themselves might lead to severe disruptions in our current society and I'm not certain that would qualify as teaching students how to be "good citizens." Universities are often centers of social change as we saw during the civil rights movement and opposition to the war in Viet Nam.

Another reason for being suspicious of Prof. Stein's view is that she seems to be coming from a humanities/social science perspective. She's only thinking of students who are at university to study human culture in one way of another. It makes some sense that such students might direct their energies toward improving the human condition by direct engagement.

What about science students? We have more than 10,000 science students on campus. One could argue that their primary focus is on learning about the natural world. Should the university be directing resources toward training these students to become "good citizens" according to the criteria established by Janice Stein? Or, is the acquisition of knowledge for it's own sake going to lead in the long run to good citizens in a knowledge based economy?

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