Connecting Social Responsibility And Good Books

By Author: Mike Jones
Total Articles: 256
Comment this article

Berman (1997) offered a concise definition of social responsibility: "A personal investment in the well-being of people and the planet" (p. 15), including basic civic responsibilities. The simplest form of civic responsibility in the United States—voting—has a turnout that is consistently near the lowest of all democracies in the world. In a typical general election, it is a struggle to get half the country to vote. And the youngest voters are the least likely to vote. In 2000 only 40% of 18—29-year-old Americans voted; in 2004 only 49% voted. In 2006—with a war raging in Iraq—only 24% voted and some states had as little as 17% (Young Voter Strategies, 2007). Early analysis of the 2008 U.S. presidential election had 18-29-year-old voter turnout at about 52%. While this is a small increase from 2004, it still means that nearly half of America's youngest Breitling Replica voters are not voting. In a survey of 3,000 students at New York University, 20% would sell their next vote for an iPod and half said that for one million ...
... dollars they would give up their right to vote forever (Quateman, 2007).

But low voter turnout may be the least of the civic problems. Civic illiteracy is an epidemic in the United States (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Marciano, 1997). In a survey that asked 12 questions on well-publicized current events, 18—29-year-olds had an average of only 5.5 correct. Nearly half could not name the Speaker of the House or the president of Russia, and 60% did not know how many American troops had been killed in Iraq (Pew, 2007a). According to a 2006 Zogby survey, many more Americans can name the Three Stooges (73%) than can name the three branches of government (42%) and more can name two of Snow White's seven dwarves (77%) than can name two U.S. Supreme Court Justices (24%). And newspaper readership continues to fall. Only 16% of 18-30-year-olds and about 33% of Americans over 30 read a newspaper daily (National Endowment for the Arts, 2007).

Using young adult literature is one of the most meaningful and enjoyable ways for students to inquire into social responsibility because we can situate this content in the wonderful stories of good books. And within these stories are moral and ethical quandaries, just as they are in endless civic issues. Through young adult literature, students are invited and challenged to grapple with moral dilemmas (Proctor & Kantor, 1996). All of this emphasizes that reading and literature teachers are in a powerful position to teach for social responsibility. And turning those books into inquiry-based investigations—either on their own or collaboratively with social studies teachers—can help students to see a vital purpose for reading and thinking about what they read.

Below is some of the content that should be part of teaching for social responsibility. My purpose is to offer a more specific understanding of the knowledge and habits of mind needed for a socially responsible citizenry. Most students will not develop this social and civic literacy and the courage to act on it Tag Heuer Carrera Replica unless teachers make this knowledge an explicit and essential part of our classrooms. Each section below also contains book titles with short synopses that could be used to teach that knowledge, keeping in mind that all of the books could easily be placed in multiple categories. However, even when using books to teach for social responsibility we still want to create constructivist literacy experiences that honor each reader. Any book read for the larger purpose of social responsibility should also involve teachers giving their students the necessary space to interact and make connections with that text in their unique ways. Following this overview of themes and books for teaching social responsibility, I offer a detailed example of creating an inquiry unit based on the novel Black and White (Volponi, 2005).