Civic learning, civic engagement, youth and our universities

The democratic institutions of Bangladesh are very weak due to many reasons. The alarming thing is that there is growing scarcity of qualified and skilled leadership. There is also a concern about decreasing rates of participation in the civic life of Bangladesh in voting, advocacy, local grassroots associations, and in other forms of civic engagement that are necessary for the vitality of our democracy. The general people abhor the political situation, and dislike some political leaders due to their corruption, feeble leadership, destructive activities, alienation policy etc. Having observed these, undergraduate students are indifferent towards, and do not want to enter in, politics and civic education as well as civic engagement although civic education and civic engagement are essential to democracy, society, social ties, nurture moral virtues etc.
On top of that, as per various reports, the higher education institutions are simply doing too little today to adequately prepare the youth for informed, engaged participation in civic and democratic life. In other words, youth are not receiving opportunities in their formal education to acquire necessary civic knowledge or skills.
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. Civic learning and democratic engagement means educational experiences that intentionally prepare students for informed, engaged participation in civic and democratic life by providing opportunities to develop civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions through learning and practice. These include civics and government as subjects unto themselves, and also service-learning and other approaches for integrating a civic and democratic dimension into other disciplines, such as science, technology, engineering, and math.
The decline of instruction in civics learning has paralleled a decline in interpersonal trust, connections to groups and family, staying informed on public affairs, and in citizens' connections to political institutions. Civil society has recognised that one of the most important purposes of educating the nation's citizens is to protect and strengthen democracy.
Education in Bangladesh must prepare all students for informed participation in civic and democratic life so that all Bangladeshis are ready to tackle the challenges confronting communities and the nation in the 21st century, and so that the Bangladesh can continue to serve as a model democracy for people and governments around the world. Yet, unfortunately, civic learning and democratic engagement are add-ons rather than essential parts of the core academic mission in too many college and university campuses today. Many colleges and universities are pushing civics and service learning to the sidelines, mistakenly treating education for citizenship as a distraction from preparing students for college level mathematics, English, and other core subjects.
Various studies and reports make plain that our institutions of higher education need to expand and transform their approach to civic learning and democratic engagement, rather than engage in tinkering at the margins. From no university should students graduate with less civic literacy and engagement than when they arrived. As US President Woodrow Wilson, a former university president, said more than a century ago about the obligations of colleges and universities, for every individual: "Touched with the spirit of our institutions, social service is the high law of duty, and every American university must square its standards by that law or lack its national title." Hence, our higher educational institutions should plan projects to enhance and expand their support for civic learning and democratic engagement for undergraduate students.
The project should have two goals. The first one is to reaffirm the civic mission of higher educational institutions. This is defined as the obligation of educational institutions to educate the young about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and to reaffirm the higher educational institutions' commitment to making education in democracy a central part of the mission of public education equal to workplace preparation. The second goal is to convince the government, and higher educational institutions to devote sustained and systematic attention to civic education at undergraduate level. This project should be an integral part of our tertiary level institutions' strategy for achieving goal that, by 2020, Bangladesh will have the highest proportion of college/university graduates in South Asia involved in civic learning and democratic engagement. We should keep in mind that civic learning is not only compatible with career preparation and improved graduation rates, but also is a core skill in preparing students to succeed as employees, entrepreneurs, policy makers and citizens.
Bangladeshi citizens must be qualified for the 21st-century opportunities that require advanced training and education. They must also be prepared to fulfill their democratic responsibilities to their communities and their nation, and be competent to tackle complex global challenges with diverse groups and within diverse environments. Finally, we must measure the success of civic learning and democratic engagement opportunities not only by whether they are provided to all students but also by whether they are effective.

The writer is educator, researcher and development specialist.

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