Civic Engagement and the Civic Project

Undertake a civic project and to write an eight-entry report about your efforts. Any type of volunteer work is acceptable for this project. Examples of places to volunteer would be homeless shelters, nursing homes, hospitals, Habitat for Humanity, the Boy and Girl Scouts, churches, mosques, temples, and so on. This civic project can be a continuation of volunteering you’ve done in the past, but all of the volunteering that you write about in your journal must have been done during the current term.
The number of hours you volunteer should be what you determine is necessary to write a quality Project Report, as described below. However, students who have written successful Project Reports in the past have typically volunteered ten or more hours.

Instructor Approval:
Before commencing your civic project, you must have it approved by your instructor (by e-mail). This must be done no later than Week 4 of the course.

Are you too busy to do a civic project?:
The civic project has been required in the Signature Series for the past decade. Previous students have found it a focal point of the course and one of the most significant things they did the whole term. The Civic Project is the major requirement for one of the three courses in the Signature Series, LA 420 Freedom and Responsibility, and the accomplishing of the project and writing about it seem a fair requirement for the earning of nearly three hours of course credit. The civic project is, ultimately, an assignment in the course. If this assignment did not exist, another assignment, equally tasking in terms of time and energy, would.

The Eight Entries of the Civic Project Report:

Note: These entries will be combined in a single document and turned in during Week 12. None will be turned in before.

Entry 1: Write an entry of 400 words minimum on why you chose your project. Discuss the life or work experiences that may have influenced your selection, including whether these experiences were positive or negative. Consider how issues of community, government or individual responsibility, leadership, productivity, problem solving, work ethic, and/or ambition might have affected your project selection. Most importantly, explain why your project is important to you, as well as to the larger community. Label this entry "Selection of the Civic Project.?
Entry 2: Write an entry of 400 words minimum explaining how your project relates to two of the course objectives, Objective 12 and one or two others between 1 and 12 (do not choose objective 13). See the list of course objectives below. Be sure to explain why you feel these objectives are important. Label this entry ?Civic Project Objective.?
Note: The purpose of this entry is not to tell what you think the objective of your Civic Project was; rather, it is, as stated above, to relate your project to specified course objectives.
Signature Series Course Objectives:
1. Explain the importance of such values as liberty, legal equality and equality of opportunity, tolerance, respect for dissent, self-reliance, and the pursuit of truth in sustaining and enriching America?s experiment with democracy.
2. Analyze the origins of American democratic ideas in the political theories of such philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau and critique each philosopher?s political ideas.
3. Explain the structure of the United States Constitution and evaluate the strengths and limitations of such major theories of Supreme Court judicial review as strict constructionism and the living document theory. Apply this knowledge to current Supreme Court cases.
4. Analyze and critique the merits of two significant contending theories of American governance: the conservative theory of limited government and progressivism. Apply this knowledge to current political issues.
5. Analyze the historically and morally necessary forces of change that brought an end to slavery and segregation, as well as to second-class citizenship for women and people of color.
6. Analyze the history of immigration to the United States and evaluate the ways in which successive waves of immigrants have both challenged and enriched American society and its institutions.
7. Evaluate the means by which America can continue to foster a society of inclusion, in which all types of diversity are respected, appreciated, and valued.
8. Explain the changing role of religion in the public square from the Puritan immigration in the 17th century through the American Founding in the 18th century to the series of 20th century Supreme Court decisions that have significantly separated church and state, and critique the arguments from both sides of this often contentious issue.
9. Assess the impact, both positive and negative, of moral absolutism and moral relativism on modern American culture and society. Apply this knowledge to their moral decision-making.
10. Analyze the major changes in the American family since World War II and evaluate the positive and negative consequences of these changes.
11. Analyze the ways in which free-market capitalism, socialism, communism, and a mixed economic theory compete in the modern world for social and political dominance and evaluate the strengths and limitations of each theory.
12. Explain the vital role of the citizen in creating and maintaining a civil society through voluntarism and civic engagement, a role that can complement and sometimes replace the role of the government in ensuring the well being of society.
13. Apply the insights gleaned from modern economic theory and from the theory of civic engagement to their personal economic decisions and to their acts of service to the larger community.

Entries 3-7: Narrate your experiences on the project each week for five weeks (unless you combine entries). integrate references wherever possible to the six values studied in Week 1. Be sure to relate your project experiences to specific ideas in the Week 12 readings. Ideally, you will synthesize ideas from these readings in entries 3-7; however, you may also do so in entries 1, 2, and 8. You are also encouraged to reference relevant ideas from the Weeks 10 and 11 readings. You may also bring in up to four additional sources you have found in your own research.
A minimum of 400 words must be written each week. If you cannot do the project for one or more of the five weeks and wish to combine entries (writing a minimum of 400 words for each entry you combine), that is fine.
Entries should simply be labeled with the appropriate entry number(s): Entry 3, Entry 4, Entries 5-6, and so on.
Entry 8: For the concluding entry of 400 words, labeled ?Conclusions,? summarize your project, its relation to the course themes and readings, and your feelings about your project experiences.

Very Important for All Students: All Major Essays must be submitted to Turnitin.com for a plagiarism check before you send them to your instructor through the Assignment area (this is explained in 3 below).
1. Your instructor will provide you with the Class ID and the Password to your Turnitin.com class. You will then create an account at Turnitin.com. See the Turnitin.com Instructions in the Assignments area of your Cyberactive course for screenshots of how to create your account.
2. Access the course and assignment your instructor has set up there. Post your essay.
3. Submit your essay to your instructor in the Assignments area of the Cyberactive course (see instructions below) by 11:59 p.m. Central Time of the Sunday that ends Week 3.
You?ll find the links to the Word documents of the Weeks 3, 6, 9, and 12 assignments in the Assignments area, just as you have for the other assignments in the course. The black underscored Week labels for those weeks are actually links. When you are ready to submit your assignments, click on the appropriate black Week label. A new page will open which will enable you to upload your assignment. Do not copy and paste them in the Submission box. Instead, scroll down a little further and click on Browse My Computer. You?ll see a listing of the computer sites, folders, and files stored on your hard drive. Navigate to the place you have your Major Essay saved on your computer. Select the file for your Major Essay. Click Open. You should now see your Major Essay attached to this upload page. Click the green Submit button. Your essay will be stored on the Cyberactive system. Only your instructor can see it. He/She will download it, save it to his/her hard drive, comment on it in interlinear fashion, grade it, upload it, and send it back to you. You will see your grade in My Grades, and you will access your paper with your instructor?s comments there, as well.
The only Major Essay you will post for the class to see, as well, will be Major Essay 4: The Civic Project Report. It will be posted to the Week 12 Discussion Board forum after you?ve submitted it to Turnitin.com and sent it to your instructor through the Assignment area. No responses are required on the Project Reports (though you may respond if you wish). You should be impressed by the variety of projects your classmates have worked on throughout the term.

Employ APA format for both in-text citations and your references list. Abstracts and running heads are not required. Use the Major Essay Grading Rubric for guidance on how to write this paper successfully and well.

Week 1

Required Readings:
American Value 1: Liberty:
Reading that illustrates Value 1: Thomas Paine: from Common Sense (1776)
https://www.ushistory.org/paine/commonsense/index.htm: click on and read the information in these links on the site:
? Of the Origin and Design of Government in General, with Concise Remarks on the English Constitution
? Of Monarchy and Hereditary Succession
? Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs

American Value 2: Legal Equality and Equality of Opportunity:
Reading that illustrates Value 2: Dr. Martin Luther King: ?I Have a Dream? (1963)
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm [full text and audio]

American Value 3: Tolerance:
Reading that illustrates Value 3: Crevecoeur: Letters from an American Farmer, Letter III What Is an American? (1782)
https://www.civics-online.org/library/formatted/texts/crevecoeur.html

American Value 4: Respect for Dissent:
Reading that illustrates Value 4: Henry David Thoreau: ?Civil Disobedience? (1849; also known as ?Resistance to Civil Government?):
https://www.thoreau-online.org/major-essays-by-thoreau.htm

American Value 5: Self-Reliance:
Reading that illustrates Value 5: Ralph Waldo Emerson: ?Self-Reliance? (1841/1847)
https://www.emersoncentral.com/selfreliance.htm

American Value 6: The Pursuit of Truth:
Reading that illustrates Value 6: Mortimer Adler: Chapter 8 The Pursuit of Truth (from Six Great Ideas)
https://www.mvla.net/teachers/StevenK/Language%20and%20Comp%20AP/Documents/Inherit_the_Wind_Supplemental_Essays/The_Pursuit_of_Truth_%28Adler%29.pdf

Introduction to the Week?s Ideas:
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense to help those who lived in the British Colonies in America to understand the reasons why it was necessary for the colonists to join the American Revolution and permanently sever themselves from English monarchical rule. Paine distinguishes between ?society? and ?government,? asserting that society ?promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections,? while government promotes our happiness ?negatively by restraining our vices.? He says that, in the natural course of things, governments should arise from the need of the people to ?to supply the defect of moral virtue? that would exist if everyone had complete freedom to act as he or she pleased. Government must recognize the rights of every person and allow every person the opportunity to have his or her voice heard through elected representatives. Needless to say, under the English Crown, that is not the form of government the colonists knew. Paine finds the English Constitution itself promotes an unjust form of governance, and he elaborates on the ?oppressions? and ?evils? that derive from monarchical government. He concludes that it is necessary for the American colonists to join the revolution if they hope to live as free people. Today we owe a deep debt of gratitude to those brave colonists who took Paine?s advice to heart. Our freedoms derive directly from their acts of courageous conscience.

Dr. Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream? speech asserts that the American ideal of legal equality and equality of opportunity enshrined in the most famous pronouncement of the Declaration of Independence??all men are created equal??has gone unrealized for people of color. They have presented a ?promissory note? for the American dream and have seen the check bounce because of ?insufficient funds.? Dr. King presents a stirring and forceful argument for Americans to create an integrated society in which people are judged ?on the content of their characters, not the color of their skin.?

Crevecoeur writes of the new America that emerged from the revolution, a country with ?gentle laws.? He speaks at some length of the variety of lifestyles and beliefs found in the frontier society he knew, and he shows how the new opportunities afforded by democracy have created a society in which people are tolerant of difference. The religious and class differences that had wreaked havoc for hundreds of years in Europe are nowhere to be seen in America. As you can see, this value is closely related to the values of freedom and equality. It may even be said to be dependent upon those other values.

Henry David Thoreau argues, in ?Civil Disobedience,? that the less government the better. He goes on to question the faith that people place in voting, calling it form of ?gaming? or gambling. He asserts that, when one?s government takes such ill-considered and morally indefensible actions as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act or the War with Mexico (which Thoreau saw as completely imperialistic, motived by the desire to take Mexican land), one should follow one?s own conscience and dissent from that government. Thoreau, like Emerson, values the individual conscience more highly than he does the morality of the government. Thus, there is no real freedom without people willingness to express their dissent and to respect those who express dissenting opinions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, a sometime friend of Thoreau?s, rails against the conformism that he saw stifling American society. He argues instead that people must follow their own hearts, must be ?self-reliant.? There will be a price to pay for this nonconformity. The world will not hesitate to ?whip? the nonconformist with ?scorn? and displeasure. However, Emerson asserts, ?to be a man one must be a nonconformist. He says the individual does not owe allegiance to family or to society, but to his or her own will and conscience. Emerson perhaps exaggerates his position, but the nature of the hyperbole is indicative of the strength and pervasiveness of the conformism he opposes.

Mortimer Adler argues for a life spent in quest of the truth, which he believes is found, not through the intuitional approach of Emerson, but rather, through the exercise of reason and logic. Adler, then, is what we call a ?rationalist? philosopher, one who believes a rigorous process of reasoning can uncover the truth to many of life?s questions, even some of the most puzzling. However, there is no guarantee that you can know the truth to all questions. Truth, as Adler sees it is an alignment between the mind and reality. Adler writes that, ?[it] is only in the realm of doubt that we can pursue the truth.? Adler believes that, with sufficient skepticism, which is an avoidance of dogma, one can add to the body of truth by one of four methods:
? addition of new truths to the body of settled or established truths already achieved,
? the replacement of less accurate or less comprehensive formulations by better ones,
? the discovery of errors or inadequacies together with the rectification of judgments found erroneous or otherwise at fault, and
? the discarding of generalizations?or of hypotheses and theories?that have been falsified by negative instances.?
Finally, Adler believes that, ?possession of truth is the ultimate good of the human mind.?

The six values are principles that Americans attempt to hold to. They are the ideals that inspire and challenge the citizens. There have been many times in its history in which America has failed to live up to?to fully manifest and act upon?its values. However, the majority of Americans believe that we must continually strive to be true to them. In that way, you can create a just society, which, as we?ll see in Week 2, is what Plato thought should be the goal of all citizens and of all government.

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