Citizenship’s Five Themes

Advocating the five themes of citizenship -- honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, and courage -- is not enough.

We need to understand them to put them into action!

** Honesty is the basic theme of good citizenship. A person must be honest with others, and with himself or herself, in order to be a good citizen.

** Compassion is the emotion of caring for people and for other living things. Compassion gives a person an emotional bond with his or her world.

** Respect is similar to compassion but different in some ways. An important aspect of respect is self-respect, whereas compassion is directed toward others. Respect is also directed toward inanimate things or ideas as well as toward people. For example, people should have respect for laws. Finally, respect includes the idea of esteem or admiration, whereas compassion is a feeling people can have for others they don’t necessarily admire.

** Out of honesty, compassion, and respect comes Responsibility, which includes both private, personal responsibility and public responsibility. Individuals and groups have responsibilities. Responsibility is about action, and it includes much of what people think of as good citizenship. You may wish to point out that one of the main responsibilities of students is to learn. They must educate themselves so that they can live up to their full potential.

** Finally, the theme of Courage is important to good citizenship. Human beings are capable of moving beyond mere goodness toward greatness. Courage enables people to do the right thing even when it’s unpopular, difficult, or dangerous. Many people---including Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and Mohandas Gandhi---have had the courage to change the rules to achieve justice.