Citizenship, Achievement and Participation
Citizenship, Achievement and Participation
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At MEA Central, the purpose of our curriculum is to ensure that every student can ‘meet every citizen as an equal.’ We know that this cannot be achieved through excellent academic results alone, so we also aim to ensure our students experience a gamut of rounded, cultural and developmental opportunities through our co-curriculum.
In order to meet citizens as equals we understand that many of our students will not have been afforded many of the diverse range of experiences as other students across the country. Students may have also had a limited understanding of the many different faiths and cultures that they live amongst in our diverse city.
In 1988, Ed Hirsch published Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, which argues that certain cultural touchstones should be required for all students to memorize and understand. Hirsch contends knowing Shakespeare and Lincoln is just as important as learning your ABCs and multiplication tables. Why? Because a culturally literate person will more quickly identify idioms, jokes, and allusions and understand the full meaning of the references a text makes. Hirsch sees cultural literacy as necessary to allow students to “thrive in the modern world.” He states, “Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of opportunity for disadvantaged children, the only reliable way of combating the social determinism that now condemns them to remain in the same social and educational condition as their parents.”
Citizenship, Achievement and Participation Lessons
- Explore our values of Citizenship, Achievement and Participation through character education.
- Contribute to students living healthier and safer lives.
- Help students to form and sustain effective relationships with others
- Help students to maintain emotional and physical wellbeing
- Provide opportunities to reflect on identity and develop a sense of self
- Develop financial capability
- Help to prepare for progression into employment or the next stage of education
- Provide opportunities to connect with positive role models from industry
- Close gaps in cultural literacy
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues
The Jubilee Centre is a pioneering interdisciplinary research centre focussing on character, virtues and values in the interest of human flourishing. Based at the University of Birmingham, the Centre promotes a moral concept of character in order to explore the importance of virtue for public and professional life. The Centre aims to strengthen character virtues by:
- Addressing critical questions about character
- Promoting, through rigorous research, the development of good character in education, business and society, both in the UK and globally.
- Building and strengthening character virtues in the context of the family, school, community, university, professions, voluntary organisation and the wider workplace.
The Jubilee Centre sets out, what it discusses, as the ‘building blocks of character’. The four types of virtue are directly linked to our school values of citizenship, achievement and participation.
The explicit teaching of character guides our pupils towards their ‘fantastic future’. We want our scholars to go out into the world and do good, to engage in society as critical, informed citizens. The virtues, therefore, are woven through our CAP lessons.