Many times we’ve heard the usual answer to the question, ‘what does it mean to be a good  citizen?’ Answers such as, ‘it means being an involved citizen,’ or ‘it means voting at election time” are the usual responses. However, I think that with the dramatic shift in how citizens receive their frequent doses of political discourse and commentary, i.e. news at the tap of a screen complete with vitriol and biased viewpoints…wait. Hold on a minute. I probably should have written something like, ‘…how most people in the developed world get most of their information most of the time now.’ It’s in the palm of our hands all the time. How handy. How snappy. How…life changing. The smartphone is here to stay folks. And, perhaps sometime soon that incredibly snappy device will be able to microwave your leftovers too, and not just your brain.

Each day when I walk down the hallways between classes in the high school where I teach, I notice that the majority of students have their noses in their smartphones. In class, I am constantly reminding my students to put their phones away. And, what I find so fascinating about the whole thing is that nearly all of what the students seem to be using, apps such as snapchat and instagram, provide students very limited amounts of information on important subjects. So, I now ask, how as educators in the social studies can we grab the attention of these young students, the future leaders of our country, our businesses, our communities, so that they become more interested and more involved in the civics? Ptuff. That’s easy. Teach to the cell phone culture.

‘Yeah, right,’  your probably saying, Well, I will tell you that in the past I have had my students web-crawl for political commentary concerning appropriate topics that affect us all as citizens; web-crawling on their phones that is. And, you know what? They ate it up. They couldn’t stop Googling. And, they learned  something related to civics and being a concerned citizen.

So, what does it mean to be a good citizen? Next time you feel like asking that question of your students, first ask them to look it up on their phones with the stipulation that the website must be noted or cited. Then, have a discussion on whether the information provided by the website is worthy of impacting their own concepts about citizenship. Last ly, congratulate yourself. You’ve just made the topic of citizenship more pertinent to your students.