Abstract
Abstract We have arrived to a moment in history when the society we are living in is confronted with different sets of problems: hunger, crime, economic crises, natural disasters or cataclysms, and various human rights violations. At the moment the most appropriate way to solve these problems still lies with the organisms of the nation state. As such, the lack of civic sense and the increasing political apathy will only allow these problems to grow out of proportions. We are of the opinion that most of them can be counteracted if we try to educate the civic sense in people. By civic sense or engagement we understand a type of orientation towards being involved in social groups according to democratic principles. It is said the post-socialist countries are particularly threatened by the lack of civic engagement on behalf of their citizens that have reached the point where they take democracy for granted. This is why we explore the role played by universities in developing and shaping this civic attitude amongst young people. In order to do so, we resorted to questionnaires applied in liberal arts universities in Romania. These universities have a special relation to democratic principles, national pride and the perpetuation of the nation state as an ideal for its citizens and because of this we believe they represent a proper starting point for the current investigation. The areas that are targeted through the questionnaire are the following: the academic environment, the methods through which civic values are instilled in the hearts and minds of the students, and the institutional and personal factors that determine faculty to introduce civic values in their academic environments. Using the results we create the Civic Engagement Index (CEI) that can be used as a valuable benchmarking mechanism for those universities that are trying to enhance their civic engagement activities. Finally, we test the hypothesis that certain universities fail to create civic-oriented graduates and we propose ways in which the organizational culture could be transformed into a more supportive one: civic participation guides, civic responsibility classes, and service learning classes for faculty members to increase their openness towards the promotion of civic values.
Highlights
Concerning civil society, Ramalay (2000) has identified how responsibility for building such a society has shifted throughout time: in the eighteenth century, a “good citizen” was a gentlemen, in the nineteenth century the idea that the majority of associated men are bearers of such responsibilities was introduced, until the twentieth century when the responsibility was in the hands of everyone and no one at the same time
We focus on developing the Civic Engagement Index based on the results obtained from an online-based questionnaire containing 60 questions about the civic responsibility of the universities and five socio-demographic questions
The Civic Engagement index that we propose is composed of four sub-indexes referring to the university’s relation with its interior and with the exterior community, the PICBE |1084 civism of the faculty and the civism of the students as they are perceived by the faculty we questioned
Summary
Concerning civil society, Ramalay (2000) has identified how responsibility for building such a society has shifted throughout time: in the eighteenth century, a “good citizen” was a gentlemen, in the nineteenth century the idea that the majority of associated men are bearers of such responsibilities was introduced, until the twentieth century when the responsibility was in the hands of everyone and no one at the same time. The article poses the assumption that universities, beyond their teaching quest, pursue the mission to shape leaders who can bring large contributions that can enrich the civil society The challenge of these leaders is to admit that individuals, groups, faculties and organisations do not exist isolated from the community, but rather within the community with which they have to create, develop and maintain a reciprocal beneficial relationship. Studying civic responsibility and citizenship in the context of liberal arts requires a view of arts and creative creations as a means to become a member of an imagined national community built on symbolic gestures and artefacts This imaginary realm offers a place for political contestation, critical dialogue and a repositioning of the self in relation to others in terms of interconnectedness instead of distancing. At a general level, it seems acceptable to believe that Romanian HEI represent agents of the democratic state through which its means and norms are transferred to future generations of adult citizens
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