“Respect—don’t know what it means to me.” Aretha Franklin could have said the same thing about good citizenship. Many of today’s youth don’t know what good citizenship means to them. Not enough emphasis is being placed on the role of civility in our modern society. Gone are the days when it was just as important to get good grades in citizenship as it was in the three Rs. Many of the behavior problems that plague our public school systems can be traced back to lack of knowledge about good citizenship. This little book is designed to help refocus our youth on learning and appreciating the value of good citizenship not just in school but also at home and everyplace else. Good Citizenship for Today offers behavioral options and alternative thought processes in a lighthearted, easy-to-understand way. When used with the accompanying incentive program, Good Citizenship for Today can be an effective tool for helping our youth become the good citizens that they deserve to be.

It's very important to be a good citizen. But what does that mean? Readers will learn through examples in a fun question and answer format that taking pride in what you do and trying to make the world a better place shows good citizenship.

"Obligatory reading for future informed citizens." —The New York Times "[This] charming book provides examples and sends the message that citizens aren't born but are made by actions taken to help others and the world they live in." –The Washington Post Empowering and timeless, What Can a Citizen Do? is the latest collaboration from the acclaimed duo behind the bestselling Her Right Foot: Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris. This is a book for today's youngest readers about what it means to be a citizen. This is a book about what citizenship—good citizenship—means to you, and to us all.

Recent global security threats, economic instability, and political uncertainty have placed great scrutiny on the requirements for U.S. citizenship. The stipulation of literacy has long been one of these criteria. In Producing Good Citizens, Amy J. Wan examines the historic roots of this phenomenon, looking specifically to the period just before World War I, up until the Great Depression. During this time, the United States witnessed a similar anxiety over the influx of immigrants, economic uncertainty, and global political tensions. Early on, educators bore the brunt of literacy training, while also being charged with producing the right kind of citizens by imparting civic responsibility and a moral code for the workplace and society. Literacy quickly became the credential to gain legal, economic, and cultural status. In her study, Wan defines three distinct pedagogical spaces for literacy training during the 1910s and 1920s: Americanization and citizenship programs sponsored by the federal government, union-sponsored programs, and first year university writing programs. Wan also demonstrates how each literacy program had its own motivation: the federal government desired productive citizens, unions needed educated members to fight for labor reform, and university educators looked to aid social mobility. Citing numerous literacy theorists, Wan analyzes the correlation of reading and writing skills to larger currents within American society. She shows how early literacy training coincided with the demand for laborers during the rise of mass manufacturing, while also providing an avenue to economic opportunity for immigrants. This fostered a rhetorical link between citizenship, productivity, and patriotism. Wan supplements her analysis with an examination of citizen training books, labor newspapers, factory manuals, policy documents, public deliberations on citizenship and literacy, and other materials from the period to reveal the goal and rationale behind each program. Wan relates the enduring bond of literacy and citizenship to current times, by demonstrating the use of literacy to mitigate economic inequality, and its lasting value to a productivity-based society. Today, as in the past, educators continue to serve as an integral part of the literacy training and citizen-making process.

"Investigation has shown that the greatest number of violations of law in large cities are due not so much to disrespect for authority of the Law as to ignorance of the Law, especially of that part of the Law covered by local ordinances. It is far more important for the welfare of the state that a child should be made to realize his present obligations to the commonwealth than that he should know the qualifications of a United States Senator. The belief that a knowledge of things close at hand should be acquired first, and that such knowledge should be made to include the personal relations of the child to the Law, is rapidly becoming an educational principle...This book is planned to meet the needs of fourth year children, but in the hands of an intelligent teacher it can be used both in higher and in lower grades...It is hoped, therefore, that the book will be of real help to all teachers who aim to bring children to a realization of their best selves, and to all children who are capable of appreciating the worth of good citizenship." --From the Preface.

In The Good Citizen, some of the most eminent contemporary thinkers take up the question of the future of American democracy in an age of globalization, growing civic apathy, corporate unaccountability, and purported fragmentation of the American common identity by identity politics.