There are many ways to describe a good citizen. A good citizen is someone that does not only follow the rules and responsibilities that their communities entitles them to, but also contributes and works to make their community better. Like Mike Hartoonian said "A good citizen should ask themselves, what can I do for my community/institute/world. What wealth, knowledge, or justice can I contribute to my community?" A person can be a citizen of many different communities, your personal community like your school or family, your country, and your whole world. You can be a part of a community such as your school or your family. These communities are smaller compared to more general communities. Often, in school and family communities because the community is smaller, the people or participants of these communities are able to get to know each other better, which can be good or bad.
Schools can be a place where people of many different likes or dislikes, ethnicities and cultural differences can be at the same place, learning and doing the same things. Often in schools, because so many people are different or when there is a majority of a kind of person, there can be discrimination, prejudice, and biases. For example, if a person moves to a completely new place when they don't understand anything, they might be discriminated because they don't understand the majority of their peers and don't agree with them on certain matters. Also, because of the differences, there can be cliques. Cliques are usually formed by a group of people with similar interests or opinions. When people hang out with people that share opinions and always agree with them, their opinions can become enforced so overtime, it becomes hard for those people to look at a certain matter in a different way so when they see other people who don't agree with them, they immediately stereotype them as something negative.
A good citizen of a school also follows the duties and responsibilities that the school sets in order for the school populace to get along and benefit. Some examples of responsibilities of a student is to do and turn in their homework, listen to the teachers or he people trying to teach them, respecting their peers and the staff, and to treat the school property well. By turning in our homework, we can learn things that may benefit us in the future. By listening to the teachers, you are showing the teachers respect for the knowledge that they are trying to pass to us. By respecting the people around you like the staff or the peers, you are showing that you appreciate their hard work. Overall, by following the school rules, you make the school community pleasant and a good place to learn.
A larger community is out nation. There can also be stereotypes and prejudices in nations. For example, some people or groups in the United States have prejudices against African Americans, Mexicans, Indians, or Asians. Many of these prejudices actually came from events in history like Pearl Harbor, in which the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor. Some people have prejudices against African Americans because when they first came to the US, it was under force so they were looked down upon and show like the Minstrel Show, which portrayed the plantation slaves in a bad way only made the situation worse. One example of how people have prejudices against African Americans is like, for example when people see African Americans on the street, they are more likely to stay away from the person rather than if the person was white.
There are duties to being a citizen of a nation too. Some responsibilities that we have are paying taxes and to take care of yourself as to not cause problems for others and to respect the people around you. When we pay taxes, the money goes to the government. The government uses the money for the country's benefit and builds things like roads and schools, and hospitals from which the citizens can benefit.
But as citizens, we also have rights. Some examples of rights is the freedom of speech, the right to vote, and the right to religion. Rights allow the citizens to decide how to live their life. The freedom of speech allows us to say what we want and be able to say our opinions out loud. The right to religion allows people of many different culture and religions to coexist. Voting is a choice. By voting, you are choosing who you want as a leader. In a democracy, the real leaders are the citizens because they are the ones to choose the leaders.
There are people that have made a difference in their nation by voicing their opinions. One example of a person to cross social boundaries which benefited their country is Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was an African American man who spoke to the public about fairness and the equality of people. He believed that all people are equal no matter their skin color. He fought for the rights of American Americans. Though he was assassinated, he passed his ideas to a lot of people, which benefited the country to have a brooder view of things.
The largest community is the world, or earth. Often, though we don't know, a lot of us share the same problems no matter who or where we are. One example is global warming. Global warming is affecting all of us because though there are some countries that are causing a percentage of the problems, the others are also helping the problem even it it's only by a little. But even if only some people help, at least we're helping. Some ways we can help is by recycling and not littering. Also, when we leave a room, be sure to turn off the lights. By teaching the world about global warming and leading by examples, we can be good global citizens.
There is often global discrimination. For instance when big and powerful countries make decisions, they often don't include the small and poorer countries. But I think that in order to be a good global citizen, you have to be able to accept all ethnicities so when the countries make decisions all the countries no matter rich or poor, big or small an contribute and voice their thoughts.
For example, one way of making a difference and space between rich and poor countries is when the poor countries don't have enough resources to deal with the effects of global warming and they often get poor products and are expected to work with cheap labor.
After all these introductions about the different communities, you can see that what we have to do is basically the same, just to different degrees. You can tel by the discrimination that's happening in different communities that a lot of times we have biases against the people that are weaker than us, the ones who don't make up the majority. Basically, to be a good citizen, you have respect others, floowly the rules, and try not to get dogmatic and try to do what's best for your community.
