Critical Reflection Essay Essay

“Academic Multisource Synthesis Essay: Civic Literacy” is an essay that touches the problem of civic literacy. The main purpose of writing it was to put people’s attention to the problem of civic literacy which is, in fact, essential for a perfect civic community. The role of education in forming civic literacy was also discussed. In general, the essay addresses for both the government and general audience. The government should introduce new methods of forming civic literacy among its people through school and other organizations. Indeed, all people should be aware of this problem. They should put all their efforts in order to solve it. People should understand that civic literacy and civic engagement are essential for a healthy society.
One of the main reasons for writing the essay was to shift people’s attention to the role of civic engagement for the society and to consider the role of education in it. Considering the fact that the essay is written for both the government and the general audience a definition of the term civic engagement was given. Furthermore, the role of education was mentioned. The role of education is tremendous for people's lives. It helps them to learn about their rights, rules and obligations. It helps them to become true members of the society they live in. Therefore, it is clear that each school and college should inform and train individuals on the basics of civic. Unfortunately, but the level of civic literacy at colleges continuously dwindles. It seems that educational systems are no longer able to fulfill their main task – that is to develop intelligent individuals who are aware of their rights and obligations and who can become a true members of their society. These are the main reasons why civic literacy was chosen as the main theme of the essay.
So why the problem of poor civic literacy is so important and why is it discussed in the “Academic Multisource Synthesis Essay: Civic Literacy”? The level of civic literacy is fairly important for the society as it helps each person to understand one's role in the community. Each person should understand that one does not only has one’s own life and problems. All people should understand that they live in the community and that the task of each individual is to be an integral part of it. Indeed, it is clear that each person should understand the running of the government, its laws and regulations. This is the only way of building a healthy society where each person is going to be aware of one’s role in it. That is the main reason why the essay focuses on the role of civic literacy in people's life and the importance of educational in order to improve it. The essay will be useful for those people who question the importance of civic literacy in their lives.
It is also worse considering that in order to explain the audience the importance of civic literacy and civic education, and in order to bring arguments into the essay, outside sources were used. Moreover, so as to make the essay more argumentative, only credible sources were used. These sources include the works of great authors and professors who are truly interested in the problem of civic literacy and can share their thoughts with the rest of the society.
It should be noted that for the essay the work “Toward a Civil Society: Civic Literacy and Service Learning” by Lisman was extremely useful. First of all, the author helps to understand the whole concept of civic society which helps to understand its necessity. The author claims that civic society consists of individuals who are capable of functioning as effective citizens and who are truly dedicated to public values and their purposes. Second, the author mentions the significance of education in forming civic literacy and civic engagement. Lisman’s work definitely brought serious matters to the essay and made it more credible. Moreover, his work is extremely useful due to the fact that it does not only gives a comprehensive picture of civic literacy, but also in order to improve civic engagement proposes community development service learning model.
One more source that was chosen for the essay is “A New Civic Literacy: American Education and Global Interdependence: a Paper” by Morehouse. This work is useful as in it Morehouse clearly gives the definition of education and names its main purpose. In it Morehouse tries to explain the audience that the importance of civic literacy lies in the fact that it helps people to understand their roles and their responsibilities in the society. In such a way he tries to explain that without civic literacy education the society wouldn't be able to function right.
The work “Critical Civic Literacy: A Reader” by DeVitis became useful for the essay as well. This work may be described as credible as its author is a former American Educational Studies Association, the Council of Learned Societies in Education. It means that the author knows a lot about the educational system from the inside and understands what is needed for a good education. DeVitis points out that people should care about civics and tries to explain why they should do it. Moreover, the author tries to explore and understand the ideal of civic literacy.
Another important and credible source used for the essay was “Community Engagement in Higher Education: Policy Reforms and Practice”. In it the authors mainly try to define civic engagement in higher education. They also suppose that social engagement exists on different levels, such as local, regional, national and international. They also agree that education is capable of shaping people's minds. As a result, this work helps to prove that education should be considered as an integral part of civic literacy.
Talking about the difficulties that were faced during the writing, it is worth of note that it was difficult to present the information so as to make it clear for the audience. Thus, each essay has a certain message in it. And the main task of each writer is to deliver this message to the audience. At this rate, it was hard to choose the right words and the style so that the audience would understand the main purpose of the essay. In order to overcome these difficulties, a substantial analysis of the concept “civic literacy” was made. The main problem was stated and different literature was read. In fact, it is important to read various sources in order to get a better understanding of the problem and to find out its possible solutions. So, when the term of “civic literacy” was understood and credible sources were found, it became easier to state the problem and to explain it to the audience.
Furthermore, considering the fact that the topic of the essay was quite complex, it was difficult to always remain focused in order not to include unnecessary and irrelevant details. It was fairly important not to change the main topic of the essay. At the same time it was important to mention that these problems were easily overcome. First of all, the main theme of the essay was throughly examined and different sources were investigated. Second, the outline was made. In fact, the outline is a significant part of each essay. The outline helps to determine the essay’s structure. It is useful for organizing the essay in terms of making decisions what information should be included in the body of the essay. It also helps to think of the proper thesis statement for the introduction. As soon as a clear thesis is stated, it becomes much easier to write the essay and to develop one's ideas. Furthermore, the writing of the outline helps to come up with an interesting and effective conclusion. As soon as the outline of the essay was done and the sources that should be added to support the ideas were chosen it became much easier to write the essay and to remain focused on its topic.