This assignment asks you to demonstrate the course competency of Global Engagement by improving your understanding on an issue related to the Miami and/or FIU community.
Learning Outcomes
The purpose of this assignment is to help you practice the following skills that are essential to your success in this course / in school / in this field / in professional life beyond school:
- Appraise the value of civic association in the United States
- Reflect on your personal growth through community involvement
Assignment Tasks
Community Reflection
When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was the Americans' propensity for civic association that most impressed him as the key to their unprecedented ability to make democracy work. "Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition," he observed, "are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types--religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America."
This assignment asks you to reflect on your experience being part of a community. At the beginning of the semester, choose a community to join if you do not already belong to one. Even if you already belong to a community, consider trying a new one out! There are many FIU clubs available to join, volunteer opportunities, and Greek or honor societies. More traditional communities and associations include religious organizations, sports clubs, and hobby groups. Interact with your community regularly throughout the semester. Write a minimum 500 word reflection on your involvement in this community in response to the quote above, and answer the question: Do you agree that civic association has played an important role in American's "unprecedented ability to make democracy work?" How has your experience in a community this term informed your understanding of this question?
Quote Source: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Maier, trans. George Lawrence (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969), 513–17. As cited in Robert Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital." Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 65-78. doi:10.1353/jod.1995.0002.