Citizenship

Many scholars and students are drawn to interdisciplinarity because of a desire to address complex public policy issues. It should come as no surprise, then, that interdisciplinarity has much to contribute to the pursuit of citizenship goals. It is heartening in this respect that both the CM and DQP reports stress the importance of citizenship as a goal.

· CM argues that civic responsibility requires the right knowledge, skills, values, and collective action experiences. Most of the items on this list have been addressed elsewhere within Interdisciplinary General Education. Interdisciplinarity is critical in each case. As we will argue under Interdisciplinarity and Curricular Coherence, interdisciplinarity also provides the only means of tying these disparate elements into a coherent whole.

· We will not progress far in our search for citizenship unless we clearly communicate that ‘respect for others’ does not mean ‘anything goes.’ (see Values)