High School Block:

Civics

Civics focuses on the elements required to invest in the public good and make informed decisions about citizenship, democratic processes, and fundamental human rights and freedoms. To preserve a healthy democracy, learners should be prepared to examine how power is gained, used, and justified. They should also be prepared to support the protection of individual and collective rights and freedoms ensured within the context of constitutional democracy. This includes digital citizenship (embedded within this is media literacy) as well as data literacy (mathematics skills for civic decision-making such as proportional reasoning, statistics, graph theory). Learners should have co-curricular opportunities for civic engagement, and opportunities to use their civic knowledge to engage in community problem-solving in a responsible, inclusive, accountable, sustainable, and ethical manner. By the end of Civics, learners should be able to articulate personal rights and responsibilities as well as express their understandings of various worldviews and political ideologies. This course aims to pair classroom learning with experiential learning opportunities so that learners can use their civic skills to engage with issues that impact them and their communities. Learners should be able to explore their civic agency within the four domains of civic engagement (Peck & Sears, 2019) and explore the benefits and limits of power and governance.

For Educators:

Civics 10 Companion Document

CONTEXTS AND CONCEPTS

Decision-making and Representation

  • Worldview
  • Sovereignty
  • Treaties and the treaty relationship
  • Forms of government
  • Functioning of Canadian democracy (Parliament, House of Commons, Senate)
  • Value positioning of political parties
  • Types of political parties
  • How values are reflected in institutions and processes
  • Function and purpose of lobby groups
  • Voting rights through time
  • Digital citizenship and data literacy
Citizenship and Belonging

  • What creates a sense of belonging or exclusion
  • The rights and responsibilities of citizenship
  • Experiences of non-citizens locally, nationally, and globally
  • Indigenous rights in Canada and internationally
  • Physical and virtual spaces that promote a sense of belonging
Human Rights

  • Philosophical and legal differences between individual and collective rights
  • The history of human rights
  • The International Bill of Rights
  • The Canadian Human Rights system
  • Genocide
  • The relationship between democracy and human rights
Civic Engagement

  • The four domains of civic engagement (Peck & Sears)
  • The three types of citizenship (Westheimer & Kahne)
  • The common good
  • How individuals and groups can initiate change in a democracy
  • What civic engagement looks like at different levels, within communities across the world, in different time periods
  • Commemoration: sites, activities, and decision-making
Expand All Collapse All
GRADE 10

Strand: Civics

Big Idea: Decision-Making and Representation

Skill Descriptor: Explore how values influence people and inform decision-making in a democracy.

Global Competencies: SGC, SASM, CM

Achievement Indicators:

  • Describe how worldview shapes values
  • Discuss how values and biases impact relationships, decision-making and politics
  • Explore and relate to Wabanaki worldviews
  • Describe responsibilities of a treaty person
  • Explore how changing values over time informs decision making in democracies
  • Analyze the importance of lobby groups

Skill Descriptor: Investigate different ways that citizens are represented within Canada and around the world.

Global Competencies: CTPS, CM

Achievement Indicators:

  • Analyze the functions of Canadian democracy and of elected officials
  • Explain Indigenous sovereignty in Canada and around the world
  • Compare Canadian democratic processes with other democracies around the world
  • Investigate changes in the democratic process and how it would affect Canadians
  • Investigate threats to democracy

Skill Descriptor: Explore digital citizenship to respond to issues of civic importance.

Global Competencies: SGC, CM, CL, CTPS, SASM

Achievement Indicators:

  • Discuss types of data used in civic decision-making
  • Analyze the purpose of the census and what the data are used for
  • Use media literacy strategies to identify reliable and unreliable sources, check claims, and trace information back to the source
  • Critically analyze data visualizations
  • Demonstrate how citizens can use data to make informed decisions
  • Describe the elements of digital citizenship

Big Idea: Citizenship and Belonging

Skill Descriptor: Examine the concept of belonging and exclusion in Canada and around the world

Global Competencies: CTPS, CL

Achievement Indicators:

  • Reflect on what it means to belong and the protections it provides
  • Identify factors that create a sense of belonging
  • Explain what it means to be a rightsholder
  • Identify rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizens and residents
  • Differentiate between equality, equity, fairness, and justice
  • Discuss civic agency within the groups one belongs to

Skill Descriptor: Investigate community and online spaces that respond to issues of belonging.

Global Competencies: CTPS, CL

Achievement Indicators:

  • Discuss the needs of own community/region
  • Investigate spaces that promote a sense of belonging within a community/region, nationally, and internationally/online
  • Discuss online or community spaces which exclude people or limit sense of belonging
  • Explore how commemorative spaces create a sense of shared memory
  • Examine how commemorative spaces speak to injustices of the past

Skill Descriptor: Consider issues of power, voice, and belonging

Global Competencies: CTPS, CL

Achievement Indicators:

  • Describe conditions that give or limit power
  • Investigate the importance of citizenship and belonging from historical, cultural, and legal points of view
  • Examine intersectionality as it relates to present and historical social, economic, and political issues
  • Analyze actions people take to increase and protect their belonging in groups

Big Idea: Human Rights

Skill Descriptor: Research human rights legislation.

Global Competencies: SGC, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Research the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and how it has affected the lives of people locally, nationally, and internationally
  • Apply the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to daily situations and conditions of everyday life in Canada
  • Examine a range of perspectives on UNDRIP
  • Describe the prohibited grounds of discrimination found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission
  • Research past legal cases related to rights – Marshall Case, Person’s Case

Skill Descriptor: Assess the impact of genocide on the development of human rights.

Global Competencies: SGC, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Identify the 10 stages of genocide
  • Describe how countries and organizations respond to genocide
  • Examine how historical narratives inform perceptions of events in the past
  • Assess the shortcomings of Aboriginal Rights in Canada as described in the Constitution Act of 1982
  • Assess historical accountability and contemporary responsibility for genocides

Skill Descriptor: Examine the relationship between human rights and democracy.

Global Competencies: SGC, CTPS, CL

Achievement Indicators:

  • Interpret data to investigate Canada’s human rights record
  • Discuss whose responsibility it is to uphold human rights
  • Identify organizations and institutions that protect human rights both internationally and within Canada
  • Research the accountability of countries in the world that do not respect human rights and the effects on their citizens – including Canada
  • Examine own actions to uphold the rights and dignity of all people

Big Idea: Civic Engagement

Skill Descriptor: Explore the four domains of civic engagement.

Global Competencies: ICE, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Identify the four domains of civic engagement and give examples of each
  • Describe the three types of citizenship
  • Define civic agency
  • Demonstrate the ways that one can have agency
  • Illustrate what motivates people to engage civically
  • Examine the concept of the common good

Skill Descriptor: Research how civic engagement changes over time.

Global Competencies: SGC, CTPS

Achievement Indicators:

  • Research historical issues and the ways people engaged to create change
  • Examine the different ways in which civic actors are perceived and portrayed over time
  • Compare perspectives on an issue and how they change over time
  • Investigate how civic engagement changes over time

Skill Descriptor: Examine what civic engagement looks like.

Global Competencies: ICE, CTPS, SGC

Achievement Indicators:

  • Discuss how people make change in communities
  • Investigate how to navigate systems that support or limit civic engagement
  • Research current and historical causes in the communities and groups one belongs to
  • Identify current work being done to address needs in own communities that could benefit from civic engagement
  • Select and civically engage with a cause in own communities
Expand All Collapse All