School of Public Affairs & Civic Engagement

Editor's Note: Peter Levine is a professor of the Lincoln Final of Public Affairs and Public Affairs, Director of Jonathan Tisch Citizenship and Public Service Academy's CIRCLE, Citizen Learning and Participation Information Research Center at Tufts University. Levin published eight books including "Future of Democracy: Fostering the Next Generation American Citizen". He writes a blog on www.peterlevine.ws (CNN) everyday - I can clearly remember September 11, 2001, but today's elementary school fifth grader has not been born even that day. For them, September 11 is history - and often topics of their history classes. Most teachers will explain the attacks on New York and Washington using the best-selling citizens and American history textbooks. As of last autumn, 21 states specifically referred to 9/11 on their social survey standards.

Citizen participation includes three aspects. Political knowledge on public relations, political trust in political systems, and political participation influencing governments and decision-making processes. The Internet helps citizens to participate by providing a new way to interact with government agencies. Supporters of electronic democracy believe that the government can participate more actively than now and encourage them to take the initiative to influence decisions affecting citizens.

Citizen participation or citizen participation is the activity of individuals or organizations working on public issues. Citizens who act personally or jointly to protect public values ​​or create changes and differences in the community are citizen participation of a general type. Citizen participation includes communities that cooperate in political and non-political actions. The goal of citizen participation is to cope with concern of the general public and to improve the quality of the community. Citizen participation can take various forms such as individual volunteer activities, participation in communities, participation in organizations, government activities such as participation in elections. These agreements may involve addressing issues directly through personal work, through the community or through the work of a representative democratic agency. Many people are responsible for actively participating in the sense of obligation to the community