Chapter one

An overview of Civics and ethics

I. Introduction
Societies have long had an interest in the ways in which their young are prepared for citizenship
and in how they learn to take part in civic life. Today that interest might better be described as a
concern-in fact as a growing concern, particularly in democratic societies. There is evidence
aplenty that no country has achieved the level of understanding and acceptance of the rights and
responsibilities among the totality of its citizens that is required for the maintenance and
improvement of any constitutional democracy.

Civic education is essential to sustain our constitutional democracy. The habits of the mind, as
well as "habits of the heart," the dispositions that inform the democratic ethos, are not inherited.
As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out, each new generation is a new people that must acquire the
knowledge, learn the skills, and develop the dispositions or traits of private and public character
that undergird a constitutional democracy. Those dispositions must be fostered and nurtured by
word and study and by the power of example. Democracy is not a "machine that would go of
itself," but must be consciously reproduced, one generation after another.

Civic education, therefore, is-or should be-a prime concern. There is no more important task than
the development of an informed, effective, and responsible citizenry. Democracies are sustained
by citizens who have the requisite knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Absent a reasoned
commitment on the part of its citizens to the fundamental values and principles of democracy, a
free and open society cannot succeed. It is imperative, therefore, that educators, policymakers,
and members of civil society make the case and ask for the support of civic education from all
segments of society and from the widest range of institutions and governments.

.What is civic education?

Civic Education in a democracy is education in self government. Democratic self government
means that citizens are actively involved in their own governance; they do not just passively
accept the dictums of others or acquiesce to the demands of others. As Aristotle put it in his
Politics (c 340 BC), "If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in
democracy, they will be attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost."
In other words, the ideals of democracy are most completely realized when every member of the
political community shares in its governance. Members of the political community are its
citizens, hence citizenship in a democracy is membership in the body politic. Membership
implies participation, but not participation for participation's sake. Citizen participation in a
democratic society must be based on informed, critical reflection, and on the understanding and
acceptance of the rights and responsibilities that go with that membership.

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Civic education in a democratic society most assuredly needs to be concerned with promoting
understanding of the ideals of democracy and a reasoned commitment to the values and
principles of democracy.

Civics is the study of rights and duties of citizenship. In other words, it is the study of
government with attention to the role of citizens ― as opposed to external factors ― in the
operation and oversight of government
Essential components of a good civic education are:
What are the essential components of civic education appropriate for a democratic society? The
three essential components are: civic knowledge, civic skills, and civic dispositions.

Civic Knowledge

Civic knowledge is concerned with the content or what citizens ought to know; the subject
matter. There are five significant and enduring questions. These are questions that have
continued to engage not only political philosophers and politicians; they are questions that do-or
should-engage every thoughtful citizen. The five questions are:

I. What are civic life, politics, and government?

II. What are the foundations of the political system?
III. How does the government established by the Constitution embody the purposes, values,
and principles of democracy?
IV. What is the relationship between nations and to world affairs?
V. What are the roles of citizens in democratic government?

The choice of question format as a means of organizing the knowledge component was
deliberate. Democracy is a dialogue, a discussion, a deliberative process in which citizens
engage. The use of questions is intended to indicate that the process is never-ending, is an on-
going marketplace of ideas, a search for new and better ways to realize democracy's ideals.

It is important that everyone has an opportunity to consider the essential questions about
government and civil society that continue to challenge thoughtful people. Addressing the first
organizing question "What are civic life, politics, and government?" helps citizens make
informed judgments about the nature of civic life, politics, and government, and why politics and
government are necessary; the purposes of government; the essential characteristics of limited
and unlimited government; the nature and purposes of constitutions, and alternative ways of
organizing constitutional governments. Consideration of this question should promote greater
understanding of the nature and importance of civil society or the complex network of freely
formed, voluntary political, social, and economic associations which is an essential component
of a constitutional democracy. A vital civil society not only prevents the abuse or excessive
concentration of power by government; the organizations of civil society serve as public
laboratories in which citizens learn democracy by doing it.

Civic Skills---The second essential component of civic education in a democratic society is civic
skills. If citizens are to exercise their rights and discharge their responsibilities as members of
self-governing communities, they not only need to acquire a body of knowledge such as that

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embodied in the five organizing questions just described; they also need to acquire relevant
intellectual and participatory skills.

Intellectual skills in civics and government are inseparable from content. To be able to think
critically about a political issue, for example, one must have an understanding of the issue, its
history, its contemporary relevance, as well as command of a set of intellectual tools or
considerations useful in dealing with such an issue.

The third essential component of civic education, civic dispositions, refers to the traits of private
and public character essential to the maintenance and improvement of constitutional democracy.
This will be discussed in third chapter

Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, or national
community.Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and
responsibilities. "Active citizenship" is the philosophy that citizens should work towards the
betterment of their community through economic participation, public , volunteer work, and
other such efforts to improve life for all citizens. In this vein, schools in some countries provide
citizenship education.

Generally citizenship is seen as the relationship between an individual and a particular nation. In
ancient Greece, the main political entity was the city-state, and citizens were members of
particular city-states. In the past five hundred years, with the rise of the nation-state, citizenship
is most closely identified with being a member of a particular nation. To some extent, certain
entities cross national boundaries such as trade organizations, non-governmental organizations as
well as multi-national corporations, and sometimes the term "citizen of the world" applies in the
sense of people having less ties to a particular nation and more of a sense of belonging to the
world in general.

In modern times, citizenship policy is divided between jus sanguinis ("right of blood") and jus
soli ("right of soil") nations. A jus sanguinis policy grants citizenship based on ancestry or
ethnicity, and is related to the concept of a nation state common in Europe. A jus soli policy
grants citizenship to anyone born on the territory of the state, a policy practiced by many
countries in the Americas, including the United States. Many countries have a hybrid birthright
requirement of local nativity and citizenship of at least one parent.

Citizenship can also commonly be obtained through marriage to a person holding the citizenship
or through naturalization .

History. The first form of citizenship was based on the way people lived in the ancient Greek
times, in small-scale organic communities of the polis. In those days citizenship was not seen as
a public matter, separated from the private life of the individual person. The obligations of
citizenship were deeply connected into one’s everyday life in the polis. To be truly human, one
had to be an active citizen to the community, which Aristotle famously expressed: “To take no
part in the running of the community's affairs is to be either a beast or a god!” This form of

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 citizenship was based on obligations of citizens towards the community, rather than rights given
to the citizens of the community. This was not a problem because they all had a strong affinity
with the polis; their own destiny and the destiny of the community were strongly linked. Also,
citizens of the polis saw obligations to the community as an opportunity to be virtuous, it was a
source of honour and respect. In Athens, citizens were both ruler and ruled, important political
and judicial offices were rotated and all citizens had the right to speak and vote in the political
assembly.

However, an important aspect of polis citizenship was exclusivity. Citizenship in ancient Greece
and Rome, as well as Medieval cities that practiced polis citizenship, was exclusive and
inequality of status was widely accepted. Citizens had a much higher status than non-citizens:
Women, slaves or ‘barbarians’. For example, women were seen to be irrational and incapable of
political participation (although some, most notably Plato, disagreed). Methods used to
determine whether someone could be a citizen or not could be based on wealth (the amount of
taxes one paid), political participation, or heritage (both parents had to be born in the polis).In
the Roman Empire, polis citizenship changed form: Citizenship was expanded from small scale
communities to the entire empire. Romans realized that granting citizenship to people from all
over the empire legitimized Roman rule over conquered areas. Citizenship in the Roman era was
no longer a status of political agency; it had been reduced to a judicial safeguard and the
expression of rule and law.

Modes of Acquiring Citizenship

There are five modes of acquiring citizenship i.e, by birth, through naturalisation, through
red integration, through subjugation and through cession of territory.

( (a) Citizenship by birth: The first and chief mode of acquiring citizenship is by birth; indeed, the acquisition
of nationality by another mode is exception, since the vast majority of mankind acquires Citizenship by birth, and
does not change it afterwards.

( (b) Citizenship through naturalization: The most important mode of acquiring citizenship besides by birth is
that of naturalization in the wider sense of the term. Through naturalization, an alien by birth acquires the
citizenship of the naturalizing state. According to the municipal law of the different states naturalization may take
place through six different acts – namely, marriage, legitimation, option, acquisition of domicile, appointment as
government official, grant on application. Thus, according to the municipal law of most states, an alien female
marrying a subject of such state become thereby ipso facto naturalized. Thus, father, according to the

Mun-icipal law of several states, an illegitimate child born of an alien mother, and therefore an
alien itself, becomes ipso facto naturalised through the father marrying the mother, and thereby
legitimating the child.
1. citizenship through reintegration: The third mode of acquiring citizenship is called reintegration
or resumption. Such individuals as have been natural-born subjects of a state, but have lost their
original nationality through naturalisation abroad or for some other cause, may recover their
original nationality on fulfilling certain conditions. This is called redintegration or resumption.
2. Citizenship through subjugation and by cession: The fourth and fifth modes of acquiring
nationality are by subjugation after conquest and by cession of territory, the inhabitants of the

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 subjugated and the ceded territory acquiring ipso facto by the subjugation or cession the
nationality of the state which acquires the territory.
Modes of Losing Nationality:
There are five modes of losing nationality, although all five are no means recognized by all the
states.
These are release, deprivation, expiration, option and substitution:
(a)Release: Some states, such as Germany, give their citizens the right to ask to be released from
their nationality. Such releases, if granted, denationalizes the released individual.

(b)Deprivation: For example, according to the municipal law of some states, as, for instance,
Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Holland, Portugal, and Spain, the fact that a citizen enters into foreign
civil or military service without permission of his sovereign deprives him of his. citizenship

(c) lapse: Some states have legislated that citizenship expires in the case of such of their subjects
as have left the country and stayed abroad a certain length of time. For instance, a naturalised
citizen of United States of America as a rule loses his citizenship by residing for two years in the
country of his origin or for five years in any other foreign state. Or, again, the American
citizenship of a woman who acquired it by marriage to an American man expires in case she is
living abroad at the time when her husband dies or her marriage is dissolved, unless within one
year after such an event she registers as an American citizen before the US consul.

(d)Substitution: According to the law of many states, as, for instance, Great Britain, the citizenship
of their subjects is extinguished ipso facto by their naturalisation abroad, be it through marriage,
grant on application, or otherwise. Some states, however, do not object to their citizens acquiring
another citizenship besides that which already possess.

Dual Citizenship. Dual or multiple citizenship applies when two or more countries recognize a
person as their citizen. Rights and Obligations are conferred by each country where a person
holds citizenship. In general, a law of the country wherein a person is currently present and holds
citizenship takes precedence over the laws of any other country where the individual may also
hold citizenship. International treaties may, allow exception to this rule.
Not all countries offer or accept dual/multiple citizenships. Each country has discretionary
authority as who it considers to be a citizen. For individuals who wish to maintain citizenship in
their country of origin, they must verify with the Embassy of their country regarding the rules of
citizenship.. Certain countries automatically sever citizenship rights to persons who have been
granted citizenship in another country, even if the other country accepts dual citizenship. Many
countries do not recognize an individual’s new citizenship. Generally the citizenship law that
would apply to an individual’s case would be the law that were in effect on the date of obtaining
(birth, marriage, parents’ birth or marriage, naturalization etc.)
An important note is there does not exist an “Application for Dual citizenship” in addition, there
does not exist a “Certificate” issued confirming that you hold dual citizenship. Dual citizenship
occurs because citizenship can be obtained in several different ways, through country of birth or
naturalization; or through parents, grandparents or, in certain cases, marriage. Certain countries
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grant citizenship to person, even if they have not applied for it. Canada, for example,
automatically grants citizenship to children born outside of Canada to Canadian parents. These
children may also be granted citizenship from their country of birth resulting in dual citizenship
without their having to petition for it.

Statelessness is the legal and social concept of a person lacking belonging (or a legally
enforceable claim) to any recognized state. Statelessness is not always the same as lack of
citizenship. Statelessness can be classified as De jure statelessness & De facto statelessness

Statelessness most commonly affects refugees although not all refugees are stateless, and not all
stateless persons may be able to qualify as refugees. Refugee status entails the extra requirements
that the refugee is outside their country of nationality (or country of habitual residence if
stateless), and is deserving of asylum based upon a well-founded fear of persecution for
categorized reasons which make him/her unwilling or unable to avail the protection of that
country.

A stateless person is someone with no citizenship or nationality. It may be because the state that
gave their previous nationality has ceased to exist and there is no successor state or their
nationality has been repudiated by their own state, effectively making them refugees. People may
be stateless also if they are members of a group which is denied citizen status in the country on
whose territory they are born, if they are born in disputed territories, if they are born in an area
ruled by an entity whose independence is not internationally recognized, or if they are born on
territory over which no modern state claims sovereignty.

Individuals may also become stateless voluntarily by formally renouncing their citizenship while
on foreign soil However, not all states recognize such renunciations on the part of their citizens.
Often, depending on the specific laws of the countries involved, one may not renounce a
citizenship unless one is a dual citizen and can show citizenship in a country other than that of
the undesired citizenship.

State the requirements for the naturalization of foreigners to Ethiopian citizenship ?

Responsibilities or duties of citizenship. The legally enforceable duties of citizenship vary

depending on one's country, and may include such items as:

• paying taxes
• serving on a jury
• Voting
• Obeying the criminal laws enacted by one's government, even while abroad

Whom do you think is a good citizen?

 A good citizen is one who:

 Up holds democracy and support the democratic system
 Pursue wisdom

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  Respects law
 Actively participates in the cultural, socio-economic and political affairs of the
society
 Develops culture of saving
 Is hard working and industrious
 Is patriotic for his country and peoples
 Responsible
 Up holds and fights for the realization equality of groups and individuals
 Stands for justice and fairness
 Is self-reliant and confident

Ethics
Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions
about morality — that is, concepts such as good and bad, right and wrong, justice virtue,
etc.Major branches of ethics include:

• Normative ethics:-it consists of applied normative ethics and general normative ethics.
• Normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action;
• None normative ethics:- :-it consists of descriptive ethics and meta ethics
• Meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how
their truth-values (if any) may be determined;

Meta-ethics----Meta-ethics is the branch of ethics that seeks to understand the nature of

ethical properties, and ethical statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics as a discipline
gained attention with G.E. Moore's famous work Principia Ethica from 1903 in which Moore
first addressed what he referred to as the naturalistic fallacy. Moore's rebuttal of naturalistic
ethics, his Open Question Argument sparked an interest within the analytic branch of western
philosophy to concern oneself with second order questions about ethics; specifically the
semantics, epistemology and ontology of ethics.

The semantics of ethics divides naturally into descriptivism and non-descriptivism.

Descriptivism holds that ethical language (including ethical commands and duties) is a
subdivision of descriptive language and has meaning in virtue of the same kind of
properties as descriptive propositions. Non-descriptivism contends that ethical
propositions are irreducible in the sense that their meaning cannot be explicated
sufficiently in terms of descriptive truth-conditions.

Correspondingly, the epistemology of ethics divides into cognitivism and non-

cognitivism; a distinction that is often perceived as equivalent to that between
descriptivists and non-descriptivists. Non-cognitivism may be understood as the claim

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 that ethical claims reach beyond the scope of human cognition or as the (weaker) claim
that ethics is concerned with action rather than with knowledge. Cognitivism can then be
seen as the claim that ethics is essentially concerned with judgments of the same kind as
knowledge judgments; namely about matters of fact.

The ontology of ethics is concerned with the idea of value-bearing properties, i.e. the
kind of things or stuffs that would correspond to or be referred to by ethical propositions.
Non-descriptivists and non-cognitivists will generally tend to argue that ethics do not
require a specific ontology, since ethical propositions do not refer to objects in the same
way that descriptive propositions do. Such a position may sometimes be called anti-
realist. Realists on the other hand are left with having to explain what kind of entities,
properties or states are relevant for ethics, and why they have the normative status
characteristic of ethics.

 Normative Ethics----Traditionally, normative ethics (also known as moral

theory) was the study of what makes actions right and wrong. These theories
offered an overarching moral principle one could appeal to in resolving difficult
moral decisions.

At the turn of the 20th century, moral theories became more complex and are no longer
concerned solely with rightness and wrongness, but are interested in many different kinds of
moral status. During the middle of the century, the study of normative ethics declined as meta-
ethics grew in prominence. This focus on meta-ethics was in part caused by an intense linguistic
focus in analytic philosophy and by the popularity of logical positivism.

In 1971, John Rawls published A Theory of Justice noteworthy in its pursuit of moral arguments
and eschewing of meta-ethics. This publication set the trend for renewed interest in normative
ethics.Greek philosophers.

Modern ethics(Theories of Ethics)

In the modern era, ethical theories were generally divided between theories of philosophers such
as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and deontological ethics as epitomized by the work of
Immanuel Kant.

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Consequentialism

Consequentialism refers to moral theories that hold that the consequences of a particular action form
the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (or create a structure for judgment, see rule
consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that
produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends
justify the means".

The term "consequentialism" was coined by G.E.M. Anscombe in her essay "Modern Moral
Philosophy" in 1958, to describe what she saw as the central error of certain moral theories, such
as those propounded by Milland Sidgwick. Since then, the term has become common in English-
language ethical theory.

The defining feature of consequentialist moral theories is the weight given to the consequences
in evaluating the rightness and wrongness of actions.[9] In consequentialist theories, the
consequences of an action or rule generally outweigh other considerations. Apart from this basic
outline, there is little else that can be unequivocally said about consequentialism as such.
However, there are some questions that many consequentialist theories address:

• What sort of consequences count as good consequences?

• Who is the primary beneficiary of moral action?
• How are the consequences judged and who judges them?

One way to divide various consequentialisms is by the types of consequences that are taken to
matter most, that is, which consequences count as good states of affairs. According to hedonistic
utilitarianism, a good action is one that results in an increase in pleasure, and the best action is
one that results in the most pleasure for the greatest number. Closely related is eudaimonic
consequentialism, according to which a full, flourishing life, which may or may not be the same
as enjoying a great deal of pleasure, is the ultimate aim. Similarly, one might adopt an aesthetic
consequentialism, in which the ultimate aim is to produce beauty. However, one might fix on
non-psychological goods as the relevant effect. Thus, one might pursue an increase in material
equality or political liberty instead of something like the more ephemeral "pleasure". Other
theories adopt a package of several goods, all to be promoted equally. Whether a particular
consequentialist theory focuses on a single good or many, conflicts and tensions between
different good states of affairs are to be expected and must be adjudicated.

Deontological Ethics

Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty"; and -λογία, -log
is an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, rather than
third-party consequences of the act as in consequentialism, or the intentions of the person doing
the act as in virtue ethics. Deontologists look at rules and duties For example, the act may be
considered the right thing to do even if it produces a bad consequence if it follows the rule that
“one should do unto others as they would have done unto them”, and even if the person who
does the act lacks virtue and had a bad intention in doing the act. According to deontology, we
have a duty to act in a way that does those things that are inherently good as acts ("truth-telling"

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for example), or follow an objectively obligatory rule (as in rule utilitarianism). For
deontologists, the ends or consequences of our actions are not important in and of themselves,
and our intentions are not important in and of themselves.

Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several different reasons.[First,
Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act from duty (deon).Second, Kant
argued that it was not the consequences of actions that make them right or wrong but the motives
of the person who carries out the action.

Kant's argument that to act in the morally right way, one must act from duty, begins with an
argument that the highest good must be both good in itself, and good without qualification
.Something is 'good in itself' when it is intrinsically good, and 'good without qualification' when
the addition of that thing never makes a situation ethically worse. Kant then argues that those
things that are usually thought to be good, such as intelligence, perseverance and pleasure, fail to
be either intrinsically good or good without qualification. Pleasure, for example, appears to not
be good without qualification, because when people take pleasure in watching someone
suffering, this seems to make the situation ethically worse. He concludes that there is only one
thing that is truly good:

Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which
could be called good without qualification except a good will.

and those who support them, through personal resistance.

RATIONALES OF CIVICS AND ETHICS

As you know the concept and practice of democracy is foreign to Ethiopia. In order to build up
democracy, citizens need to know about democracy, its principles, values, processes, structures,
challenges and prospects. In addition to such knowledge, citizens are required to up hold
democratic values and exercise them in their day to day decision making processes. As the
saying goes democracy with out democrats will not sustain. The commitments and democratic
qualities of citizens are most required to having a well-functioning and sustainable democratic
system in the country.
Democratic citizens are not born but they are created through education. So we learn civics and
Ethics to up hold democratic principles and values and exercise them. Indeed civics and Ethics
teaches you about self government.
There are different levels of self government. The primary level of self government is the
individual realm. In democracy citizens are required to govern themselves with the external
impositions and coercions. The family could be taken as the secondary level wherein democracy
could be exercised.

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The second major rational why we learn civics is to have good knowledge and awareness about
the social and economic conditions and challenges of the country. As a matter of fact Ethiopia is
one of the poorest countries in the world. The country has been hit by famine and food shortage.
Its economy has been vulnerable to climate change and erratic whether condition. For long the
country has been aid dependent because of low economic performances. As the society lives
under extensive poverty for many decades, and perhaps, centuries, this definitely has adverse
effect on the democratization process.

So, the creating citizens who ensures their freedom from poverty, disease and ignorance requires
knowledge and awareness about these facts. In civics and ethics we learn thus, about the socio-
economic conditions of the country. This definitely will scale up the general knowledge of
citizens which would motivate them to become hard working and economical citizens..

Professional Ethics
a profession Is a vocation founded upon specialised educational training, the purpose of which is
to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly
apart from expectation of other business gain

The concept of Professional Ethics is partly comprised of what a professional should or should
not do in the work place. It also encompasses a much greater part of the professionals life. If a
professional is to have ethics then that person needs to adopt that conduct in all of his dealings..
Things that are included as professional ethics are concepts like: professional respect, avoidance
of dishonest or fraudulent activity such as plagiarism and the professional development of the
individual. Another aspect of this is the enhancement of the profession and the industry within
which the professional works. This concerns a professional's conduct and behaviour while
carrying out their professional work. This then, is work for the good of the community and
mankind.

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