On Democracy and Critical Citizenship

In this essay I fuse narrative, social critique and critical understandings of schooling. Across the writing I argue for an increased critical awareness of print and other forms of news media. For the purposes of this paper I propose two major arguments that support critical awareness, they are: knowing what it means to be an informed citizen and practicing a critical democratic citizenship. As a springboard for discussing the major themes I review how print and other news media are used as propaganda and how a seemingly literate populace more easily accepts what are understood as social norms.