Individual and Society

Lessons

Senior 4 · General and Religious Studies

Individual and Society

4 lessons

Lesson 2 of 4

Roles and Responsibilities of the Individual

25 min

One Saturday, four rings

Follow Jean, an illustrative S4 student, through one Saturday.

At 6 a.m. he fetches water and gets his younger sister ready for her choir practice.
At 8 a.m. he joins the neighbours clearing the drainage channel on their street.
At noon he reads a post claiming that the government will soon close all boarding schools. He checks the Ministry of Education's website before deciding whether to share it.
In the evening he sorts the household's plastic waste from the food waste, because he learned at school that plastic in the soil harms crops for years.

In one day Jean acted as a son and brother, a neighbour, a citizen and a member of the human community. Each of those roles came with responsibilities. This lesson maps them.

Definition

Role: the part a person plays in a group, with the behaviour the group expects. Example: an elder brother, a class captain, a voter.

Responsibility: something you are expected or obliged to do because of your role, and for which you can be held to account. Example: a class captain is responsible for passing on the teacher's messages.

Right: something every person is entitled to, protected by law. Duty: something the law or morality obliges you to do. Rights and duties go together: my right to speak freely brings a duty not to spread hate.

Citizenship: membership of a nation, with its rights and duties. Global citizenship: the sense of belonging to a wider human community; in UNESCO's words, a global citizen "understands how the world works, values differences in people, and works with others to find solutions to challenges too big for any one nation".

The four rings

Figure 2: the rings of responsibility. Each ring contains the ones inside it: you meet the world through your nation, your community and your family. Drawn by Ganzaa.

Ring	Your roles	Your responsibilities	Basis in Rwanda's Constitution
Family	Child, sibling, grandchild; later spouse and parent	Respect and obey parents in what is right; share household work; care for younger and older members	Article 18: the family is "the natural foundation of the Rwandan society"; both parents have "the right and responsibility to raise their children"
Community	Neighbour, member of a village (umudugudu), club or faith community	Take part in Umuganda and village meetings; keep the peace; help vulnerable neighbours; keep shared places clean	Article 46: every Rwandan has the duty "to respect and consider his or her fellow beings without discrimination" and to promote "mutual respect, solidarity and tolerance"
Nation	Citizen, student, future worker and voter	Respect the law; work and study well; protect public property; take part in good-health activities; vote when of age	Article 49: the duty to respect the Constitution and other laws; Article 48: the duty to take part in development "through their dedication to work"; Article 44: the duty to respect State property; Article 45: the duty to take part in activities aimed at good health
World	Member of the human community; user of the internet; consumer	Respect human rights; protect the environment; treat foreigners and refugees fairly; refuse to spread hate or lies online	Article 53: "Everyone has the duty to protect, safeguard and promote the environment"

Notice how the Constitution is built. Chapter IV sets out human rights and freedoms; Chapter V, which follows it directly, is titled "Duties of the State and of citizens". A citizen who claims rights but ignores duties weakens the rings for everyone else.

When responsibilities compete

The rings can pull against each other. A family may want a son to stay home on the day of a national exam; a community may expect a contribution that a poor family cannot afford; a business that is good for the national economy may pollute a river used downstream. Three questions help:

Which responsibility is a legal duty? A legal duty (sitting the national exam, respecting the law) usually comes before a wish.
Who is harmed if I neglect it, and how badly? Serious harm to many outweighs small harm to a few.
Can I meet both? Often a conversation, a plan or a compromise lets you honour two rings at once: sit the exam in the morning and help at home in the afternoon.

UNESCO adds a reminder: "Citizenship and global citizenship do not exclude each other." A good citizen of Rwanda and a good citizen of the world are usually doing the same things.

Warning

Responsibility is not the same as obedience. Students sometimes write that a good citizen "does whatever leaders say". The Constitution says the opposite when orders are wrong: Article 49 gives every Rwandan "the duty to defy superior orders if they constitute a serious and obvious violation of human rights and freedoms". Lesson 4 returns to this.

Tip

Role, responsibility, reason. For each level in an exam answer, name a role, state a responsibility that comes with it, and give the reason or legal basis (an article of the Constitution, a law, or a value). Then add a Rwandan example.

Important

Discuss. Which ring do young people in Rwanda neglect most today: family, community, nation or world? Give evidence from your own community, and propose one project that your class could carry out to strengthen that ring.

UNESCO: "Learning to live together in peace through Global Citizenship Education", about 3 minutes. Watch for how the video connects local actions to global problems, and list two responsibilities it gives to a global citizen.

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Practice

Define role and responsibility, and explain how they are connected.
Give two responsibilities of a young person in each of the four rings.
Name the article of Rwanda's Constitution that sets out each duty: (a) to respect the Constitution and the laws; (b) to protect the environment; (c) to respect State property; (d) to respect others without discrimination.
Explain the link between a right and a duty, using freedom of expression as your example.
A family asks its son to miss his national examination to help with the harvest. Use the three questions in this lesson to decide what he should do.
Explain how one action can serve all four rings at once. Use the photo of the volunteer or your own example.
"Global citizenship weakens national citizenship." Evaluate this statement.

Show answersHide answers

A role is the part a person plays in a group; a responsibility is what they are expected or obliged to do because of that role, and can be held to account for. Each role brings its own responsibilities: a class captain's role brings the responsibility to pass on messages.
Family: share household work; care for younger siblings. Community: take part in Umuganda; help a vulnerable neighbour. Nation: respect the law; study and work well. World: protect the environment; refuse to share hate or false news online.
(a) Article 49; (b) Article 53; (c) Article 44; (d) Article 46.
Every right brings a duty to use it without harming others. I have the right to express my opinions, so I have the duty not to use that freedom to spread hate, lies or genocide ideology, which would harm the rights of others.
Legal duty: the national examination is an official obligation and missing it costs a year. Harm: missing the exam harms his whole future; a day of harvest can be done by others or later. Both: he can sit the exam and help with the harvest before and after it, or the family can ask neighbours to help for one day. He should sit the exam.
The volunteer protects the passenger and the passenger's family (family), the people at the bus station (community), public health (nation) and the global fight against a pandemic (world). Example: planting trees protects your family's land, the hillside community, the nation's soil and the world's climate.
Mostly false. UNESCO states that citizenship and global citizenship "do not exclude each other". Most global responsibilities (respecting human rights, protecting the environment, rejecting hate) are also national duties in Rwanda's Constitution (Articles 46 and 53). Tension can arise, for example over national economic interest and global climate goals, but the two usually reinforce each other.

Quick check

Match each responsibility to its ring.

Tap one on the left, then its partner on the right.

Key points

Every role brings responsibilities, in four rings: family, community, nation and world.
Rwanda's Constitution sets out duties beside rights: Articles 44, 45, 46, 48, 49 and 53, and protects the family in Article 18.
When responsibilities compete, ask which is a legal duty, who is harmed and how badly, and whether you can meet both.
Responsibility is not blind obedience: Article 49 gives the duty to defy orders that seriously violate human rights. National and global citizenship reinforce each other.

Sources and credits

Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda of 2003, revised in 2015 and 2023 (Official Gazette n° Special of 4 August 2023), Ministry of Justice: Articles 18, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49 and 53 quoted.
What you need to know about global citizenship education, UNESCO: quoted.
Photo: Rwanda youth volunteer sanitizing people at Rutonde bus station, Davyimage, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Video: "Learning to live together in peace through Global Citizenship Education", UNESCO, embedded from YouTube.

Written by Ganzaa: Jean's Saturday, Figure 2, the tables, the analysis and the exercises.

This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.

1One Saturday, four rings

2The four rings

3When responsibilities compete

One Saturday, four rings

The four rings

When responsibilities compete