The Good Citizen's Handbook: A Guide to Proper Behavior is a tongue-in-cheek tour of truisms from my childhood--advice on being a good neighbor, showing the proper respect to authority, good penmanship--all the stuff that was beaten into us in the 50s, rejected in the 60s, and cynically repurposed to sell detergent and win elections ever since.

Its Dick-and -Jane illustrations and hokey lessons aside, what's remarkable about writer and designer Janet McKnight-Trontz' 2001 pocket guide is the reminder that social norms are a shared assumption about personal behavior. 

Social responsibility is the sum of our individual actions.

No one wants to return to the bigotry and mores of the 50s, but there's no reason we can't be more than consumers and once again be citizens responsible for our shared future.

Originally posted @ Ann Oliveri