Peter Levine2013-06-19T17:33:13-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=peter-levineCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Peter LevineGood old fashioned elbow grease.What We Need to Do About Civic Educationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19579482012-10-11T17:41:22-04:002012-12-11T05:12:01-05:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/
We found recently that 68 percent of young people didn't know whether their state required a photo ID to vote, and 80 percent of the young people didn't know their state's early registration rules. Other news reports have raised the question of whether citizens understand broader issues. In the New York Times online (Sept. 23), Thomas B. Edsall quoted a Romney supporter who explained why President Obama might win that state: "People are stupid. ... [Governments] eliminated civics from our curriculum. The students don't know about civics, they don't know about our history, our government, our constitution."
Edsall had talked to someone with strongly partisan opinions, but his article raised a question of fact: have schools eliminated civics? The liberal mega-blogger Atrios asked whether that is true, and Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum answered, "Civics is Alive and Well in American High Schools."
So what's the real story? My organization, CIRCLE at Tufts University, recently scanned all the state laws and policies relevant to teaching civics in k-12 schools. Our report, funded by the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, finds that 39 states require at least one course in American government or civics. In those courses, students learn about citizenship, government, law, current events, and related topics.
All 50 states have standards for the social studies, a broad category that includes disciplines like history and geography as well as civics and government. The topics of power, authority, and government are in all states' standards. Civic ideals and practices (such as the rule of law, or why people vote) are mentioned in every state's standards except Missouri's.
In short, students are still generally required to take civics and to study topics like government and civic ideals. But that does not mean we are doing a good enough job preparing young people to be active and engaged citizens. Several obstacles stand in the way.
First, most states require only one course in government or civics, and it is often assigned at 12th grade. By that time, senioritis has set in, and -- worse -- many students have dropped out of high school. The course is often too little and too late.
Second, both students and teachers know that they must focus on what is tested. The social studies class is required, but it usually involves no standardized test, and that makes it a relatively low priority for faculty and students alike. Just 21 states currently require their students to take a statewide social studies test. This is a dramatic reduction compared to 2001, when 34 states conducted regular assessments on social studies subjects..
In many of the states that do have social studies tests, the stakes are not very high. Just nine states require students to pass the test in order to graduate from high school. Also, the most commonly tested social studies field is history. Only eight states provide standardized tests specifically in civics or American government: California, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Of those eight, Ohio and Virginia are the only ones that require students to pass that test to graduate from high school, although Maryland and Florida have plans to add such requirements.
The relative lack of testing would be a problem if we were confident that tests encouraged good teaching and learning. But of course, it all depends on the test. Social studies assessments have shifted from a combination of multiple-choice questions, essay questions, and other assignments to almost exclusively multiple-choice exams since 2000. That means that a student preparing for a civics test (if there is a test) may have to memorize how many votes it takes to overcome a veto or which house of Congress must originate revenue bills. That is useful information if you want to assess a president or influence Congress, but it has no value if it is simply stored in short-term memory and the student doesn't see how to apply it. A multiple-choice exam is a poor tool for assessing advanced knowledge or the application of knowledge to complex situations, let alone students' abilities to work together in groups.
Many states do want their students to develop more advanced civic skills. Forty-two states have standards about the "real-world application" of civics, and 41 have standards that somehow involve communication, deliberation, or collective decision-making.
In Connecticut, for example, students are expected to develop and employ the civic skills necessary for effective, participatory citizenship. Iowa's standards require students to be able to analyze a local, state, national issue and prescribe a legislative response.
Oregon students must be able to analyze an event, issue, or problem, propose, compare and judge multiple responses, and engage in informed and respectful deliberation and discussion of issues, events and ideas. And Wisconsin's standards include locating, organizing, analyzing, and using information from various sources to understand an issue of public concern, take a position, and communicate the position.
In my opinion, these are the outcomes that we want -- for the good of our democracy and civil society. But although they are mentioned in many state standards, they are buried among thousands of other standards about concrete, factual information. And they are not tested or otherwise rewarded. No wonder they tend to be low priorities.
Interactive, engaging civic education has been found to boost young people's interest in news and politics for years after graduation. It can also be good for them as individuals, enhancing their motivations to succeed in school.
What we expect of our students in civics classes is a good measure of what kind of nation we hope to be. The question is not whether we are raising young people to vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, but whether they can talk with people who disagree and form and execute good plans for addressing public problems. By that standard, we typically fall short.]]>Taking the President Seriously About Citizenshiptag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18929832012-09-19T12:36:30-04:002012-11-19T05:12:02-05:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/he said, "we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government."
The president's talk of active citizenship should not have surprised anyone, since he spoke about it frequently and extensively during his first presidential campaign. It was the main theme of his Springfield speech announcing his candidacy in 2007, an important note in his Grant Park speech on Election Night 2008, and a recurrent topic throughout the campaign.
Mr. Obama's talk of citizenship usually draws applause and cheers, as it did when he accepted the Democratic nomination in Charlotte. But pundits and policymakers never pay attention to it. They regard talk of citizenship as a politician's cliché -- like saying you are delighted to be in New Hampshire in January. The only question reporters asked about the Charlotte speech was whether it had fallen flat or done the job. Nobody wrote about the substance of the citizenship idea.
I see two reasons for their lack of interest: pundits doubt that active citizenship has important consequences, and they don't see its relevance to policy.
Scholars who empirically study the consequences of civic engagement can demonstrate that it has important consequences. For example, my colleagues and I helped write a report released last week by the National Conference on Citizenship that shows that civic engagement affects the unemployment rate. For that report, we investigated the relationship between civic health and unemployment in all 50 states, 942 metro areas, and more than 3,100 counties. We found that communities with more civic engagement in 2006 suffered less from unemployment during and after the Great Recession, even when other possible explanations were factored in.
Nonprofit organizations, driven by volunteers and charitable contributions, played an important role. According to our analysis, if a county had one extra nonprofit for every 1,000 residents in 2005, and everything else were held constant, the county would have half a percentage point less unemployment by 2009.
An individual who was employed in 2008 was twice as likely to become unemployed if he or she lived in a community with few nonprofit organizations (the bottom 5 percent in nonprofit density) rather than one with in the top 5 percent for nonprofit density, even if the two communities were otherwise similar. It is not just that nonprofits employ people; they also seem to strengthen the economic performance of their whole communities.
We found that not all nonprofits mattered equally. Fraternal organizations and unions that convene their members for local meetings, sports organizations that hold athletics events, and service providers that directly assist local people all seemed to help, whereas "mailing-list" organizations whose members just contribute checks did not seem to matter for unemployment.
We also found that it mattered whether residents socialize, communicate, and collaborate with one another. In 2006, the states with the highest and lowest levels of "social cohesion" (informal socializing and collaboration) had virtually identical unemployment rates of around 4.5 percent. But by 2010, their unemployment rates were significantly different: states with high social cohesion had an average unemployment rate of 8 percent and states with low social cohesion had an average rate of 10 percent.
The effects of active citizenship on unemployment are just an example. Engaging as citizens has also been found to benefit people's psychological well-being and health and to strengthen schools and other organizations.
In short, active citizenship really matters. But what does that mean for policy? The answer was clear during the New Deal, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt framed federal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration as opportunities for ordinary people to help rebuild the American Commonwealth, contributing their ideas and passions as well as their money.
The Obama stimulus package may have created some such opportunities, but the stimulus wasn't presented that way and it was not designed to maximize citizen engagement. The president signed bipartisan legislation to expand AmeriCorps, but it remains a tiny program. Federal policy continues to neglect civic education, and the civics courses that young people take are rarely about learning to participate in civil society.
President Obama deservedly wins some citizens' applause for his citizenship theme. Pundits may have underestimated his Charlotte speech because they overlooked the resonance of that idea for people who are discouraged by our fraying civic fabric. But so far, the Obama administration has been much better at talking about citizenship than actually encouraging it. If the president takes concrete steps to boost civic participation, even pundits may start paying attention.]]>Understanding a Diverse Generationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11083782011-11-23T12:43:40-05:002012-01-23T05:12:01-05:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/Generation We: How Millennial Youth are Taking Over America and Changing Our World Forever by Eric Greenberg and Karl Weber (2008). Norman Lear provides one of many enthusiastic endorsements on the back cover: "The Bible tells us, 'a little child shall lead them.' ... Greenberg and Weber chronicle today's wonderful young people as they push, pull, and propel us toward global salvation."
But I also own The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein (2008). The back cover, with sober endorsements by elders like Harold Bloom, warns: "If they don't change, they will be remembered as fortunate ones who were unworthy of the privileges they inherited. They may even be the generation that lost that great American heritage, forever."
What is the true story about this generation? In 2008, they turned out in near-record numbers to elect a president who inspired them. In 2010, relatively few of them voted at all. They are camped out in "Occupy" tents, yet they spend all their time inside, staring at screens.
A record number, almost 12 million, are working on college degrees, yet nearly one third drop out before they even attain a high school diploma. They commit homicide at less than half the rate of their parents' generation, yet more than 780,000 of them are in prison. They face an obesity epidemic, yet they are conscious of nutrition and exercise. They are tech-savvy, but they struggle in a high-tech economy. They are idealists, yet cynics; overachievers, yet slackers; coddled, yet managing on their own.
Come to think of it, why would we assume that any stereotype accurately describes the most racially, ethnically and culturally diverse generation in American history? Maybe they all have access to Facebook, but in most other respects, their circumstances are far from uniform. Economic inequality (measured as the gap between the top fifth and the bottom fifth of families) is greater than at any time since 1929. Schools are more segregated than they were a quarter of a century ago.
With the election season heating up and much speculation about whether "youth" will vote, we should be focused on enormous disparities in civic engagement. Census data from 2010 reveal that about one in five young Americans is broadly engaged. They work with neighbors, attend community meetings, take leadership roles in community organizations, and volunteer on a regular basis. White, college-educated, high-income youth are overrepresented in this cluster. Almost three quarters of young people in this group have attended college, and more than 30% have already completed a four-year degree. Women are also overrepresented in this group.
A different one in five young adults are civically alienated, reporting almost no forms of engagement -- from voting to community service. Latino, non-college-educated, and low-income youth are overrepresented in this cluster. Because they are disconnected from organizations and community networks, they miss the chance to influence society, and they lose opportunities to develop skills and positive relationships.
Several other groups are also worth attention. Fourteen percent of young adults in 2010 were registered to vote but did not vote or do much of anything else. The fact that they registered suggests some concern and knowledge, but they evidently need a push to participate. Another group of 13 percent reported discussing political issues and were avid communicators with their friends and family, especially online. But they took very little action in the world. Again, they display interest and concern, but civic organizations must recruit them to participate.
Americans are obsessed with trends over time. We stare at graphs showing test scores and voter turnout rising or falling from year to year. But the gaps among people of the same age are much bigger than any of these changes. No one knows how many young adults will vote in 2012. But we can be virtually certain that college students will vote at twice the rate of their peers who have no college experience, because that has been the case in every election for decades.
I anticipate that many reactions to this article will be generalizations about "young people today" -- appreciative or disparaging. Any comments that lump all young people together are bound to be wrong. If you care about engaging the next generation, I would urge you to drop the stereotypes and focus on important differences. Recognize that some young people are remarkably active and responsible leaders; include them in your work. But also find ways to engage the young people who are left out.
]]>Could Civic Engagement Be the Key to Economic Success?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9661762011-09-16T14:14:00-04:002011-11-16T05:12:01-05:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/
The obvious place to look is economic conditions. A Goldman Sachs study in August found that the only factors that mattered were the extent of the housing bubble (more was worse), the size of the state's oil and gas industry (more was better), and the proportion of its workforce in high-skilled professional jobs (higher was better).
My colleagues and I are concerned about civic engagement: voting, volunteering, belonging to and leading groups, attending meetings, and working with fellow citizens to address problems. Those activities are now measured annually by the federal Current Population Survey. So we included them in a statistical model along with major eight economic factors to see what explained changes in unemployment best.
We found that the civic measures were strongly related to changes in employment from 2006-2010, but none of the economic factors was associated with employment to a statistically significant degree. Please see Civic Health and Unemployment: Can Engagement Strengthen the Economy, released today by CIRCLE at Tufts University, the National Conference on Citizenship, the Saguaro Seminar at Harvard, Civic Enterprises, and the National Constitution Center.
In short, the more civic engagement, the less unemployment. Particularly valuable forms of engagement seemed to include volunteering, working with neighbors, group membership, meeting attendance, registering to vote, serving as a group officer, and contacting public officials.
The main focus in the report is on states, but more limited evidence from metropolitan areas finds the same patterns at that level as well.
The report carefully notes that we cannot tell for sure whether civic engagement lowers unemployment; other explanations are explored. However, the statistical relationships are notably strong and deserve much more attention by economists, policymakers, and the public.
The statistical analysis itself cannot explain why civic engagement may be an important factor in avoiding unemployment, but other research lends support for several hypotheses:
Participation in civil society can develop skills, confidence, and habits that make individuals employable and strengthen the networks that help them to find jobs
People get jobs through social networks (online and offline)
Participation in civil society spreads information relevant to investors and workers
Participation in civil society is strongly correlated with trust in other people, and people who trust others are more likely to invest and hire
Communities and political jurisdictions with stronger civil societies are more likely to have good governments
Civic engagement can encourage people to feel attached to their communities
As the report concludes:
Even at a time when the global economy has been buffeted by strong and dangerous forces, all communities have capital and skills that can be deployed to create or preserve jobs. Investors may be more willing to create jobs locally if they trust other people and the local government, if they feel attached to their community, if they know about opportunities and can disseminate information efficiently, and if they feel that the local workforce is skilled. All these factors correlate with civic engagement. Those correlations, plus the other evidence cited in this report, lend some plausibility to the thesis that civic health matters for economic resilience.
If we want to boost civic engagement at the state and local level, many strategies are worth considering -- from funding nonprofits to reforming election laws. But civic education at the k-12 level should certainly be part of the strategy, and that was the topic of another major report released this week: Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools.
]]>Massachusetts Kids Fight for 'Civic Ed'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8755882011-06-14T12:23:22-04:002011-08-14T05:12:02-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/Teens Leading The Way) have chosen to fight for a statewide civic education requirement. Today, they will testify in the state capitol in favor of Senate bill # S00183 (which they wrote) to require a civics course.
Isn't "civics" boring and despised by kids? Aren't today's youth slackers, obsessed by celebrity culture but apathetic about politics? And aren't kids from Boston, Lowell, Worcester, and other urban school systems especially "at risk" for dropping out -- not champions of extra academic requirements?
The answer to each of these questions is no. Young people volunteer in their communities at higher rates than their parents did and voted at near-record levels in 2008 (though not so much in 2009 and 2010). Many youth are notably idealistic, concerned about serious public issues, and eager to learn more.
To be sure, young people's knowledge of political and civic issues is not impressive. In this year's National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) in civics, only 24 percent of high school seniors scored at "proficient" or higher, demonstrating solid understanding of the topic. Many young people are critical of their own civic and political knowledge, and that is one explanation they offer for why they don't vote. But they favor educational experiences and requirements that would boost what they know. In a national poll we conducted almost a decade ago, two thirds of young Americans favored a new mandatory civics requirement for high school graduation.
Urban students have an impressive record of constructive civic engagement, as shown by Lowell kids' sustained effort to get the voting age lowered to 17 in their city, and many other projects. Like young people everywhere, they respond exceptionally well when given opportunities to contribute to their communities. Youth who enroll in programs like Lowell's United Teen Equality Center (UTEC) or YouthBuild flourish and succeed because they are treated as assets and challenged to do serious work for their communities, not viewed as chronic problems.
Finally, "civics" need not be boring but is often quite engaging. The word "civics" summons a scene of a teacher diagramming the three branches of government on a chalkboard for rows of silent students. Young people do need to understand the structure of their government. But effective civics teachers introduce the facts as part of interactive discussions and projects on issues that matter to kids. For instance, if students discuss crime in their neighborhood and develop effective, research-based recommendations for reducing it, then the relationship between the city council and the police department will matter to them and they will be eager to learn about it.
That is why the young people in Teens Leading The Way are supporting legislation to require the study of government, history, and civil rights along with opportunities to use such knowledge to create community change through service and community-action projects. Service, when tied to classroom work, has been found to boost students' graduation rates and college attendance, probably because they gain positive motivations and skills.
These elements of effective civic education have been demonstrated to work in rigorous research. They are already offered by excellent teachers in some of our schools, but many kids never experience them. That is why the students are fighting for "civics" on behalf of themselves and their generation.
]]>Creating Good Citizenstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8749882011-06-10T14:11:24-04:002011-08-10T05:12:01-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/National Action Civics Conference. These are people who know that teenagers become good citizens -- and improve their schools and communities -- when they are given the chance to contribute.
Chicago is a natural site for the conference because it is a hotbed of constructive youth engagement. Consider the Gage Park High School students who successfully lobbied for a digital memorial -- a public touch-screen kiosk -- to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King's 1966 march through their neighborhood. Those students were participants in the Mikva Challenge, a Chicago nonprofit that Education Secretary Arne Duncan cites as a leading example of "cutting-edge civics."
Similarly, as a result of a grant from my organization, CIRCLE, teenagers in the Cabrini-Green area documented their neighborhood in public videos through a grassroots organization called Cabrini Connections.
Neutral Ground is a multimedia center in Humboldt Park, operated by yet another nationally recognized nonprofit, Street-Level Media. Young people between 8 and 22 meet at Neutral Ground to create journalism, music, animation, and photography for their communities.
These programs and many like them take advantage of young people's creativity, media savvy, and knowledge of their own communities. They help the kids by giving them creative outlets, skills, and networks. These are important at any time, but crucial today. In the Chicago metro area, according to the Chicago Urban League, 84 percent of teens (age 16-19) were unemployed in 2009, and summer jobs programs have been cut since then.
The prominent Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy, which issued its national report in 2009, called for greater public engagement with the information resources that they have. They particularly called on AmeriCorps to support young people as media producers.
Imagine if thousands of young volunteers served community organizations by producing videos, news websites, research archives, photo essays, online discussion forums, and other forms of media. Imagine if they also met regularly as representatives of their separate organizations to discuss the information needs of Chicago as a whole. They could collaborate to build city-wide websites, discussion forums, archives, and video channels.
In the Chicago Public Schools, according to a careful study by professors Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh, students who discuss and work on current issues gain skills and commitments to be active citizens when they graduate.
Engaged youth also help the city by producing valuable news, discussion, and culture. With professional journalism in crisis, newsrooms cutting staff, and many neighborhoods and communities barely served by the mass media, we need groups of citizens to share news, information, and ideas. Young people can be leaders in that work.
In 2009, Congress authorized up to 250,000 AmeriCorps community service positions, mostly for young people who are paid modest salaries to work in grassroots organizations across America. You may recognize the ones who wear City Year-Chicago jackets, or the Public Allies workers who are placed in Chicago nonprofits.
These young volunteers could work with major institutions like the Chicago Public Library, which recently opened its YOUmedia Center to teach young people media skills. A signature program of the YOUmedia Center is the Digital City Planner project, in which young Chicagoans use cutting-edge technology to develop visions of the city's future.
Other partners might include Chicago's universities. For example, the University of Illinois-Chicago has long recognized its responsibility to be a source of information and ideas for the city, and its Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement recently launched CivicSource as an online portal. AmeriCorps volunteers could be the glue that holds these important but disparate efforts together.
To realize this dream will take some modifications in today's "service" programs, which range from the Chicago Public School's community service requirement to AmeriCorps. "Service" is not all about picking up trash or tutoring children. Media creation should be a central component. Media-creating kids are some of our communities' most important assets]]>What to Do About an 'Unwise Public'tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7874002010-11-23T10:06:26-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/American Prospect blog, Jamelle Bouie cites the latest Pew survey of public knowledge (only 38% of Americans can identify the incoming House Speaker; only 14% know what the inflation rate is) and concludes, "If there's a pundit trick that annoys me the most, it's the tendency to attribute particular ideological views to the public at large. In reality, the public doesn't actually know very much and isn't particularly ideological." His advice for politicians: "The best anyone can do is to meet the needs of your constituents, work on economic growth, and maintain good relationships with party leaders and activists. In the end, it's probably not a good idea to try to divine the "wisdom of the people; from an election outcome, because by and large, the people don't have much wisdom."
But what happens if politicians don't try to meet the real needs of their constituents and don't take steps that will actually promote economic growth or other goods, such as security, freedom, sustainability, and equity? According to Joseph Schumpeter and kindred thinkers, that won't be a problem because the voters can judge overall success in periodical elections. They need not master specifics; they must simply assess their own circumstances and fire the incumbents if things go badly. Then the incumbents will be motivated to do a good job and can ignore citizens' advice about how to go about it.
This is not a crazy theory, and it rests on the valid premise that Bouie cites: "most people aren't terribly interested in public affairs or the minutiae of politics and come to their views by way of partisan affiliation and broad heuristics about the world." But clearly our Constitution is not designed for Schumpeterian politics. Division of power, staggered elections, bicameral legislatures, judicial review, and federalism all dilute and check the power of any particular incumbents and make it impossible to remove the people responsible for poor performance--unless voters are well informed about "the minutiae of politics." For example, in the last election, voters probably fired the Democratic majority because unemployment was stubbornly high. That was a smart and helpful move if the Democratic congressional majority was responsible for high unemployment. I think not, but I could be wrong. The important point is that our system makes it foolish to vote on overall performance.
So we need people to know enough to be wise. Some candidates for what we should know or understand as citizens include: the Constitution, statistics, the carbon cycle, the Holocaust, the positions of powerful politicians, the chief principles of Islam, the biography of Abraham Lincoln, macroeconomics, the Atlantic Slave Trade, accounting principles, the geography of Afghanistan, the contents of the recent health care reform, the major components of the federal, state, and local budgets, evolutionary biology, the tenets of classical liberalism and civic republicanism, Spanish, what causes AIDS, the rudiments of criminal procedure, important interest groups, the mechanics of voting, Keynes versus Hayek, Brown v. the Board of Education, how a bill becomes a law, the King James Version, our rights, the fact that half the world's population lives on less than $2/day, Letter from Birmingham Jail, and how to moderate a meeting.
That's a long list that could be much lengthened. I think we all need to avoid the kind of argument that runs: "People are ignorant of the things I know. That's why I vote right and they vote wrong." Liberals are deeply invested in that argument right now, and the relevant evidence is the public's ignorance of climate science, the composition of the federal budget, and the actual contents of the recent health care reform. But conservatives can play the same game with equal sincerity. For instance, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute regularly surveys college students and finds (to their way of thinking) woefully low levels of knowledge of the following issues on elite campuses: why capitalism allocates resources efficiently; what Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas thought about natural rights; how the Soviet Union dominated other nations; and the origin of the notion of separation of church and state.
I'd like to change the subject. Our system does require public knowledge and virtue. Schools should teach all of the topics mentioned above, along with civic values. There is room for improvement in public education, but we cannot expect everyone to learn and permanently retain the entire corpus of modern knowledge. My own understanding is profoundly limited.
Thus we must identify the most important knowledge and find ways to teach it that go beyond schools. We need "lifelong learning." Although I respect many other kinds of knowledge, I most want citizens to possess a set of considered judgments about how public institutions should run. People can and should disagree about that question, but everyone's judgments should be based on informed and reflective thoughts about how to balance equity, participation, minority rights, and efficiency; how much to reward innovation and hard work versus protecting people against failure; when to preserve traditions and when to innovate; how much to demand of individuals and when to leave them alone; and how to relate to newcomers and outsiders. They should also know how to participate in constructive debates about such issues when people disagree.
To some extent, those matters can be discussed in classrooms and informed by readings. But much of our learning is experiential. From Jefferson's idea of a ward system to Tocqueville's observation that juries and associations were schools of government to John Dewey's notion of democracy as a set of learning opportunities, our wisest thinkers have always understood that the American system depends on knowledge and virtue that must be learned through experience.
Unfortunately, we have lost several of the most important venues for civic learning.
Because of the consolidation of school boards, water boards, and other local governmental bodies and the replacement of citizen boards with expert managers, opportunities to serve on such bodies have fallen by about 75% since the mid-1900s.
Because of the collapse of traditional civil society, the proportion of Americans who said they had attended a local meeting fell smoothly from about 65% in 1976 to about 35% in 2005.
Because of the standards and accountability movement, citizens' participation in debates about schooling have become increasingly marginal.
Because of the mobility of capital, local governments are no longer able to make their own decisions about how to balance the interests of businesses against those of the community. Business that don't get what they want can simply leave.
For reasons that I don't fully understand, the proportion of children who participate in extracurricular groups has fallen.
Empowered associations, boards, meetings, and community debates are schools for democracy, and we are in serious danger of losing them. That's a very different complaint from "the public is unwise," and it suggests very different responses. ]]>Defending Obama Against Krugmantag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7835202010-11-15T09:55:04-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/ Today's Krugman column provides an opportunity to sum it up. This is the key paragraph:
In retrospect, the roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America's problem as one of process, not substance--we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions.
During the campaign, Krugman wanted Obama to capitalize on the unpopularity of George W. Bush to make a sweeping and persuasive case to the American people: things had gone badly because of conservative ideas; liberal ideas were better. It was deeply frustrating to Krugman, Sean Wilentz, and many others (including some of my friends) that Barack Obama wouldn't say that forcefully and relentlessly. He did say much of it, but mixed with other themes that had no resonance for Paul Krugman. What Krugman heard was a call for "bipartisanship," which seemed exactly the opposite of what we needed. Bipartisanship meant blurring the distinctions between liberals and "people with the wrong ideas" and signaling an excessive willingness to compromise.
After the election, Krugman argues, Barack Obama should have explained and defended liberal policies, whether or not they could get through Congress. Above all, he should have "fought" for an "economic plan commensurate with the scale of the crisis." Krugman doesn't explain what "fighting" means for a president, but perhaps it means vigorously debating one's opponents in public forums. If, despite Obama's most vigorous ideological arguments, a huge stimulus package failed in Congress, the "people with the wrong ideas" would have to take the blame.
Instead, Krugman believes, the president compromised on his liberalism, and therefore Americans did not understand their options. Communication is everything for Krugman. From today's column: "What Mr. Obama should have said... Mr. Obama could and should be hammering Republicans... There were no catchy slogans, no clear statements of principle... " The president "has the bully pulpit."
I don't believe that bipartisanship was the distinctive message of the Obama campaign; in fact, the candidate paid no more than the usual and customary homage to it. But Obama did reject the diagnosis that we were simply "in trouble... because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas." He didn't think that he could explain or argue the American people into a different political philosophy, one in which our major troubles stemmed from conservative ideas and the solutions lay in a more activist government. Obama wanted a more activist government and has taken the largest step in that direction since 1974 with the health care bill. But he didn't believe that the way to get there was to conduct a debate on ideology. He did think, contra Krugman, that the main problem was the process and not the misguided people in office.
After all, the number of "people with the wrong ideas" (as defined by Krugman) is very large. All Republican elected officials, plus the majority of American voters who supported that party in several recent elections, have the wrong ideas, from Krugman's perspective. So do at least one third of elected Democrats and a large proportion of Democratic voters. So do all the leaders of major foreign economies, who are asking Obama to lower deficits and not spend. So do many impressive economists. I personally find Krugman's economics quite persuasive, but the task of explanation and persuasion is much harder than he realizes.
People begin with a very deep distrust of the federal government. Because of that distrust, just six percent of Americans believed that the $787 billion stimulus package had created even one job a full year after it passed Congress. I suppose Krugman would say that the stimulus was too small to be noticeable. But the kind of stimulus he wanted was certainly too big to pass Congress, so Obama could only have won the debate, not the policies he needed. In any case, if you live in a country where 94% of people believe that almost one trillion dollars of their money bought no jobs, you have a deeper problem than being "governed by people with the wrong ideas." You need to diagnose why most people are so deeply distrustful and skeptical.
One reason is a natural and healthy distrust of a large and distant federal government. No other diverse, continental-sized country has a central government that has addressed national problems and won broad popular support. The European democracies are far smaller; Russia, India, and China have worse governance problems than we do. Governing from Washington is a tough task.
A second reason is poor results. We devote large amounts of our income to taxes, but because of military spending, wasteful health spending, and misconceived programs like the Farm Bill and the mortgage income deduction, we don't get very good value for our money.
A third reason is distaste for political leaders who appear to squabble and score points rather than cooperate to solve our problems. Krugman wants Democrats to pin the blame for bad policy and obstructionism on Republicans. But Americans hear the counter-charges as well as the charges and decide that they don't want to entrust large amounts of their money to any of these people.
A fifth reason is "the Big Sort"--our mass migration to enclaves (whether neighborhoods, news sources, or organizations and associations) where we only encounter others who agree with us. The Big Sort lowers trust in government because individuals believe that most other people agree with them, yet the government acts contrary to their values. They underestimate the degree to which we actually disagree with one other. Our opponents, meanwhile, become shadowy enemies motivated by terrible values, instead of flesh-and-blood neighbors with different life experiences.
A sixth reason is the collapse of powerful intermediary organizations, associations with grassroots chapters and national lobbies that once connected people to the policy process. Those associations included fraternal and ethnic clubs, unions, and churches (of which only the evangelical conservative ones remain strong). They gave people a feeling of ownership by multiplying their power.
And a final reason is a terrible process. As long as elections are privately funded, districts are gerrymandered, and legislative procedures are rigged, it doesn't matter who makes what argument or what the people believe who govern us. Policy will be determined by power.
Obama explicitly understood these points. He concluded that the problem was the process. Debate wouldn't solve anything, but we needed to build new relationships--relationships of trust between citizens and the government and among diverse citizens. Krugman scoffs at the idea of "men and women of good will... coming together to solve our problems." That is indeed too much to expect of Congress, but it happens regularly in civil society. At the national level, politicians can at least display more of the civility that Americans expect of fellow citizens. (Civility, by the way, is not the same as bipartisanship.)
I think Obama's diagnosis and promise were correct. That doesn't mean that the execution has been satisfactory. There have been no new policies that permit or encourage broad public participation. There have been no serious changes in the rules and processes of Washington. The administration has tried to negotiate its way to satisfactory policies and explain their merits to the American people, instead of changing the system itself. In that sense, they have been doing what Krugman recommends, but with less economic ambition and impact. We need the kind of transformational presidency that Barack Obama promised and that Paul Krugman considered a mistake.]]>Youth Voter Turnout 20%: What Does That Mean?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7782442010-11-03T11:16:50-04:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/
If you care about youth voting -- as a manifestation of democracy and a bellwether of future participation -- you should take some comfort in the fact that young adults voted at roughly the same rate as usual in a midterm election. You should reject exaggerations about the size of the decline, especially after four consecutive federal elections in which youth turnout rose.
On the other hand, youth turnout is low compared to what we should want in a great democracy. At best, about one in three young adults vote even in the most engaging midterms, and they skew toward the most privileged youth. Arguably, we need a game-changing event or movement to increase turnout to a whole different level. If you were hoping that 2008 was such an event, yesterday's results may be discouraging. It is time to ask whether the millions of young people who were deeply engaged in the 2008 campaign could have been invited to engage more in governance once the election was over. I offered some suggestions about how to do that in a January Huffington Post piece.
If you are excited about the Millennial Generation (those born after 1984), you should stay excited. They are an appealing group, with high levels of volunteering and a record of strong turnout in 2004 and 2008. They are already producing creative and skillful leaders. They are the most diverse generation in American history and they have other important assets, such as skills with media and technology. They certainly care about issues and the future of their country. Significant numbers of them specifically care about political participation and worked round the clock to mobilize their peers.
On the other hand, yesterday's election (with its 20 percent turnout rate) reminds us that generational change cannot explain everything. Participation rises and falls from one election to the next. Members of the same generation vote very differently depending on their state, their race, class, and gender, and their politics. As a whole group, today's young people are not sharply different from their predecessors. The arrival of the Millennials will not restore American democracy, although it provides opportunities.
If you are a Democrat, you should not blame young people. They did turn out at fairly typical rates and they supported Democratic candidates, on the whole. Nationwide, in House races, 56% of young people voted for Democratic candidates and 40% voted for Republican candidates. Republicans did somewhat better than in 2008 but much worse than in 1994, 1998, 2000, and 2002, when they ran neck-and-neck with Democrats for the youth vote. Earlier today, Bill Wimsatt wrote on the Huff Post "for four national elections in a row, young voters continue to be the most progressive segment of the population -- and the most progressive generation on record since exit polling began in 1972."
In virtually every state, young adults were the most Democratic age group. For example, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) won 58% of the under-30 vote but only 44% of seniors. Ron Paul (R) won the Kentucky Senate race easily, but he lost the under-30s by three points. Indiana and Louisiana are exceptions: the Republican Senatorial candidates in those states won the youth vote and performed better with young adults than they did with Gen-Xers (ages 30-44).
If you are a Republican, you are entitled to celebrate the election as a whole, but you should give some thought to youth. They represent the future and they did not vote Republican except in the reddest of red states. Even though some young people lean libertarian, the Kentucky results suggest that libertarian Republican candidates have gained little traction so far with the younger generation. The Tea Party is probably a turnoff for young people--if not because they disagree with its policy positions, then because it doesn't reflect a diverse and future-oriented image of America.
If you are any kind of political leader, you should think hard about the way the last election was played: with a barrage of expensive, negative advertising targeted to specific demographic groups, especially the elderly, and encouraging fear. That style can sometimes win elections but it is no way to engage young Americans.]]>Educating Youth for Better Politicstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7433452010-09-29T10:59:33-04:002011-05-25T17:50:22-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/
(My co-authors of this piece, Scott Warren and Alison Cohen,* work with historically underrepresented youth in Providence, Boston, and New York through an organization called Generation Citizen that teaches democratic participation.)
The frenetic 24-hour news cycle means that young people hear more about Sarah Palin's latest Facebook message than substantive issues like health care, unemployment, the War in Afghanistan, and potential school budget cuts.
Meanwhile, teachers and students face the burden of increased standardized tests and measuring up to par, while our youth continue to fall behind in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. This is especially true in urban, low-income schools. Despite a range of attempted reforms, the academic achievement gap remains wide, and minorities and lower-income youth continue to fall behind.
Students from Charlestown High School in Boston, MA participate in Generation Citizen's Civics Day in December, 2009
Irresponsible political discourse and the academic achievement gap are linked to a problem that receives markedly less attention: "the civic engagement gap." There is evidence of widening disparities in civic knowledge, skills, and confidence between poor, minority and immigrant youth and adults, and middle-class or wealthy, white, and native-born youth and adults.
According to the Census, in the 2004 presidential election, people living in America's poorest families (incomes under $15,000) voted at barely half the rate of those living in America's wealthiest families (incomes over $75,000). Despite a 2008 presidential election that saw an expanded youth vote, the disparities continued: youth with some form of college experience were almost twice as likely to vote as those without college experience (62% to 36%). These gaps in political participation are linked to gaps in civic knowledge: African-American, Hispanic, and poor students perform significantly worse on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in Civics than white, Asian, and middle-class students.
The civic engagement gap has wide-ranging repercussions. Scholars have found that students who are more civically engaged tend to have higher levels of motivation and self-efficacy, and also perform better academically. When students address social problems, they recognize that their schoolwork is not only important for homework and standardized testing purposes; it allows them to be community leaders and take action on issues they care about. The academic achievement gap and civic engagement gap are inextricably intertwined.
The civic engagement gap also has obvious consequences in the political arena. Several studies demonstrate that politicians pay little to no attention to our poorest citizens. When issues like health insurance reform and unemployment are debated at the political level, those most affected by the issues rarely have their voices heard.
The reasons for this gap are complex; there is no simple solution. Effective, engaging civics education during the school day, however, is a strategy with promise. Mills College Professor Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh have found that students from wealthier families are twice as likely as students of average socioeconomic status to report studying how laws are made or to participate in service activities, and one-and-a-half times more likely to do in-class debates. If we are serious about combating both the growing political inequality in this country, and lessening the academic achievement gap, effective civics education for every student in this country is a must.
First, schools must recognize that civics is an interdisciplinary subject and that it cannot be studied in a vacuum. In order to be effective citizens, students must be able to read, write and communicate effectively. It is completely possible, and necessary, to plan effective, engaging civics classes while aligning curricula to standards and preparing students for standardized tests.
Second, civics education must be engaging. Students learn math by practicing math problems; they learn science by conducting experiments. Students should not study civics by just learning the three branches of government: they should also engage in the political process by actually acting on issues of concern.
Effective and engaging civics education will not solve all of our political and educational problems. But closing the civic engagement gap is a necessary step to restoring the democratic political discourse that once defined this country, while simultaneously increasing student motivation and academic results. As school starts this fall, we must make a renewed effort to engage all of our youth in the political process. The next generation has the promise and potential to solve many of the problems plaguing American society, and it's our duty to help empower them with the skills they need to be active, effective citizens.
*Scott Warren is the Executive Director for Generation Citizen, and Alison Cohen is the Director of Evaluation and Research. Generation Citizen's mission is to expand democratic participation among youth populations that have been historically under-represented or actively excluded from the political process. Generation Citizen currently works with over 2,000 youth in Providence, Boston, and New York City]]>The Path Not Taken (So Far): Civic Engagement for Reformtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.4373172010-01-26T14:48:45-05:002011-05-25T15:20:23-04:00Peter Levinehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-levine/
But no one who has any influence in the party or the administration--other than possibly the president and the first lady--really understands the power of civic engagement. All the diagnoses of what's going wrong focus on top-down strategy: the Democrats are too arrogant or too cautious, they took too long or tried to rush too fast, or they focused on health care when they should have attended to unemployment. Now the advice from all quarters is to change legislative objectives and to craft a new "message." This whole discourse ignores what could be the unique advantage of having a community organizer in the White House.
The "Active Citizenship" Theme in the Campaign
Announcing his presidential candidacy, Senator Barack Obama said, "This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change."
Ten months later, as he campaigned to win the Iowa Caucuses, Senator Obama said "I won't just ask for your vote as a candidate; I will ask for your service and your active citizenship when I am President of the United States. This will not be a call issued in one speech or program; this will be a cause of my presidency."
Candidate Obama argued that positive change comes from organized social movements, not from the government alone. Social movements should be broad-based, not narrow groups of people who all agree with one another. They should promote discussion and collaboration across lines of difference--including ideological difference.
As he said in May 2007, "politics" usually means shouting matches on TV. But "when politics gets local, when the person talking to you is your neighbor standing on your front porch, things change." In that speech, he called for dialogues in every community on Iraq, health care and climate change.
Further, Obama argued that social change requires work by many people. We must tap their skills, energies, networks and local knowledge. Government programs cannot substitute for public work; nor can rights or entitlements. The "work" theme was strong and consistent in his speeches.
Before the campaign, Barack Obama had been a broad-based community organizer, provoking moral discussions with diverse neighbors for social change. Because of his deep interest in the theoretical issues connected to that work, he was one of just two elected officials who joined Robert Putnam's Saguaro Seminar, a leading project on civil society. Michelle, meanwhile, ran an AmeriCorps program (Public Allies in Chicago) that emphasizes civic skills, and then she took the job of building better relationships between the University of Chicago and its surrounding communities. Civic engagement ran deep in the lives of this couple.
Did the Civic Engagement Theme Help Obama Win?
The press, including liberal columnists and bloggers, paid virtually no attention to the civic engagement theme in the campaign. Reporters regard a statement about "active citizenship" much like a comment about how wonderful it feels to visit New Hampshire in January. Yet videos of his speeches clearly show rising applause at the civic moments.
Within the campaign, policy advisers didn't pay much more attention to the civic themes than the media. The Democrats' proposals on matters like education and the environment included no concrete ideas for civic empowerment. The "active citizenship" theme slipped past Democratic Party elites just as it escaped the notice of the press.
On the other hand, the campaign was structured in ways that reflected Obama's civic philosophy. Volunteers were encouraged and taught to share their stories, to discuss social problems, to listen as well as mobilize, and to develop their own plans. There was a rich discussion online as well as face-to-face. This deliberative style was particularly attractive to young, college-educated volunteers, who felt deeply empowered and who played a significant role in the election's outcomes, especially in Iowa.
What Happened After the Inauguration?
Once elected, President Obama signed the Kennedy Serve America Act, which triples the size of AmeriCorps. That means that about 250,000 Americans--mostly young--will perform civilian service for a year or so. On his first day of office, the new president issued an executive order on Transparency, Participation and Collaboration.
But service does not necessarily build civic skills or address fundamental problems; besides, even an expanded AmeriCorps offers no role to most people. "Transparency" came to mean feeding information to organized interest groups, reporters, and a few independent citizens who have deep interests and skills in particular areas. Participation and collaboration have not been part of the agenda since Inauguration Day.
Service and transparency are not nearly "edgy" enough; there is no fight in them. People are angry - from the Tea Partiers to MoveOn. When citizens try to solve serious social problems, they identify enemies. They do not just hold hands and serve together; they strike back at those whom they perceive as threats. "Active citizenship" reduced to non-controversial "service" or downloading government data completely loses touch with the legitimate anger of the American people.
The White House chose to make health care its major focus and included no aspects of civic engagement in the deliberations about the bill, in its advocacy for the legislation, or in the design of the statute. There could have been real public discussions, instead of sham "Town Meetings" that were really speeches by politicians with time for Q&A. Progressive volunteers could have been encouraged to conduct face-to-face dialogues in their communities and to form relationships with one another (instead of merely finding themselves on the receiving end of an email list). The legislation could have included health co-ops as an experiment in engaging citizens in policy.
It is probably too late to try a civic approach on health care. Climate change is so obviously stuck in the Senate that it is the issue I would use. The inside game can't work. Since negotiation cannot yield an acceptable bill, the administration should try a grassroots strategy that includes a genuine element of open discussion, not just "messaging." And the legislation should include strong support for citizens' work (not just volunteer service) to reduce our carbon emissions.
With the strategy for ramming a deeply contentious issue like health care reform through Congress in tatters, the case for active citizen engagement in pursuit of climate change is stronger than ever.
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