AN ENGAGING CONCERN

This blog has identified a series of aims for civics education.  They are imparting knowledge about the government and politics of the nation, training students about viable skills regarding participation in the political processes of the nation, instilling a disposition to become involved in those political processes, encouraging civil demeanor among students in their social interactions, and encouraging a law-abiding mode of social and personal behavior.  This blog assumes that the reader agrees with these general aims.

          The blog has just reviewed a set of evidence indicating that knowledge among students and adults is wanting.  This, in turn, has led to inconsistent thinking or intolerant thinking among most Americans.  The sum effect is that civics education has not been particularly successful in this area of its responsibilities.

It has not, as this blog has indicated, bolstered the overall levels of social capital[1] among the citizenry.  This posting proceeds to review how well the citizenry has been exercising its participatory responsibility; that is, how well civics education has encouraged and trained students to engage in the political processes of the nation.

          What does the current research reveal are the participatory levels of Americans?  In a recent evaluation by the National Conference of State Legislatures reporting on how well civics education is doing, it summarizes its findings:  “… Americans have shared a vision of a democracy in which all citizens understand, appreciate, and engage actively in civic and political life.  In recent decades, however, increasing numbers of Americans have disengaged …”[2] 

This includes participation in civic organizations and the like.  The natural tendency is for people not to engage; after all, working for change benefits all, so why not let others take on the burden?  This is called collective action problem;[3] people are not prone to expend energy when many will accrue advantages from the effort.  To solicit such effort calls for active encouragement.  To be successful in this realm of civic behavior, civics education needs to overcome an intuitive proclivity – not easy to do.

These outcomes should be a focus of any evaluation of a civics education program.  The point is that schools are influential in informing students about the world, its successes, failures, optimisms, institutions, and other social affairs affecting a citizen’s current conditions.  The question is:  along with asking how successful schools are, in which ways or in what directions is such an influence manifested?

Using Robert Putnam's take on social capital as it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions – and again assuming the reader agrees, –  a public school curriculum should actively promote this quality.  One ways schools can do this is along with imparting political and governmental knowledge, is to promote citizen participation in governmental affairs, especially at the local level.  This would highlight the communal aspects of governance and the need to be cooperative in order to be effective.

It is useful to insert a contextual word:  local involvement in politics is important.  It is at the local level, not the national level, that average citizens have the assets to be influential.   A federalist/constitutional principle is, therefore, that local governments need to be kept viable – it heightens the quality of a democratic society.  

However, there are enormous forces that act against this principle.  One prominent force is the inclination of locals to be very parochial.  Not only are parochial concerns often anti-democratic, as in biases against minorities,[4] but they also hinder a citizen in appreciating those developments that originate elsewhere and affect local politics and economic conditions.  This is a challenge for those who promote local power.

Life has become more and more affected not only by national forces, but also by global forces as well, such as is the case with job creation.  Global labor markets can and often profoundly do affect local communities.  Such developments can be beyond the reach of the average person.  One can easily feel justifiably overwhelmed.  This whole development undermines both local governance and the chances of increasing the levels of social capital of any citizenry. 

While all of this is true, one can make the case that enough political realities are still governed and generally handled by local politics, and that local access to government is still the foundation of this nation’s democratic project.

Citing an above concern, consistency in one’s political thinking, it is related to political involvement.  That is, an approach to this concern is to look at levels of political participation. Engagement is a motivator, a reason for holding political views and obtaining political knowledge in the first place.  Engagement demands reasonable and logically consistent views, knowledge, and opinions, at least is one wants to be effective.  That is why this blog listed participation as an aim of civics education and there has been relevant research in this area of concern. 

For example, a 2013 Pew Research Center study which relied on an extensive telephone survey, found that 48% of adults had engaged in a civic group or activity in the preceding year.  It also found:

§  35% of Americans have recently worked with fellow citizens to solve a problem in their community

§  22% have attended a political meeting on local, town, or school affairs

§  13% have been active members of a group that tries to influence the public or government

§  10% have attended a political rally or speech

§  7% have worked or volunteered for a political party or candidate

§  6% have attended an organized protest[5]

While the 48% figure does not sound too bad (almost half), the descriptor of this variable is too broad.  This can be mostly voting, although given voter turnout figures in the most recent elections, one can safely determine that the 48% rate consists of mostly voting.  And the more specific numbers do not describe an actively engaged citizenry. 

In summary, what can one say as to whether our civics education has been even somewhat effective in inducing political participation among students and their corresponding adult population?  By any reasonable standards, one cannot give very high marks.  A rather inclusive bit of data justifying this estimation is the following:  in a recent midterm election (2014) 63.6% of the eligible voters chose not to participate and only about half in the last presidential election (2016) voted.  Nothing can ring louder alarm bells than these disheartening statistics.

There are different spins among academic findings regarding the level of knowledge and engagement that American citizens, including the young, have.  For example, Putnam found in his review of relevant research that except for voting, American rates of political engagement are high compared to other democracies.[6]

Even in terms of how much people knew about politics, both in terms of information and skills, the National Center of Educational Statistics – the IEA study – found US levels among adolescents were high when compared to twenty-seven other nations.[7]  Globally, Ronald Inglehart found increased levels of participation in political activities among those who live in industrial and post-industrial societies.[8]

But the nature of that involvement, of the variety found in the US, changes.  It has changed from those types of activities this writer was taught when he was a student in civics and government classes.  For example, Charles Euchner argues that American participation in politics has become, in many instances, unconventional.

He summarizes his argument as follows:

All across the United States and around the globe, millions of people have decided that protest offers the best opportunity to put pressure on the political “system.” Millions of people have decided that the ordinary system of politics lacks legitimacy and that the only way to practice democratic politics is to operate outside that system.[9]

Naming this form of participation as “extraordinary politics,” Euchner posits that traditional forms of political involvement are disappearing.  Given what one sees in the current town hall meetings around the country, Euchner’s message rings true.

To be clear, traditional forms of engagement include voting, working on political campaigns, discussing politics with one’s neighbors, writing letters to an editor or an elected official, collecting signatures on a petition, and the like.  By contrast, extraordinary politics are acts such as civil disobedience, demonstrations, boycotts, and creating or exhibiting subversive art and literature. 

This latter classification of activities can be very disruptive and one can see the logical connection between extraordinary politics and the ideological extremism among the political class described in a previous posting.

An example of extraordinary politics was demonstrated by Cuban-Americans in Miami, Florida, back in the 1980s.  They mounted an organized car and truck caravan strategy in which they drove on an expressway at twenty miles an hour or slower to block traffic.  Their aim was to protest a government policy.  These types of activities can be very divisive for a community.

In recent years, we observed “Tea Party” demonstrations around the country or some involved in the Black Lives Matter movement engaging in this sort of involvement.  Since the election, liberal versions of these actions have become common.  Many of these demonstrations were conducted in legitimate forms, yet some of them verged on disruptive behavior that at times promoted violence.

On the other hand, Putnam also reports that a lot of political “involvement” has become a matter of writing checks – “checkbook” involvement.  A person shows his or her support by making donations to a political party or lobbyists.  For example, many older Americans write checks to the American Association for Retired Persons. 

The problem is that such engagement substitutes donations for the person-to-person quality of more traditional forms of participation.  In addition, it hands over to professionals the actual planning and implementation of political action.  Putnam reports a 25% decrease in traditional activities between the ‘70s and the mid ‘90s[10] and from just viewing the TV coverage since, one can easily conclude that that trend has only been amplified.  And there have been more recent studies that find similar trends.

As alluded to above, participation relies on knowledge and, in turn, adds to knowledge; that is, there is a mutually enhancing link between political participation and political knowledge.  The two have a reciprocal relationship, each strengthening the other. [11]

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[1] Political scientist, Robert Putnam, tells us that social capital means having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[2] “The civic mission of schools,” National Conference of State Legislatures, 2015, accessed on February 24, 2017, http://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/trust-for-representative-democracy/the-civic-mission-of-schools-executive-summary.aspx .

[3] Paul Burnstein, American Public Opinion, Advocacy, and Policy in Congress:  What the Public Wants and What It Gets, (New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press, 2014).

[4] Some might see the current debate over transsexual students and the use of bathrooms as an example of this concern.

[5] “Civic Engagement in a Digital Age,” Pew Research Center, April 25, 2013, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/ .

[6] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

[7] “What Democracy Means to Ninth-Graders: U.S. Results from the International IEA Civic Education Study” National Center for Education Statistics (U. S. Department of Education, Washington, D. C., 2001).

[8] Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1997).

[9] Charles C. Euchner, Extraordinary Politics: How Protest and Dissent Are Changing American Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), xi-xii.

[10] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

[11] Herbert McCloskey, “Political Participation,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008, accessed February 24, 2017, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Political_Participation.aspx.