[Note: This posting, the previous two postings, and
at least the one to follow are a restatement of what has been addressed
previously in this blog. Some of the
sentences to come have been provided before but the concern is that other
information has been discovered and an update seems appropriate. The blog has not changed the overall message
– that civics education is seriously deficient – but some of the evidence needs
updating.]
The previous posting
focuses on defining and describing political activities as being a central
element of civic engagement which in turn, it is argued here, should be a main
concern of civics education. This
posting will address two other elements, political voice and electoral
activities.
As
for these two elements, the first includes those actions citizens can take to advocate
a public policy option – signing petitions, communicating with government
officials, writing letters to editors and other media outlets, boycotting, etc.
– and the latter, electoral activities, includes voting and other election
related behaviors that, in turn, have social implications. The general thrust in civics education should
be to advance those behaviors that one can link to communal duties and
obligations.
The
question here is: what does recent
research indicate how often and how well do Americans are perform these
behaviors? To provide some context, Mary
Hylton makes a connection in her reportage.
That is, that a citizenry that engages in these types of activities add
to their communities’ resources and further can be associated with economic
resilience.[1]
This
was demonstrated in those years following the onset of the financial crisis of
2008. Communities that had among their
citizenry higher levels of civic engagement were able to recover more readily. While this is a correlational finding, one
cannot help but think that either directly or indirectly there is a mutual
reinforcing dynamic between civic engagement and economic health.
People
who actively behave in sufficient numbers to advance their community add a
vibrance that can only help stimulate that community to do what is necessary to
spur economic energy. And, further
strengthening this connection, one can detect this relationship at a communal
level but also at the individual level.
Jonathan
Greenblatt reports in a White House paper:
Volunteering
also helps people develop skills and confidence. A recent report by the National Conference on
Citizenship found the “participation in civil society (such as volunteerism)
can develop habits that make individuals enjoyable and strengthen the networks
that help them find jobs.”[2]
In
a study, Malte Klar and Tim Kasser found that political activism is positively
associated with measures of good feelings (hedonic), a sense of being happy,
healthy, and prosperous (eudaimonic), and social well-being.[3] And college students, according to an
Association of American Colleges and Universities publication, who are
civically engaged, register greater levels of satisfaction with their educational
experience, enjoy higher grade point averages, and are more apt to gain their
degrees than those who are not so engaged.[4]
And
what can one say about the levels of community responsibility and civic
belongingness – i.e., political engagement from a social perspective –
exhibited by Americans? According to
Putnam, Americans have “a shriveled sense of we.”[5]
Despite many school systems introducing “volunteerism” as a graduation
requirement, a program with little thought-out function, overall participation
by Americans has fallen drastically during the last fifty years.
Peter
Levine and Eric Liu report, “The proportions of Americans who say that they
have attended community meetings, worked with neighbors to address problems,
and belonged to organizations have fallen between 1975 and 2005.”[6] This conclusion is backed by a slew of
research over the past several decades.[7]
That
research basically provides evidence supportive of the conclusion that
political participation is seriously low and that for those who do participate,
they are more apt to engage in what Charles Euchner identifies as extraordinary
politics,[8]
a topic that will be highlighted in the next posting.
But
recent studies have further connected volunteerism with either physical health or
psychological health. There seems to be a
correlational relationship between this civic behavior and cardiovascular
disease factors: “[Researchers] found
older adult volunteers (65 and older) had lower risk of hypertension than older
non-volunteers, but not for middle-aged volunteers (51-64 years old).”[9] This study goes on to report other
relationships, but the purpose here is not to give a rundown of these findings.
The
purpose is to give the reader a sense of areas of research that investigate the
effects of civic behaviors have on a person’s physical health. Another study worth noting is by Frank J.
Infurna, Morris A. Okun, and Kevin J. Grimm that notes a relationship between
volunteering and the avoidance of cognitive impairment, a psychological
condition.
Consistent civic engagement in old age [over 70
years of age] is associated with lower risk of cognitive impairment and provides
impetus for interventions to protect against the onset of cognitive
impairment. Given the increasing number
of baby boomers entering old age, the findings support the public health
benefits of volunteering and the potential role of geriatricians, who can
promote volunteering by incorporating “prescriptions to volunteer” into their
patient care.[10]
Again, a positive
effect attributable or, at least, associated with proactive civic behavior is
noted.
This
posting will abruptly end here. The next
posting will begin with a description of extraordinary politics and pose questions: is this sort of politics necessary in the
pursuit of desired public policy? Also,
how federal – how much does it promote a federated citizenship – is
extraordinary politics?
[1] Mary E. Hylton,
“The Role of Civic Literacy and Social Empathy on Rates of Civic Engagement
among University Students,” Journal of
Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 2018, vol. 22, 1, 87-106.
[2] Jonathan
Greenblatt, “The Benefit of Civic Engagement for Tomorrow’s Leaders,” White House (of Barack Obama), April 17,
2012, accessed May 10, 2018, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/04/17/benefits-civic-engagement-tomorrows-leaders .
[3] See Malte Klar
and Tim Kasser, “Some Benefits of Being an Activist: Measuring Activism and Its Role in
Psychological Well-Being,” (abstract), accessed May 10, 2018, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2009.00724.x .
[4] The National
Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, “A Crucible Moment:
College Learning and Democracy’s Future” (Association of American Colleges and
Universities, 2012), accessed May 7, 2018, http://www.aacu.org/civiclearning/crucible .
[5] Robert D. Putnam,
“Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis”
(Keynote presented at the Campus Compact 30th Anniversary Meeting, Boston, MA,
2016, March 21).
[6] Peter Levine
and Eric Liu, “America’s Civic Renewal
Movement: A View from Organizational Leaders (Medford, MA: Tufts Report, Tufts University, 2015), 3.
[7] “Political
Polarization in the American Public,” Pew
Research Center, June 12, 2014, accessed on February 17, 2017, http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/, AND Herbert
McCloskey, “Political Participation,” International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2008, accessed December 27, 2017, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Political_Participation.aspx , AND “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 ,
AND 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), AND Arron
Smith, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba, and Henry Brady, “The Current State
of Civic Engagement in America,” Pew
Research Center, September 1, 2009, accessed on December 6, 2017, http://www.pewinternet.org/2009/09/01/the-current-state-of-civic-engagement-in-america/,
AND
Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The
Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon &
Schuster, 2000), AND “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] Charles C.
Euchner, Extraordinary Politics: How Protest and Dissent Are Changing American
Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview,
1996).
[9] Jeffrey A. Burr, Sae Hwang Han, and Jane L. Tavares,
“Volunteering and Cardiovascular Disease Risk:
Does Helping Others Get ‘Under the Skin?’” The
Gerontologist, April 15, 2015, accessed April 15, 2019, 937-947, 944, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/43c7/f901d13837320cbce6c8254bbcaad7070659.pdf . A summary of
the results are as follows: “formal
volunteering is beneficial for middle-aged adults, and to a lesser degree,
older adults. Further research is required to determine what factors may
mediate the volunteer–CVD risk relationships.”
Page 937.
[10] Frank J. Infurna, Morris A. Okun, and Kevin J. Grimm,
“Volunteering Is Associated with Risk of Cognitive Impairment,” Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
(Wiley Online Library), 64 (11), November 2016, accessed April 15, 2019, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jgs.14398 .
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