A SPECULATIVE WANDER

[Note:  This posting, the previous several 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 supporting that message needs updating.]

The last posting attempted to make a connection:  intuitively, there can be a causal relationship among several factors.  The factors are political knowledge, consistent political beliefs, political engagement, and civility.  This posting hopefully adds some evidence that while not proving these connections, add weight to their existence.  It wanders through these relationships.

The posting begins in a round about way by looking at the effectiveness of civics education in imparting knowledge, and encouraging certain beliefs, attitudes, and values that are related to civility.  A researcher who has addressed these concerns, in 2013, is Kathleen Hall Jamieson.[1]  A recent academic article reviews her research.  Jamieson’s article reports a certain inconsistency.  Overall, she agrees with the message this blog has expressed:  civics education is deficient (more on this below).

In addition to this judgement, though, she reports on some notable exceptions.  Jamison extends hope by citing these more successful efforts:

A randomized field experiment concluded that involvement “in Student Voices [a civics program] significantly boosted students’ confidence in their ability to make informed political decisions, their knowledge about how to register to vote, and their belief that their vote matters.”  Moreover, in a randomized controlled experiment, “participation in Facing History and Ourselves programs result[ed] in:  greater engagement in learning; increased skills for understanding and analyzing history; greater empathy and ethical awareness; increased civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions; and improved ability to recognize racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in themselves and in others; and reduced racist attitudes and self-reported fighting.”  Some civics programs, such as Kids Voting USA [another program], have been shown to create a trickle-up effect, not only increasing the knowledge level and civic dispositions of the young but enhancing their parents’ political knowledge as well.  Evidence also suggest that inclusion of civics education in a curriculum may correlate with a decrease dropout rate.[2]

It this type of instruction that would lead to what Robert Putnam has called social capital[3] among students and, eventually, the general population.

          But Jamieson goes further in her analysis.  She lists a set of consequences to what generally happens with current civics efforts.  They are:

1) neither the federal government nor the states have made high-quality civics education a priority; 2) social studies textbooks may not adequately convey the knowledge or facilitate the development of the skills required of an informed, engaged citizenry; 3) consequential differences in access and outcomes between upper- and lower-class students persist; 4) cutbacks in funding for schools make implementation of changes in any area of the curriculum difficult; and 5) the polarized political climate increases the likelihood that curricular changes will be cast as advancing a partisan agenda.[4]

She provides supportive literature of these conclusions.  This blog agrees as it has made ample comment, for example, on the state of civics textbooks – they are solely concerned with the structural elements of government and other related arrangements such as political parties.  Very little of the content deals with issues or problems and the obstacles that exist in devising, enacting, and implementing governmental policy to ameliorate or solve those issues.[5]

So, how does a lack of political knowledge, then, relate to social capital?  Using Robert Putnam's take on social capital, as it speaks to communal bonds and cooperative interactions, assuming one accepts the federalist value of cooperative political activities, a public-school curriculum should actively promote this quality.  One can state, social capital amounts to civic civility.  Two ways schools can do this is to impart political and governmental knowledge and to promote citizen participation in governmental affairs, especially at the local level.

On this front, a helpful contextual word or two is in order:  political engagement at the local level is important for two reasons.  The reasons are both practical – grass root action encourages effective strategies that lead to policy implementations[6] – and they are also effective as educating experiences.[7]   A federalist principle is to have as much local governance as is possible.  If done meaningfully and continuously, it ultimately heightens the quality of a democratic society. 

In turn, there are various reasons for this.  For one, an average individual has little chance of affecting politics at a national level.  He or she, though, can engage locally and have an impact.  However, there are enormous forces that act against this principle.  One, locals tend to be very parochial in their inclinations.  Not only are parochial concerns oftentimes anti-democratic, as in biases against minorities, but also hinder a citizen in seeing those developments that originate in other places as affecting local politics and economic conditions. 

Life has become more and more affected not only by national forces, but by global forces as well.  This is a challenge for those who promote local power, local action.  Yet, by getting involved, at the local level, in any national/global movement or effort, one can have meaningful input as to how that issue or problem is addressed.[8]  These issues can extend, for examples, from job lose to foreign, cheap labor to gun regulation to the opioid crisis.

Yes, the forces responsible for these issues can seem beyond anyone's reach.  One can easily feel justifiably overwhelmed.  This whole development undermines both local governance and the chances of increasing the social capital or civic civility of any citizenry.  But one can cite two conditions that still make local engagement a powerful political activity.

That is, while all of these nationalist and globalist trends are true, one can make the case that enough political realities are governed and generally handled by local politics, and that local access to government is still the foundation of our democratic project.  And when that is not the case, citizen action in national and international, organized efforts have proven to be successful – look at the effort to curtail smoking, especially in public places.[9]

What of the relationship between political engagement and political knowledge?  That is, engagement can be a motivator, a reason for holding political views and obtaining political knowledge in the first place.  It also assists if one has consistency in one’s thinking about politics.  Engagement demands reasonable and logically consistent views, knowledge, and opinions. 

This blog has reported a lack of engagement.  To cite another study along this line, in 2013, the Pew Research Center people conducted one that relies on an extensive telephone survey.  It found 48% of adults engaged in a civic group or activity in the preceding year.  They also found:

§  35% of American adults 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[10]

These numbers do not describe an actively engaged citizenry.  If one adds to these figures the percentage of registered voters that voted in any recent election as also cited often in this blog, the result is disappointing.

Given that non-participating citizens reflect a lack of concern over political matters, they tend to be less knowledgeable about politics and governmental policy.  Naturally, one can see these results reflect a less than successful civics education since these adults should have been encouraged in their civics classes to be active citizens.  This is not the case.

It is, therefore, no surprise that that segment of the populous that does not engage would express higher degrees of inconsistency in its political beliefs and opinions.  In addition, they have low levels of political knowledge and they tend to be inconsistent in their political thinking as earlier cited research in this blog indicates.

With these conditions as context, one can advance the claim that healthy levels of social capital are dependent on the amount of political knowledge citizens have and the levels of political engagement in which citizens are willing to participate.  Oh yes, and it helps one to contextualize the political and economic realities that are in fact before a nation at a given time when thinking of such factors.  They present a set of challenges that test how well one is disposed to treat others with civic civility; i.e., cooperative political action. 

To round off this connection, the next posting further addresses this relationship via the concept, social capital.

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[1] Kathleen H. Jamieson, “The Challenges Facing Civic Education.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring 2013, vol. 142, no. 2, 65-83.

[2] Ibid., 72-73.

[3] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2000).  Reminder:  social capital, as a societal quality, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[4] Kathleen H. Jamieson, “The Challenges Facing Civic Education.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 74-75.

[5] This blog has cited the largest selling American government textbook to make this point.  See Willian A. McClenaghan, Magruder’s American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition) (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2013).

[6] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).

[7] For example, Janet Eyler, “The Power of Experiential Education,” Association of American Colleges and Universities, n. d., accessed December 11, 2018, https://www.aacu.org/publications-research/periodicals/power-experiential-education .

[8] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Civic Engagement in a Digital Age,” Pew Research Center, April 4, 2013, accessed May 8, 2019, http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/04/25/civic-engagement-in-the-digital-age/ .