Mind the civic empowerment gap: Economically elite students and critical civic education

Abstract

Calls to close the civic empowerment gap have traditionally focused on improving and expanding civic education for students in high-poverty urban schools. While important, this recommendation implies that closing the gap is in and of itself a sufficient end and that the civic education of affluent youth is unproblematic. This paper calls for (1) an explicit aim for the gap to close in a way that moves US society towards radical democratic egalitarianism, and (2) a response to the gap that includes consideration of the civic education of affluent students. It suggests that an “activist ally” approach rooted in emancipatory social science, political compassion, affective motivations, and empathic listening may be a useful framework for a critical civic education curriculum with economically elite youth. It concludes with an example from an affluent private school to highlight the affordances and limitations of this framework.

Keywords:

• affluent students
• civic education
• civic empowerment gap
• elite education
• privilege
• social class

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the editors of Curriculum Inquiry and the reviewers of this paper whose comments and suggestions made this paper considerably stronger. I would also like to thank Quentin Wheeler-Bell and Isaac Gottesman for their invaluable feedback from the conception of this paper to its final edits. Their critical friendship keeps me on my toes and I am better for it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For research related to increasing rates of youth involvement, see Lopez et al. (2006), Marcelo, Lopez, and Kirby (2007), and Sander and Putnam (2010). For work describing historical examples of powerful civic engagement through social movements aimed at challenging the status quo, see Arditi (2009), Curl (2009), Harris, Sinclair-Chapman, and McKenzie (2005), Montgomery (1993), Piven and Cloward (1977), Schudson (1998), Skocpol, Ganz, and Munson (2000), and Zinn (2003).

2. The gap between White people and people of color appears to be shrinking, especially among young people. According to the US Census Bureau, Blacks accounted for a larger percentage of votes cast than their share of the eligible electorate for the first time in 2012 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2013). For more details about these trends, see Abu El-Haj (2008), Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE (2003), File (2013), Lijphart (1997), Lopez et al. (2006), Alex-Assensoh (1997), National Conference on Citizenship (2008), Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry (1996), Rubin (2007), Uslaner and Conley (2003), and Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995).

3. The 2010 NAEP report shows that the racial gap is shrinking among 4th graders, but remains steady for 8th and 12th graders. Though all scores for students across income levels have mostly increased, the gap among them remains the same. For more information about the civic knowledge gap, see Baldi, Perie, Skidmore, Greenberg, and Hahn (2001), Delli Carpini and Keeter (1997), Lutkus, Weiss, Campbell, Mazzeo, and Lazer (1999), U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, and National Assessment of Educational Progress (2010), The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2007, 2010), and Torney-Purta, Barber, and Wilkenfeld (2007).

4. See Charles Tilly (1998) for an examination of the mechanisms that result in what he calls “durable inequality.”

5. Gilens and Page (2014) defined elites as in the top 10% of the income bracket. Their research focuses not on race or other “configurations of dominance” (p. 9) but on economic status solely.

6. Their analysis focused on what the authors call the “first face” of power (p. 22) – the ability of actors to shape policy outcomes on contested issues – rather than the ability to shape the agenda of what issues get considered or the ability to shape the public's preferences at a more fundamental level. These analyses were impossible given their data set, but are important to consider. It is possible that the mobilization of “ordinary citizens” has more influence in those other arenas. For example, Avery and Peffley (2005) found that low-income voter mobilization impacted policies consistent with their interests, but that state voter registration laws pose a substantial barrier to such mobilization.

7. For general examples of this, see Hobson (2003). For school-based examples of this, see Apple and Beane (2008) and Schultz (2008).

8. It is worth noting that not all elite students experience this education in the same way. Race, sexual identity, and gender are important mediating influences in how elite status is produced and expressed (Allan & Charles, 2014; Fahey, 2014; Khan, 2011)

9. Similarly, Curry-Stevens (2007) identifies five domains necessary for the transformation of privileged students: spiritual changes in which a student moves from an individual orientation to an interdependent connection; ideological changes in which students understand power relations and the importance of collective action; psychological changes that call for sensitive educators to facilitate reflective discussions that border on counseling; behavioral changes that come about with structured time for practicing social action; and, intellectual or cognitive changes that form a new sense of social responsibility.

10. For more on the distinction between affect and emotion, see Zembylas (2006).

11. In educational circles, the term “ally” has been used primarily in teacher education with reference to anti-racist White teachers and in the student affairs literature in reference to heterosexuals advocating for LGBTQ rights (Agosto, 2010).

12. For a full account of this study, see Swalwell (2013a). The name of the school is a pseudonym.

Additional information

Funding

The Avril S. Barr Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison provided support for the first stages of this project's data collection and analysis.

Notes on contributors

Katy Swalwell

Katy Swalwell is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Iowa State University. She studies the intersections of social studies education with social justice education, educational policy, curriculum design, and teacher professional development. She is also Co-Chair of the Critical Education for Social Justice Special Interest Group in the American Educational Research Association.