Educating for Democracy: Reflections From a Work in Progress

Abstract

Why are Americans, and young Americans in particular, so turned off to government and politics? And, what can be done to arrest these trends? In this article, I suggest that three primary, and mutually reinforcing, trends, which can be summed up as the “relevance factor,” the “negativity factor,” and the “triumphant market factor,” have conspired to preempt any interest in government and politics on the part of young people. Consequently, these young people do not develop the skills and knowledge that democratic participation requires nor do they see a need to do so. As educators, however, we have a unique opportunity to address these barriers and, thus, to help repair a key aspect of our democratic fabric—the willingness and ability of citizens to participate in the well-being of the society and its political institutions and processes. This article presents a case study of such an effort at Temple University, a large public institution with a diverse student body located in the heart of Philadelphia.

Keywords:

• democracy
• experiential learning
• political engagement

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleague Robin Kolodny for persuading me to undertake such a course many years ago. A special thanks to Bernie Mennis for his constructive feedback on an earlier version and to the two anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful comments. Most of all, I want to thank the students who have been part of this ongoing effort for their creativity, commitment, passion, and constructive feedback. I only hope that they have benefitted as much as I have from this course.

Notes

*While each cause is powerful in its own right, the three typically interact creating an even greater impact on the behavior and disposition of young people.

In the 1992 presidential election, turnout for the 18- to 24-year-old cohort increased by 9 percentage points from 1988 presidential election (49% and 40%, respectively). A similar spike occurred in the 2004 presidential election when the turnout for this cohort increased by 11 percentage points over the 2000 turnout (47% and 36%, respectively) (Lopez and Donovan 2005). In the 2008 election, turnout for this cohort was 48.5% and then plummeted to 22.84% in the 2010 midterm elections (US census.gov 2010). Although midterm elections traditionally experience voter declines, the 2010 figures for this age cohort were lower than the 2006 midterm election figure of 23.5% (www.civicyouth.org, CIRCLE Fact Sheet 2008). These figures suggest that the “Obama factor” in 2008 was indeed short lived.

The source from which these numbers are taken—Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) report—notes that there are different ways of calculating actual turnout. However, regardless of the method, the overall trend of decline remains. The different methods yield decline patterns of 13 percentage points to 18 percentage points in the 1972 through 2000 presidential election period (Lopez and Donovan 2005).

Civic competence is a composite of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions deemed “critical for the responsibilities of citizenship in America's constitutional democracy.” P2 The Nation's Report Card: Civics 2006. National Center For Education Statistics. US Department of Education NCES 2007–476.

Cited in Gibson (2001).

The New Millennium Project (2000). www.nass.org.

While it is true that the Obama administration did succeed in passing financial regulation, it was an extremely watered down version of what was initially sought.

The banking system was Freire's (2001) metaphor while the “cold storage system” was Dewey's (1938) metaphor.

Of course, there are institutional and practical limits to how democratic the classroom can be so the goal is really to strive for as much democracy as is possible and to collectively discuss the limits to complete democracy and what that term even means in practice.

UCCP staff, who supervise the interns from the class, and I do postsemester debriefs identifying what worked, what did not, and how we can improve the course, especially the fieldwork component, the next time.

The issues most commonly pursued by UCCP participants relate to criminal justice, education, and stereotyping. Moreover, we have increasingly incorporated media into our programs, with youth using film, magazines, and Web productions as tools for youth voice.

It was not bureaucratically feasible to admit only students who worked for the UCCP to the course.

Students had to write a 2- to 3-page reaction paper for each of the readings. They were asked to discuss the central argument(s), how it fit with their own experience/knowledge and to provide examples, and to identify actions that could be taken to address the problems raised in the reading.

Two very resourceful Web sites for media literacy activities are the Center for Media Literacy (www.medialit.org) and Media Education Foundation (www.mediaed.org) among others.

Although there are a variety of power analyses, the one developed and used by The People's Institute For Survival and Beyond was the most relevant and engaging for purposes of this class. See http://www.pisab.org/.

While I believe that I do this in all my courses, I make a much more conscious effort to do so in this class.

See for example, Battistoni (2002), Billig (2000), Dewey (1916), Stanton, Giles, and Cruz (1999).

That is, we did not ask students questions that would get at how democratic or empowering they believed the course was.

Most instructors still rely on the lecture format, and a trend that will no doubt increase as Temple University and other universities move to larger and larger classes to accommodate, on the cheap, burgeoning enrollments.

Ira Shor (1992) discusses at some length similar difficulties that he has encountered with undergraduate students when he tries to “democratize” the class room.

Feedback consisted of midsemester written comments on the field component, end-of-semester in-class discussion guided by written questions, and standard final course evaluation required by the university. These formal mechanisms were supplemented by informal conversations with students.

More students have expressed interest in participating in the Leadership Development Institute (LDI) and the Leaders Corps but scheduling difficulties prevented them from doing so. Additionally, many students were graduating seniors, some of whom said they wished they had taken the course earlier in their education at Temple so that they could have become part of the UCCP.