March 2007
Our public school system was originally created to produce good citizens. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson argued for a national school system because "a foundation [would be] laid for a government truly republican." Today, that foundation is shaky, with young people increasingly disengaged from the nation's political life.
In his recent book Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life (Princeton University Press, 2006), David E. Campbell shows what schools can do to strengthen that foundation. He finds that adolescents who attend schools which foster civic responsibility develop into engaged adults who vote. Civic responsibility, in turn, is rooted in an appreciation of America's shared civic culture. While today's public schools celebrate "diversity," Campbell argues that it is time to reemphasize what we have in common with each other.
How can schools promote a sense of civic responsibility? Can "schools of choice" provide models for fostering community? Campbell discussed this and what America's schools can do to strengthen the "foundation for a government truly republican" with former governor Bob Wise (D-W.Va.), president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at AEI, moderated this March 15th discussion at AEI.
Frederick M. Hess
AEI
There is widespread agreement that the lack of civic engagement in America is a problem. Voter turnout even in presidential elections is an ongoing concern, and masks far lower turnouts in other elections. Civic participation among American youth is particularly sparse. Only 36 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds voted in the 2000 presidential election. While turnout in 2004 was somewhat higher, at 47 percent, turnout among 18- to 24-year-olds has not reached 50 percent since 1972.
In Why We Vote, David Campbell confronts competing research on voter turnout and explains how both highly homogenous and highly heterogeneous communities yield the highest turnouts. Focusing specifically on the role of civic duty as a lasting determinant of whether an individual will be a lifelong voter, he argues that America's schools serve a particularly important role in fostering civic engagement.
After 9/11, we saw a temporarily renewed interest in civics education. This surge of enthusiasm was short-lived. This past September, the National Conference on Citizenship reported that "9/11 does not appear to have triggered a broader civic transformation." The report warned, "While there are some signs of civic recovery in the last few years, our civic health shows steep declines over the last thirty years."
David E. Campbell
University of Notre Dame
Political science studies show that there are high levels of turnout where elections are competitive. People turn out to vote because they have interests that they want to advance or defend. Turnout also tends to be high in the most homogenous places, as people vote because they believe it is their responsibility and duty. People vote either for political motivations or for civic motivations.
What shapes an individual's sense of civic duty is the community in which they spent their adolescence. In particular, schools as communities can teach what it means to be good and active citizens. Schools have the capacity to bring together a heterogeneous population of young people with different backgrounds, perspectives and vocational ambitions to instruct in common lessons and values.
Political scientists have addressed many factors that motivate people to vote, such as whether an individual is educated, married, or raised by politically engaged parents. But research has rarely addressed the importance of the high school civic climate.
High school civic climate can predict whether one will vote fifteen years after high school graduation, but it does not have that effect only seven years after graduation. What happened to someone when young has the greatest influence when he or she has settled down in life. In other words, we have a "sleeper effect."
In order to enhance their civic climate, schools must establish a culture in which teachers encourage civic engagement. We can learn a lot about how to build an ethos of community responsibility from observing Catholic schools.
William A. Galston
Brookings Institution
There are signs of renewed civic interest and activism among youth: participation by young people rose from 36 percents to 47 percent between 2000 and 2004. Campbell's book articulates the diminished sense of civic "duty" among youth. A 2002 study of young adults by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement supports these findings, with only 9 percent of respondents identifying voting as a duty.
Campbell presents a dichotomous voting model in which we can regard voting as either duty-based or interest-based. But there are other important factors. First, we have the expressive function or value of voting; one votes because he wants to identify himself with something he values. Second, we have an expanded conception or understanding of benefit that affects voting. Voters are guided by their conception of the prospects of the country and not just their own situation.
Campbell argues that there are many positive civic consequences that flow from homogeneity as opposed to diversity. Homogeneity tends to produce things like trust, order and discipline, duty, civic engagement, and increased participation by more moderate and less zealous partisans. But we are a far more diverse society than we were forty years ago, so there is a tension between homogeneity and a liberal immigration policy. We have seen a flight towards homogeneity; we have much more sorting by income, by age, by marital status, and by communities of affinity than we did thirty or forty years ago.
We now live in a country where citizens have lots of choices but almost no mandatory duties. Young people exhibit the virtue that most closely corresponds to heterogeneity: very low levels of interpersonal trust and very high levels of tolerance. The challenge that Campbell poses is in rebuilding a normative community: neighborhoods and schools that mutually reinforce and promote the internalization of some core civic norms. In modern America, this cannot be done on the basis of ethnicity or religion. It can only be done on the basis of a new common civic culture. Shared experiences of mutual responsibility and obligation are particularly important for the moral formation of adolescents and young adults.
The Honorable Bob Wise
Alliance for Excellent Education
We should recognize that the first law of politics is voter turnout. Turnout is in direct proportion to the age of the voters. About 18 percent of eighteen-year-olds will vote. Eighty percent of eighty-year-olds will vote. Voter turnout is much lower among youth than it should be. Voting is particularly important as an act because it encourages further civic participation. People are led into activities incrementally, so the act of voting can begin a process leading toward greater civil involvement.
The second law of politics is that every important decision will ultimately be made by an elected official. The public's priorities are set through the budget. People must be informed about the candidates and issues.
We need civic education reform as part of high school reform generally, to better integrate learning into practice and real activities. It will take ingenuity and hard work, but we can find a way to integrate civic involvement into the overall education process. If we can better engage students, achievement will rise and dropout rates will decrease. We need to integrate civic education and multiple assessments into our educational system.
AEI research assistant Rosemary Kendrick prepared this summary.
