Young Americans know that the country is in trouble.
A December poll of 18-29-year-olds conducted by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government found that over half of young people believe that American democracy is under threat. But youth voter turnout rates remain stubbornly low, typically under 50%. And participation by African Americans and Hispanics is lower still.
But whether or not a young person is civically engaged is shaped long before they get the right to vote. And K-12 civics education has long been in decline, de-emphasized in favor of reading, math, and science. However, a newly-released report from Educating for American Democracy (EAD) and the Educational Testing Service (ETS) is shining a light on how K-12 civic learning can be promoted and monitored.
EAD and ETS use a holistic definition of civic learning that goes beyond what a student might learn in a high school government class. It includes the skills necessary to engage in the democratic process, such as critical thinking, research, and media literacy. And it encompasses the attitudes that underlie civic engagement, like a sense of duty, concern for others, and a feeling of agency.
The report argues that civic education need not be restricted to the social studies classroom. Many different classes, including English and math, can include civics-related material and promote civics skills like information literacy and perspective-taking. And thoughtfully run extra-curricular activities like student elections and service learning can foster civic participation as well. Shifts towards emphasizing civics in these ways are already occurring.
Dr. Laura Hamilton
“There’s growing availability of resources, curriculum, professional development, and so forth to promote civic learning, broadly defined,” said Dr. Laura Hamilton, associate vice president of ETS’s Research Centers and the author of the report. “But we don’t currently have a lot of resources to monitor it.”
