I have posited that one’s adult civic engagement or lack thereof can often be stemmed from the extent to which one has perceived engagement while in one’s youth. In December 2009, I commented on a lecture provided by Judge Souter in which he discussed his own exposure to civic engagement by watching the activities of the local town council. Judge Souter suggested how that youthful exposure shaped his adult understanding of the political and legal process.
If I were teaching a semester-long college course on civic and legal engagement, I think I would start by asking my students to write a mini autobiography of at least four life experiences which shape his or her perspective on citizenship and social action. I suspect that self-reflection would cause students to consider whether their perspective on politics and social involvement, whether it be idealistic, optimistic, pessimistic, disinterested, or completely hopeless.
A fuller understanding on this front would shape educator’s understanding of how to make civics education more meaningful for its students. It would also impact the manner in which social engagement is conducted. In an effort to demonstrate what I have in mind, I have chosen to provide an example of what I am calling a citizenship autobiography by providing my own as if I were responding to this question.
My civic engagement story:
In thinking about my earliest memories of thinking about citizenship, I should admit that I may have been that oddball that was fascinated by the political process as early as I can remember. In seventh grade (1987-88), I took the standard middle school introductory course in civics. I was immediately fascinated by Continental Congress’ 1776 decision to separate from England and the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
There was something amazing to me about people gathering to envision how to organize society towards its betterment. I read about the debates and developed clear images in my mind of a room of adults in serious and respectful discourse about various methods of governance.
Frankly, I think this is when I first developed an admiration for democracy, envisioning that all informed adults were capable of collaborating to address communal problems. This idea was reinforced repeatedly for me by my vcr, as I was mesmerized by the movie musical “1776”, which has been a favorite of mine since.
That idealism in the classroom was reinforced to some extent in my synagogue involvement. Even at that age, I was attentive to member discussions about my synagogue’s structure, collective decision-making, and future. I didn’t attend board meetings but I overheard discussions about them and I found it fascinating that a small number of individuals would take responsibility to put effort into shaping the religious and communal experiences for another hundred petitioners.
My interest in civics, however, must have predated that seventh grade class to some extent because I have very specific memories of reading Gandhi and thinking about King in that year of my life—and I would presume that my interest in Gandhi and King and society as a whole was not spontaneous, but grew out of some experience I cannot recall.(I am certain that I was influenced by Gandhi and King in 7th grade because my views of Gandhi and King shaped how I responded to a particular bully I confronted that year. Thus, I must have thought about Gandhi and King either that year or earlier.)
In fact, I remember watching a televised debate between Mayor Harold Washington and Donald Haider and surprising myself by being very impressed by the Republican Donald Haider. The election for which that debate was held occurred on April 7, 1987. At that early age, I was very aware that supporting Donald Haider meant not supporting an historic and well-respected Democrat even though I lived in a Democratic town and grew up in a Democratic family. I also remember being asked to consider the favorable effect Mayor Washington had or was brining to race relations—so I was aware of segregation in Chicago and was aware that there was a role of a mayor in addressing these issues. Unfortunately, I have no memory of why I supported Haider, or why race relations would have been affected by who occupied the position of Mayor.
These memories have two things in common, similar to the stories of Justice Souter. I was not intimately involved in the political process itself, and in fact had no effect on it, yet I knew it impacted me and perhaps was fascinated for that reason. Alternatively put, and perhaps stated in an overly sophisticated way, I appreciated that the democratic process often involved individuals thinking about the greater good, the interest of the larger community not whether one fully thinks through how it impacts one’s own self.
Personal involvement began, in some manner, in the following year. In the 1988 Presidential election, I watched the debates, watched CSPAN’s coverage of the Democratic, Republican and Libertarian conventions. I also remember that the Democratic primaries featured two candidates from my then-home-state, namely Jesse Jackson and Paul Simon, along with another Midwesterner, Richard Gephart. I don’t remember if I had a favorite candidate, although I ultimately felt strongly in favor of the Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, over the eventual victor, President George Bush. During the general election of that year, my school had a mock election on or about Election Day, and I wrote the summary of the results for the school paper.
part of a mock electorate had meaning for me, as it meant that my voice was being heard, even if not counted. Writing about it for the school newspaper meant that we were preserving history—even if the historical evidence of that paper may now be limited to my memory. I remember that Bush won our school’s election by a margin that was not far off from the national margin.
That election season also featured discussion of some sort. I specifically recall a school retreat to Lorado Taft in early November (either right before or right after the election) where there was spirited debate about the two general election candidates, Bush and Dukakis. As an aside, I should add that our school was a voting place, and thus we had no access to our gym on that day. We also had to be quieter during lunch so we did not disturb the voters.
All of this made the political process real, making us appreciate that upon the age of maturity, we too would participate in the democratic process, at least to decide our country’s leaders. High school involvement was much more direct in several ways.
Ultimately, I turned 18 during November of my senior year of high school, although not until several weeks following President Clinton’s election—and this was highly disappointing for me. However, during high school, my political involvement included participation in our school’s delegation to the YMCA’s Illinois State Youth and Government, where I served as a mock lobbyist for the ACLU in my sophomore year of high school and as a legislator my junior year. In the year I was a mock lobbyist, I won “lobbyist of the year” for my thorough efforts to get attention and engage in discussion with anyone I could find. I even wrote a newsletter to hand out in Springfield (the statewide legislative session that culminated the seven month program) to assure that everyone I could find knew my views on issues facing those in the mock legislature. (Sadly, I no longer have copies of this newsletter.)
For the first time, I felt like I was really getting political experience, as I sat and spoke for some time here and there with individuals who saw the world differently than I did. Although the State Youth and Government process was so truncated, I developed an appreciation of the political process. To me, it became instantaneously clear that the difference between liberals and conservatives was not in contrary ideals, but in different experiences in the value of the governing process, primarily stemming from different types of interaction with government. I also developed the notion that urbanites would always be a little more interested in an involved government (as they required government to manage the number of people living in close proximity, including in adjoining properties) whereas those in rural areas would be a little less interested (as they saw themselves as more independent from their neighbors, and in fact often had property that was a not dependent on a neighbor’s property for survival.
These shaped my view that Aristotle was right when he said man was a political animal. Thus, I started to see human experience not merely in terms of my own experience but in terms of the idea of a society as a whole. Subsequent high school experiences that reflect this include (1) participation in clean-ups, soup kitchens, and Habitat for Humanity; (2) participation in a student walk-out to protest the continued employment of a supposedly racist teacher; (3) conduct of a survey of race relations in the high school; (4) attendance at mayoral candidate forums during a local election, being both the youngest attendee at both forums, being both the only Caucasian at the forum for the Democratic candidate and the only Democrat at the forum for the Republican candidate.
All of these events make politics and social involvement very real for me. They allow me to experience democracy in a very serious way. I cherish these memories and I suspect that many people highly engaged in the political or legal process would have similar memories they cherish. A good reader would likely see similarities in the nature of the stories presented by those who are politically active or active in advocacy.
It would then be important to review these stories, along with those stories of those choosing to be inactive or apathetic to the political and policy world, and contrast those who chose activism with those choosing inactivism to understand best what inspires people to engage and what dis-inspires people.
I write this paragraph because I believe that many activists believe that they can engage “the masses” without first addressing why some people feel dis-engaged from the process and helpless when it comes to affecting social issues. Alternatively put, why do some people feel like they could conceivably change the world if they organize correctly and others feel that the democratic institutions are a ruse and they are helpless to alter the system?
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