A Presidential Commission?

Rick Shenkman (professor of history at George Mason University) and Alexander Heffner (director of Scoop Seminar, a civics and journalism education program) wrote in the St. Petersburg Times this week that the Obama administration should appoint a high level commission to confront the lack of knowledge about politics and government among many of Americans. The article points out that studies that show that only 20% of Americans know that the Senate has 100 members, and only 14% of young people Americans can find Iraq on a map.

This lack of knowledge among the average American either leads to absurdly low levels of civic engagement among the uninformed populations -- and then when there is civic engagement, it is not necessarily based on thought-out understanding of national policy priorities. I'll add that this was evident in the 2009-2010 debate over national health care, where many Americans truly believed that the President's legislation actually created "death panels" and thus protested the legislation on this basis.

Additionally troubling were the number of Americans preaching about the constitutionality of national health care without viable theories as to what constitutional principles were implicated in the legislation. The article takes the position that a Presidential Civics Commission would galvanize civic leaders and focus the public to the problem, thus improving civic engagement.

I agree that citizen engagement is a national issue worthy of Presidential attention. However, I worry that a Commission would do nothing more than study the problem and articulate what has already been articulated. I think a Commission could have value if it were tasked with advancing curriculum and policies in the school and community settings that engage kids and citizens in the democratic process. Perhaps the Commission could study what kinds of legislation and policies would make it easier for the average citizen to engage in the democratic process.