By Todd Clark

Back to Ask the Expert: Todd Clark

In 2002, a distinguished group of the nation's most respected educational scholars and practitioners gathered in Washington, D.C. to discuss the fact that increasing numbers of Americans are disengaging from civic and political activity.

Representing diverse political views, disciplines, and approaches, these educators shared a common vision of a richer, more comprehensive approach to civic education in the United States. The Carnegie Corporation’s Civic Mission of Schools (CMS) report is a powerful statement of that vision.

To expedite their vision, participants set about to identify goals, approaches, and recommendations to support civic-engagement principles. Adopting the premise that the overall goal of civic education should be to help young people gain and apply citizenship skills, knowledge, and attitudes. CMS also found that competent and responsible citizens:

• Are informed and thoughtful. They appreciate history and American democratic processes, understand community issues, think critically, understand diverse perspectives, and more.
• Participate in their communities.
• Act politically. They have the skills, knowledge, and commitment to address social issues, speak in public, influence public policy, and more.
• Have moral and civic virtues. They are concerned for the rights and welfare of others, are socially responsible, strike a balance between self-interest and the common good, and more.

CMS also recognizes that civic engagement can be especially difficult for young people who lack resources and are often discouraged from participating. Thus an essential goal of civic engagement is to provide skills, knowledge, and encouragement for all students. Research shows that schools can help develop responsible citizenship when they:

• Provide formal instruction in government, history, law, and democracy. This in itself increases civic knowledge, but schools should avoid teaching only rote facts and dry procedures, which are unlikely to benefit students and may actually alienate them from political participation.
• Incorporate discussion of current local, national, and international issues and events into the classroom, particularly those that young people view as important to their lives. This practice increases civic knowledge and interest in politics, improves critical thinking and communication skills, and translates into more interest in discussing public affairs outside of school. Discussions should be well moderated to encourage a variety of viewpoints.
• Give students the opportunity to apply what they learn through community service linked to the formal curriculum and classroom instruction. While service programs are now common in many schools, ones able to develop engaged citizens are those that are linked to what students are studying, consciously pursue civic outcomes, and allow students to engage in meaningful work on serious public issues consistent with laws that require schools to be nonpartisan.
• Offer extracurricular activities that involve students in their schools and communities. Long-term studies show that students who participate in such activities in high school remain more civically engaged, even decades later, than students who do not.
• Encourage student participation in school governance. Studies show that student participation in the management of their own classroom and schools builds their civic skills and attitudes. Encourage student participation in simulations of democratic processes and procedures. Recent evidence indicates that simulations of voting, trials, legislative processes, and diplomacy in schools can lead to heightened political knowledge and interest.

Service-Learning as a Promising Practice

Of particular relevance to AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America practitioners is the potential for service-learning as a vehicle for promoting civic engagement. According to the CMS report, “service-learning programs that are most effective for civic education are known to be ones that:

• Encourage teachers and administrators to use them as a way to consciously pursue civic outcomes and not merely to seek improved academic performance or higher self-esteem.
• Allow students to engage in meaningful work on serious public issues, with a chance of seeing positive results within a reasonable time.
• Give students a role in choosing and designing their projects and strategies.
• Provide students with opportunities to reflect on the service work.
• Link service with academic lessons and the broader curriculum.
• Allow students—especially older students—to pursue political responses to problems (for example, contacting local officials), consistent with laws that require public schools to be nonpartisan.
• Help teachers to address potentially negative attitudes that can arise in service projects, such as sense of superiority over those served.
• See this approach as part of a broader philosophy toward education, not just a program that is adopted for a finite period in a particular course.” (CMS, page 26).

These recommendations parallel the definition of service-learning provided by the National Service Trust Act of 1993. This act identified the following five elements of service-learning:

• Students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service that is conducted in and meets the needs of a community.
• The service is done in connection with an elementary school, a secondary school, institutions of higher education, or community service programs, and the community.
• The service helps foster civic responsibility.
• The service is integrated into and enhances the curriculum of the students.
• Time is set aside for students to reflect on the service.

Reflecting this definition and the research concerning service-learning and its relationship to civic-engagement, a recent report from the California Department of Education entitled “Linking Service and Civics through Service-Learning” concluded, “that not all service can be directly tied to creating a better civil system . . . not all service is civic service.” The report encourages practitioners to create service-learning experiences appropriate for various age levels that include research, collaboration, and policy formation as the best approach to develop civic capacities (Granicher 2003).

Active Citizenship Today

One recommended method for developing civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions in youth is through utilizing the Active Citizenship Today (ACT) model. Developed by Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) in conjunction with Close Up Foundation, this service-learning program is designed to promote civic responsibility by teaching young people how to effectively participate in a democracy. ACT does this by linking an in-depth study of civics with active community involvement and service. Through their participation in ACT, students:

• Learn about the people, processes, and the institutions most effective in improving community conditions.
• Develop skills necessary to participate in policy making.
• Foster attitudes about the value of lifelong service for the common good.

These approaches attempt to teach civic responsibility by forging strong links between classroom work, community service, and civic education.

Specifically young people in ACT go through five units of study and service-learning. First, students examine their community’s resources and problems. Second, students choose a community problem they want to focus on. Third, students learn about policy, policymaking, and how policy affects their problem. Finally, students take action—they apply what they have learned in previous units to design and implement a service-learning project.

One example of such an outcome is a group of youth in Jefferson County, Colorado, who discovered that a busy residential street posed hazards because it didn’t have street lights. A survey showed that residents agreed on the need for improved lighting. Research at city hall revealed that the county did not have enough money to install them. Students then persuaded a local contractor to put up half the money, got a vote of approval from the county government, then went door-to-door raising the other half of the money required to install the lights.

A similar approach for high school students in U.S. government classes is called CityWorks. An evaluation of this program found that CityWorks:

• Promoted greater commitment to participatory citizenship, justice-oriented citizenship, and interest in service than non-CityWorks classes.
• Provided opportunities for students to “learn about aspects of society that need changing” and opportunities to “work on issues that matter to students,” which had broad positive impact on students’ sense of their capacities and commitments.

The evaluation data also revealed that students who participated in CityWorks classes showed more interest in participating in civic life. The complete CityWorks Evaluation Summary can be found on the Constitutional Rights Foundation website at www.crf-usa.org.

The emerging research on these and other civic-based service-learning programs should be useful to practitioners working with youth in out-of-school settings as well. Through the application of these principles and best practices, one can effectively enhance service activities and improve civic outcomes.