In my day job, I am the Program Director of a non-profit organization that is committed to increasing youth civic engagement. In particular, our goal is to encourage young people ages 18 to 25 to vote in every election. I've been on the job for 10 years and have worked with a number of inspiring students and teachers throughout the years.
What I haven't done is blogged about it much. My program is deeply committed to providing "partisan neutral" activities where the participants can explore a wide variety of ideas and engage their own points of view with those of their peers. This past Friday, I sponsored a discussion forum for students from eight different high schools in the San Gabriel Valley. I have been sponsoring discussion forums for these students throughout the year, forums where I bring in three to four speakers who discuss a topical political issue from a variety of perspectives. This forum was different from those. At this forums, student representatives from each of the high schools were themselves the experts as they discussed a number of political topics. These topics ranged from the elimination of the penny to whether or not we should support legislation like the DREAM Act.
One of my favorite moments was when a student panel was discussing whether it was more beneficial to go to an Ivy league college or to a UC. The student did a chi-square analysis to support the arguments of his position.
All the topics were selected by the students themselves, and they did all of the research. They even arranged for the location and negotiated the food that was to be provided. The students coordinating the activity used what they had learned from watching my plan other events throughout the year in order to plan this one in entirety. Okay...their faculty advisors and I arranged for transportation to the event, but that was it.
The event was a great success. All of the student presenters were well prepared, and the students in the audience asked incisive questions.
The event ended with a trivia contest where those who the audience found most persuasive had to opportunity to compete for the allocation of additional seats on our annual Sacramento trip. Each year I take 150 high school students to California's capitol where they meet with legislators, their staffs, and experience a couple of lectures throughout the 3 day trip.
During the trivia question, I noticed how much these students knew about a great many things, but I also noticed that I had not been sharing with them enough academic research regarding the concept of citizenship and the act of voting. There is an abundance of research in this area, and I would love to get the feedback of those students and acquaintances on the internet. To that end, I will be blogging here about once a week regarding a topic related to the concept of citizenship or the act of voting. These posts will be rigidly non-partisan. That is to say that I will freely offer discussions of scholarship in the area, but that when presenting information regarding current elections and political parties my information will stick to "just the facts" as much as I am able.
For example, when discussing the current crop of Republican candidates I will not offer opinions regarding their policy positions. I will, however, present polling data that demonstrates whether or not their policy positions seem to be positively or negatively associated with support from the young voting demographic. I might highlight the data collected by the The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement which discusses the background of young voters in Michigan in 2008.
This isn't to say that I won't bring up some controversial posts, it is just to say that the opinions contained within quotes within the posts should be attributed to those making the statement and not to me. My only concern is whether I find the topic discussed interesting and worthy of soliciting observations from the students I work with and/or academic acquaintances on the internet.
My desire is to make this as much a learning experience for myself as it will be a tool for those students who choose to participate in the conversation.
