Dictionaries say a democracy is a rule-of-the-majority system of government that gives power to its citizens. One of the current threats to America’s democracy is that the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. In order for a democracy to work, we need an informed electorate that knows how to hold elected officials to account. This is how we get them to pay attention to what citizens want, not just what special-interest groups want.
Why Does America Need Actively Involved Citizens?
What does the American concept of democracy include?
- A respect for the equality, fundamental worth and dignity of all persons.
- A faith in majority rule and an insistence upon minority rights.
- An acceptance of the necessity of compromise.
- The right to vote.
People’s trust in their own government has declined
It’s not restricted to one party or another. It extends to all politicians, regardless of affiliation. According to a Pew Research Center study, when asked to describe US politics these days, eight out of ten Americans answered in the negative. The three words they used most frequently were divisive, corrupt, and messy.
The same study tells us that two out of three Americans believe a small group of people with selfish interests control the government, only 20% trust the government in Washington to do the right thing, and only 4% believe the political system is working well.
What are actively involved citizens?
An active citizenry is an indicator of a healthy democracy. Democracies need citizens who take action. Democracy needs informed and responsible citizens who are willing and able to take responsibility for themselves and their communities by contributing to the political process.
Active citizenship is learning how to handle responsibilities and obligations through involvement in civic issues. The concept of active citizenship involves education’s role in teaching young adults the knowledge, skills, and experience they need to become involved in a meaningful way.
Active citizens strengthen democracy by voicing opinions, campaigning, and voting in community, state, and national elections.
There are many programs that attempt to make active citizens out of students
All of them mean well, but one of the problems is much like the one people have with the different pay screens and buttons they encounter on the pumps at gas stations. There is no standardization, no best practices. Each approaches the problem its own way, resulting in a hodgepodge of designs all trying to achieve the same thing, but pulling in different directions, making things harder for users, not easier.
Voting is not just a privilege granted by citizenship – it’s our civic duty
Thomas Jefferson wrote that whenever things go wrong in government, well-informed people with high levels of civic literacy are the ones who can be relied upon to set things straight.
How can we raise our own levels of civic literacy?
- By understanding the importance of community, the basic principles of democracy, and how the government works.
- By gaining the knowledge and ability to participate in and create change in a community and a nation.
- By staying informed, examining evidence, using news and information intelligently, and developing critical thinking skills.
Using news and information intelligently begins with learning how to tell fact from fiction
The News Literacy Project identifies these things that people should know:
- News sources that don’t identify the author cannot be trusted.
- Stories with grammar and spelling errors cannot be trusted.
- Stories based upon a single source are less trustworthy than stories based on evidence collected from several independent sources.
- Stories that show only one point of view are less legitimate than those that tell all sides of the story and allow you to make up your own mind.
- Headlines are designed to catch your eye and are often exaggerated, embellished, and skewed. They convey excitement and a sense of urgency when there is none, and are often presented out of context. About half of Americans read only headlines, making them easy to lead astray.
Public education in the United States is failing
- Monsters are shooting and killing teachers and students with alarming frequency. We don’t have to be statisticians or even see the actual numbers to see at a glance that the number of shootings represented by the red circles has risen steeply, with the pandemic era the sole outlier.
- Americans who think there are more shootings now than ever before are right. There have been more school shootings in the U.S. in the last 14 years than in all the previous 109 years combined. From 1900 to 2009, there were 438 school shootings in the US. Since 2010, there have been 473.
- There is a shortage of teachers. In addition to the possibility of dying every day they come to work, the job comes with low pay and the high stress that comes from having to deal with students, parents, and administrators.
- School funding is inadequate. The lack of resources and support for teachers and students is striking. Last year the US government’s budget for the military was $1.1 trillion, 50 times greater than education’s budget of $208 billion.
- Distractions. Keeping a room full of children focused on the lessons has always been difficult because kids have short attention spans and are easily distracted. This was the case before kids had the whole wide world in their hands, but now it has become far worse. Educators say half of all public school and college students admit they pay more attention to what’s going on with their smartphones than they do to their teachers. Some active citizens are calling for schools to ban every interweb-enabled device from the classroom and the school.
- Math and reading scores have been declining for decades. Grade point averages (GPA) are up and aptitude test scores are down. These trends should be in sync, not headed in different directions.
Grade inflation is more destructive than most imagine and has enormous long-term repercussions
The GPA at Harvard University was 2.6 in 1950 and is 3.8 today. Yascha Mounk is a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he says it’s time to abolish college grades because grade inflation is so out of whack that across all four-year colleges in the US, the most commonly-awarded grade is an A. This sounds a lot like the Lake Woebegone Effect, where all the children are above average.
How did an A grade stop being a mark of excellence?
Today’s college students report they spend less than half as much studying as students did 60 years ago.
One problem is that those “A” students leave college with a false sense of achievement, thinking everything they do is excellent
When graduates join the labor force, many are shocked to find their sense of being intellectually superior is unfounded.
Employers say new college graduates can’t think
A well-crafted study surveyed two groups of people: employers and new hires. All of them were asked the same questions and responses could hardly be more different.
What do employers want new college graduates to be able to do?
- Think critically.
- Analyze problems and situations.
- Manage the information gathering process.
- Solve complex problems.
- Apply their knowledge to the real world.
- Communicate effectively verbally and in writing.
What characteristics do employers want in new college graduates?
- An awareness of diverse cultures.
- The ability to work well in teams with people from different backgrounds.
- They stay current on global developments.
- They always make ethical decisions.
You can find the detailed results in this letstakeacloserlook.com article from 2020: Employers Say New College Grads Can’t Think
Here are the broad strokes so you can get a sense of the situation without having to read the entire very revealing study.
- A majority of new graduates claim they already have the skills, abilities, qualities, and character traits employers want. Employers disagree, saying that only a small minority of new hires have the characteristics that the company needs.
- The percentage of employers who think newly graduated job candidates have these important attributes is less than half of what the grads claim for themselves.
The conclusion is that the kind of people employers need to hire to collect, manage, and use information arrive at the workplace woefully unprepared to do so
What makes matters even worse is that each of these attributes are essential to succeeding in today’s information age.
Service learning is actively changing the world for the better
The National Youth Leadership Council says service learning is a teaching and learning approach that makes learning real and relevant, fosters civic responsibility, and helps young people to feel connected. Service learning:
- Is learning through self-directed, hands-on, real-world experiences that empower students to be involved in their own learning, voice their own opinions, reach consensus, and care about their communities.
- Helps students develop higher-order thinking skills and deepen their understanding of the subject matter.
- Integrates service and learning experiences that benefit both the student and the community, such as raising funds for money to plant trees in your community, starting a school recycling program, collecting old eyeglasses for organizations that donate them to needy people, volunteering at a local animal shelter, cleaning up litter in parks and along roadsides, and helping register voters.
Bonus: The 30 Days of Service Challenge
We Are Teachers is an organization that provides inspiration and support for schools, teachers, and students. Their 30-day challenge is designed to help students feel good by doing good day after day for a full month.
Each activity can be completed in one day and when students complete the challenge, they can reflect on what they gained from this month-long experience. Teachers and anyone who wants to get started on serving their communities can download the 30 Days of Service Challenge here.
