According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for people between ages 16-19 was 18 percent in January, 2008. I’m looking at a table that goes back to 1998, and this is the highest rate shown. (It was 13.9 percent in January 1998). For ages 25 and older, the unemployment rate was 3.8 percent in January, and that’s below where it was for most of 2001-5. In other words, the current weak employment market is mainly a problem for our youth.

Why don’t we hear more about this on the campaign trail? Although “young people” are now voting, young voters are mostly (79%) college students or people with some college experience. The other half of young people–those with no college experience–are not part of the campaign. Therefore, we hear some talk about the cost of college and some discussion (albeit not enough) about issues that especially concern idealistic college students, such as climate change. But there is silence about the serious plight of working-class youth.

If you run a speaker series, edit an editorial page, produce a broadcast show, or manage a journal, you give numerous people opportunities to express their views, but you also exclude many potential guests. Attracting a diversity of speakers or writers is usually desirable, although the appropriate range varies depending on the circumstances. For example, an environmental round table seems to need a narrower range of speakers than the op-ed page of a major metropolitan newspaper, which would be “unbalanced” unless some of the contributors were critics of environmentalism.

Choosing a list of contributors is hard. If balance is a criterion, around what center point should the list be balanced? If diversity is desirable, what kind? And what views are beyond the pale? Does President Ahmadinejad belong at Columbia? Does William Kristol strengthen or weaken the New York Times editorial page? Does an environmental series need critics of the greenhouse gas theory? Does a biology series need creationists?

For what it’s worth, I would propose these principles:

1. Never give a voice to someone you believe is flatly wrong. That’s patronizing, and it renounces your own judgment. If you have been chosen to make decisions of quality, you shouldn’t decide against your own assessments in the interest of balance. But …

2. Make sure that your definition of wrong isn’t too broad. I am a critic of libertarianism and of Marxism. Both views, I believe, dismiss the potential for beneficial collective action within a system like ours. But certainly neither view is stupid. On the contrary, I do my best thinking when I have to grapple with strongly argued libertarian or Marxist ideas. Thus, if I were running a series, I would bend over backward to have those two perspectives well and skilfully represented.

(Cambridge, MA) I have spent the last two days reviewing, editing, and occasionally creating test items for the National Assessment in Education Progress (NAEP) in Civics, which will be given to a large and representative sample of American students next year. The NAEP is an evaluation of our school systems, not of our kids–no scores are calculated for individual students. I am on the NAEP’s “background variables” committee (which choses demographic measures) as well as its Civics committee. Producing questions for a civics test raises all kinds of interesting issues: moral, methodological, statistical, developmental, factual, political, and practical. However, I am somewhat constrained by test secrecy–and very mentally tired–so I’m not going to be able to comment tonight.

About one in four college students and young college graduates have been voting in the 2008 primary season. But only about half of young Americans attend college. For those with no college experience, the voter turnout rate has been about one in fourteen this year. One important reason is unequal civic education. The activities in school that help people to participate are basically reserved for our more successful students.

These are results of major new CIRCLE studies released today. You can read our fact sheet on primary turnout (pdf), download an important new working paper by Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh (pdf), read the AP article based on our study, or listen to Audie Cornish’s story an “All Things Considered” that quotes me and uses our data–but more importantly, captures the voices of non-college youth.

(On an airplane over Ohio) Let’s assume that you want to increase the quantity, equality, impact, and quality of political participation. Which institutions would give you the most leverage? Put another way, by reforming or enlisting which of the following institutions would you have the most impact?