We are deep in the Institute of Civic Studies, talking about challenging theorists like Bent Flyvbjerg, Jürgen Habermas, and John Dewey. My notes on those thinkers are at the links. Meanwhile, friends in the actual civic renewal movement are sending their news. For instance:

• Alison Fine presents a perceptive analysis of the “The Social Network Behind Wendy Davis,” showing how online activism and “on land” activism came together.
• Students from the Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) testified at the White House on how they got “student input” included in “official teacher evaluations” in Boston. That required their engagement and it will engage thousands of other students.
• The National Institute for Civic Discourse “has been leading a team of deliberative democracy groups from around the country to promote President Barack Obama’s National Dialogue on Mental Health.” See this map for where dialogues are occurring; and you can organize your own.
• In “Civic Learning through Action: The Case of Generation Citizen,” we (CIRCLE staff) describe the theory of change of Generation Citizen. GC works with middle and high schools in diverse communities by offering a curriculum, coaching, and support for “action civics.” GC has also received a large grant from the Knight Foundation to expand, and we will be evaluating.

The recent increase in student loan rates is a significant injustice for people who hold student loans. But the politics of this issue is often presented misleadingly. It is treated as a generational question, much as a decrease in Social Security benefits would be a threat to seniors. There are two problems with that analysis: (1) most young people are not conventional college students or college graduates, and (2) many college students are not young.

The National Journal’s Elahe Izadi has a good piece making those points. She also notes that the most severe student loan burden falls on older grads (age 30+). She quotes me on politicians’ tendency to ignore issues that confront the non-college-bound youth. I say that working-class young people are “not really part of the political situation.”

More generally, young people do not act like a political interest group because their circumstances and interests vary too much, and because their horizons extend beyond youth, which is a short phase. The fact that they do not act like an interest group is one reason they are easy to ignore in politics.

(Quebec City) We are on vacation this week, and I will be offline until July 8.