We just signed a contract to repeat a national survey of young Americans that was last conducted in 2002. It’s a broad assessment of young people’s civic and political engagement, not narrowly focused on voting and political opinions. Repeating the survey will give us a chance to update our numbers and also to analyze the young population in some detail.

CIRCLE has recently created a nice online interactive map that shows youth voting statistics by state.

Jim Youniss of Catholic University and I have been awarded a Carnegie Foundation grant to pull together a scholarly group that will try to bridge the gap between developmental pyschology and political science. Psychologists know a lot about how the political system makes people into active or alienated citizens; but they tend to be ahistorical. They talk about “politics” or “government” in general, and don’t consider how (and why) politics has changed. Political scientists know all about the changes in our political system, but they rarely consider its impact on political socialization. Jim and I are charged with trying to fill that gap.

Earlier this week, I watched videos of two focus groups: teachers in Portland, OR and parents in Cleveland, OH. These focus groups had been commissioned by the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, which is an advocacy coalition dedicated to implementing the recommendations of the Civic Mission of Schools report. An important first step is to find out which arguments for civic education (broadly construed) are most effective. It was odd (and, frankly, something of an ego-trip) to watch strangers 3,000 miles away being read passages from a report that I had helped to write. Generally speaking, the teachers were very enthusiastic about it. One teacher said, “It’s hard to imagine what else [anyone] could come up with.” They all endorsed the idea that schools have a civic mission. They were also very knowledgeable; in conversation, they referred to service-learning, the Center for Civic Education, Deborah Meier, and even Paul Wellstone’s Civic Education Enhancement Act. They were leery of additional tests in social studies–but so am I. Predictably, the parents’ group was much less knowledgeable and enthusiastic. As one of the teachers said: If you ask parents whether schools have a civic mission, they will agree, because they know it’s the right thing to say. But they really want their own kids to get an education that will help them to get ahead; “civic education is for other people kids.”

I’m interviewed in the latest issue of a journal called Higher Education Exchange. Actually, David Brown conducted simultaneous email interviews of me and of Bob Kingston, a senior associate of the Kettering Foundation, and edited our comments together (with our help). I’m not sure how coherent the whole document is. I would summarize it as follows:

Bob admires “public intellectuals” who have broad interests, address crucial and current public issues, and reach large audiences. I admire those people too, although I think they are already well supplied and rewarded. Besides, Learned Hand had a point when he warned: “You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt.” In other words, there’s a tradeoff between impact and intellectual rigor.

Therefore, I especially admire a different kind of “public intellectual,” one who gets deeply enmeshed in the work of institutions or communities, contributing his or her skills and knowledge but also constanrly learning from experience and feedback. Such scholars may never talk to large audiences about broad issues. On the contrary, my favorite “public intellectuals” are self-effacing, listeners rather than talkers; and they focus on relatively narrow or local issues because those are what concern people. Because they take the time to understand the complex details of local problems, they risk losing the chance for fame and influence.

By the way, these lists of famous “public intellectuals” are interesting. They do not include the kind I admire. (Thanks to Hellmut Lotz for the reference.)

Apparently a real politico named Reilly (I was told–but forgot–his first name) once explained that a successful Washington career has the following stages:

1. Who’s Reilly?

2. Get me Reilly!

3. Get me a Reilly.

4. Who’s Reilly?

The goal is to reach stage 2 early, and then stay there as long as possible.

I’m not a big fan of elaborate facilitation techniques, but I’ve had two good recent experiences with a method called “chalk talk.” Here’s how it works. You write a few significant and relevant words on a large expanse of paper or a blackboard. You distribute markers or pieces of chalk to everyone in a group. You tell them that there are only two rules: 1) No talking. 2) It’s over when it’s over.

There is then a brief period of embarrassed silence until someone writes a word or phrase (or possibly draws a picture). Others join in. They pose questions silently and draw lines connecting other people’s ideas. Everyone concentrates intensely, the board fills up, and then the pace slows. Finally, you say, “It’s over.”

This is an efficient way to get lots of comments “on the record.” It would take hours for people to say the same things in a standard conversation. The method encourages everyone to pay attention to everyone else’s thoughts. It can empower shy people to participate from the beginning. And it’s a good way to think about connections and disagreements.

This page shows the results of a “chalk talk” exercise from last week, at which social activists from eight countries silently discussed “participation” and “deliberation.” (To see the whole thing, scroll right and down.) I’m not sure that the image makes much sense unless you were there, but it’s a good conversation-starter and a great resource for anyone who wants to summarize a meeting (in a more linear style) afterwards.

A hobson-jobson is my favorite linguistic phenomenon. A good example is “compound,” which originally meant any union of several elements. English visitors to what’s now Malaysia encountered the Malay word “kampong,” which meant a group of buildings enclosed by a wall. They heard “kompong” as “compound,” and gave the English word that new meaning. Another example is “gas.” The Dutch chemist van Helmot used the Greek word “chaos” to refer to substances that acted like steam. English scientists misheard him and thought he was saying “gas.”

On my way to Georgia last weekend, I happened to be seated next to a Brazilian colleague whom I had met at the conference last week. He asked me how long it takes to get to the “finger” at Atlanta’s airport. It turns out that the English word “finger” is what Brazilians call the gates at airports (which do look like fingers reaching onto the asphalt). He understandably assumed that this metaphor was borrowed from English, but it’s an imaginary borrowing–a kind of hobson-jobson.

The phrase “hobson-jobson” itself arose when English imperialists in India heard their Muslim subalterns chanting “Ya Hasan! Ya Husayn!: O Hasan! O Husain!” In their offensive way, they called this chanting the “natives’ hobson-jobson.” Question: Is the phrase “hobson-jobson” (referring generally to misunderstood words appropriated from foreign languages) itself a hobson-jobson?