I spent this morning walking around Hyattsville, MD, with high school kids, who were entering data about each street segment into Palm Pilots. We want to collect information that will help us see what features of each block make it attractive or unattractive for walking. For example, are the sidewalks clear and continuous? How much vegetation is there? Are there curb cuts? Is there an incline? We will later collect information about (a) people’s eating and exercise habits; and (b) the availability of various types of food and recreation in the neighborhood. When we put everything together, we should be able to build a statistical model showing what features of the local environment influence people’s choices to walk and buy food. We’ll also be able to generate public maps showing where one can walk most safely and buy the healthiest food in the community.

Today was a day for thinking about civic education from several different angles. I participated in a Steering Committee meeting of the National Alliance for Civic Education; reviewed research grant proposals submitted to CIRCLE (on aspects of youth civic engagement); and worked on my own application to the National Endowment for the Humanities. This proposal is due next week, so I’m focusing a lot of my on budgetary and other practical details. (My colleagues and I are applying to replicate our high school students’ unusual oral history project in several sites, including Jackson, Mississippi and Miami, Florida. The proposed topic is segregation and desegregation in local school districts, during the period 1954-2004. Students will interview surviving witnesses, think of several alternative strategies that could have been adopted in 1954, and create interactive websites to help community members think about what should have been done. That’s not an easy question, since each strategy would involve different risks and tradeoffs.)

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We’ve made it past the first stage of a grant competition to provide

funds for our local mapping

work with high school kids. That’s great news, except that now

I have to write a full proposal on short notice. Among other questions,

I need to answer this: "What is unusual about your project?"

We intend to help high school students who are not college-bound to

play leading roles in original scholarly research on a matter of public

importance, and see whether that work increases both their academic

skills and their civic commitment. The topic, which I’ve discussed

here before, is healthy nutrition and exercise and the degree to which

these outcomes are affected by the physical environment.

The Orton Foundation provides a great collection of youth-generated

maps at communitymap.org.

School desegregation is a public issue that involves

and affects youth. It’s a vital contemporary matter that requires

historical background to understand. It continues to provoke debates

among reasonable and well-intentioned people, who disagree about both

goals and solutions. In all these respects, it is an ideal topic for

sustained work in schools as a key component of civic education.

Last fall, we worked with students at a local high school in Maryland

to create an interactive, deliberative website

about the epic history of desegregation in their own district. ("We"

means the Democracy

Collaborative and the Institute

for Philosophy & Public Policy, both at the University of

Maryland.) We have now collaborated with NABRE, the Network of Alliances

Bridging Race and Ethnicity (pronounced “neighbor”), to

develop a plan for a replicating the same project in many school districts.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Brown v Board of Education,

the first of a series of 50th anniversaries of events in the Civil

Rights Era. Coming to understand the difficult choices made in one’s

own community seems both a good way to commemorate this history and

an excellent foundation for making choices today.

I came across a quote today by Myles

Horton, the great founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee,

which trained Rosa Parks and so many other heroes of the labor and civil

rights movements. Horton said that he had learned from decades of nonviolent

struggle against injustice that "the way to do something

was to start doing it and learn from it."

I recognize the limitations to this approach. It’s good to have a "strategic

plan" with goals and methods all arranged in proper order. Yet

often in civic work, improvisation is both a necessity and an inspiration.

As long as you keep your mind open, listen to others, and try to learn

from everything you do, it’s sometimes wise to start working even before

you know exactly what you are doing.

I write this as I continue to read articles about local geography and

its effects on nutrition—all because I want to obtain a grant

that can support our local work with kids.

I don’t know where that work will take us, but it seems important to

sustain a nascent institution by grasping the opportunities that come

along. (I don’t mean to compare myself and my colleagues to Miles Horton,

because we’re not struggling against injustice as he did. But we do

have a similarly cavalier attitude toward planning.)