Here’s my latest scheme for

local civic work, connected to the Prince

George’s Information Commons. We would train young people to rate local food

sources (both shops and restaurants) for healthiness. We would then generate an

online map of the healthiest places in the community to buy food. This map would

be our direct public service. Meanwhile, we would use the data in combination

with local health statistics to test these hypotheses:

• It is good

  for your health to live near a source of healthy food.

• It is bad for your

  health to live near a source of unhealthy food.

• It is bad for your health

  to live near no food sources (because then you have to drive and don’t get exercise).

No

doubt, healthy food outlets tend to locate near healthy populations, so we’d have

to be careful before drawing the conclusion that the presence of a health-food

store explains the good health of its neighborhood. But with the appropriate

statistical controls, we might discover that the availability of various kinds

of food does matter for health—and that would be useful for planners to know.

Yesterday, our high school class interviewed a 30-year veteran teacher

at their school, mainly about racial issues. He said—among other

things—that people in his home county (Montgomery, MD) read, whereas

young people in Prince George’s do not. They just watch television, he

said; and if they read, it’s "trash." Montgomery is predominantly

White; Prince George’s is majority Black. After he left, I asked the students

what they thought about this particular comment. Some were evidently offended

and suspected that the teacher was relying on racial stereotypes. Others

thought that he was factually correct. We held a debate on the question:

"Do people read more in Montgomery?" I said that I honestly

didn’t know, but that I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just because Montgomery

is whiter and richer than Prince George’s. One male student who was offended

by the comparison said that girls read in Prince George’s—although

boys don’t. This comment received a lot of assent.

Our high school students’ online history project tells the epic

history of their own schools’ desegregation, from 1955-2000. It includes

an introductory slide show, a timeline and graph of the county’s massive

demographic changes, a set of oral history interviews, and then a deliberative

forum on the topic, "What should have been done to address school

segregation in 1955?" The project will never be complete, because

students can always add interviews, historical data, and new perspectives.

But it is now ready for a public launch at an event tomorrow. Therefore,

we invite anyone and everyone to visit and participate. The URL is www.princegeorges.org/history.htm

I wrote part of a grant proposal today that would allow our high school

students to conduct research connected to nutrition, exercise, and

obesity. They would identify local opportunities for recreational

exercise and healthy food, and also local sources of unhealthy food and

barriers to exercise (such as streets without sidewalks). They would place

these items on an online, public map along with the routes of local buses

and Metrorail. Their goals would be (a) to show local residents how they

can get to healthy opportunities; and (b) to show local policymakers how

inaccessible certain important opportunities are.

At the same time, students could calculate how much unhealthy food (i.e.,

grams of fat) can be purchased in various locations for one dollar, versus

how much healthy food can be bought. These figures could also be displayed

on a map. Students could then compare statistics from comparable areas

such as Takoma Park or Silver Spring, MD.

I have been thinking more generally about how young people—especially

non-college-bound kids and kids of color—can learn to play a role

in local decisions about zoning, economic development, and transportation.

They are disproportionately affected by these decisions, yet they rarely

participate in public meetings or discussions. CIRCLE has identified "non-college

youth" as a group that does not vote, does not attend community

meetings or join local groups, and does not have the knowledge necessary

to participate. Furthermore, habits of participation or non-participation

are usually set in adolescence, so unless we find ways to involve these

young people while they are still in high school, chances are they will

be uninvolved for the rest of their lives. One promising idea is to get

them interested in using technological tools for urban planning, such

as the many wonderful products described by PlaceMatters.com.

My colleagues and our high school class have been using oral history

methods to construct the Prince

George’s County Information Commons history page. Today an expert

from the Oral

History in Education Institute at University of Maryland came to class

to teach our students proper interviewing techniques—unfortunately

too late to improve our most important interviews, which are over. I thought

one of the most interesting distinctions she made was between journalism

and oral history. She claimed that oral history is less adversarial than

reporting. "We are recipients of the story," she said. She taught

the students to avoid leading questions and questions that anticipate

yes/no answers. Open-ended questions are the oral historian’s tool.

The class and I came to understand our serious responsibilities better

as a result of the session. The desegregation of Prince George’s County

Schools was an epic struggle. Understanding it is crucial, since racial

divisions and inequities remain, and no one is sure how to address them.

In nearly half a century since the struggle began, no one had interviewed

some of the key players, such as the first African American students to

attend White schools in our county. Chances are, no one else will interview

them after us. So we alone are creating primary source materials for later

historians—and they better be good. We didn’t seek this responsibility.

Our original intentions were to provide a civics lesson and to develop

innovative ways of using websites. But the responsibility is real even

if we backed into it.

We were given these links to good online oral history projects conducted

by youth:

What

Did You Do, Grandma?

The Whole World Was

Watching: An Oral History of 1968

We Made Do: Recalling

the Great Depression

The Stories

of the People

(I have found the same list on this

webpage.)