I’m interested in the following rule published recently by the Federal Corporation for National and Community Service:

(f) Civic engagement programs. A State, Indian Tribe, Territory or qualified organization may use funds to support service-learning civic engagement programs that promote a better understanding of:

(1) The principles of the Constitution, the heroes of United States history (including military history), and the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance;

(2) How the Nation’s government functions; and

(3) The importance of service in the Nation’s character.

The Corporation has been bitterly criticized for allegedly brainwashing young people to be supporters of President Obama’s radical socialist agenda. But this rule couldn’t be much more conservative. It would be a balanced policy, in my view, if it supported education on “heroes” and “military history” and on social movements and concepts of justice; or if it stressed the “importance of service” and the importance of social reforms and governmental programs. But it is almost entirely in the rightward side.

I’m glad to see that Corporation funds will be used for civic education. I think that the projects supported under this provision may be valuable. I’m only supportive, however, because I am personally open to relatively conservative approaches to civics. From a political perspective, I think it’s noteworthy that the Obama Administration would publish such a conservative rule. The people who should be mad about the president’s service agenda are not conservatives, but liberals.

There is a huge controversy about whether President Obama should make a speech to students (and whether schools should show it). I don’t dismiss the criticisms as merely partisan or paranoid; I can understand that direct speech by the nation’s most powerful man would provoke concerns, especially for people who trust and admire this president much less than I do. Still, I favor the speech. If you assume it will have some political significance because an elected official will speak, you might consider the evidence that statements by authority figures do not persuade kids to agree, but rather provoke them to have critical conversations.* Too often, we keep civic and political issues out of schools because they offend some parents, and then we create zones free of civic discourse.

At the same time, Obama’s speech is likely to have minimal political content. It will mostly be an exhortation by the head of state to study hard. Barack Obama has some potential to motivate students academically, which seems beneficial if it works.

Whatever you think about this particular case, you should know that there is absolutely nothing new about such an address. Before TV, presidents often issued proclamations to American school children that were intended to be read in all schools. For instance, Teddy Roosevelt proclaimed in 1907:

To the School Children of the United States … If you neglect to prepare yourselves not for the duties and responsibilities which will fall upon you later, if you do not learn the things which you will need to know when your school days are over, you will, suffer the consequences. So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal, whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.

Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation to be read to American schoolchildren at the beginning of the school year, Sept. 15, 1917. He said, “every pupil in the United States can find a chance to serve our country. The school is the natural centre of your life. Through it you can best work in the great cause of freedom to which we have all pledged ourselves.”

I assume many more such speeches could be found–I located these two in 15 minutes of web searching.

More recently, in the age of modern communications, Ronald Reagan made a speech that was nationally broadcast on TV and radio and intended for students in American classrooms. The first president Bush made a speech intended to be watched in schools that also boosted his administration’s education policy. And the second president Bush provided “parents and teachers’ guides” that encouraged students to read his biography and that of Dick Cheney.

We seem to have survived all this–not just the power of the presidency reaching into our humble schoolhouses, but also the use of instructional time for anodyne messages from our heads of state. If this particular controversy creates a precedent, it will not be the idea that presidents can address the nation’s children. (They have done that for at least a century.) It will rather be the principle that irate citizens can block elected officials whom they don’t like from being seen or heard in schools–and that would be another blow to civic education.

*E.g., Yates and Youniss find that a powerful dose of Catholic social doctrine does not convert predominantly Protestant African American students, but provokes them to reflect on their own values. McDevitt and colleagues (in a series of papers including this one) find that political debates in school stimulate critical discussions in the home. Colby et al. find that interactive political courses at the college level, although taught by liberal professors, do not move the students in a liberal direction but deepen their understanding of diverse perspectives.

Vanderbilt University Press has published Engaging Young People in Civic Life, edited by James Youniss and me, with a forward by former United States Representative Lee Hamilton.

In the forward, Hamilton writes, “I can think of no task more important for the future of American democracy than teaching young people about our system of government and encouraging them to get involved in politics and community service. … Engaging Young People in Civic Life is tough-minded, data-driven, and unsentimental. It is full of concrete policy proposals for schools, municipalities, service programs, and political parties. It offers all the appropriate scholarly caveats and qualifications. But at its heart, it is a plea to revive American democracy by offering all our young people the civic opportunities they want and so richly deserve.”

Table of Contents

Foreword – Lee Hamilton

Introduction. Policy for Youth Civic Engagement – Peter Levine and James Youniss

Part I. Youth and Schools

Chapter 1. A “Younger Americans Act”: An Old Idea for a New Era – James Youniss and Peter Levine

Chapter 2. Democracy for Some: The Civic Opportunity Gap in High School – Joseph Kahne and Ellen Middaugh

Chapter 3. Principles That Promote Discussion of Controversial Political Issues – Diana Hess

Part II. Political Environments: Neighborhoods and Cities

Chapter 4. Policies for Civic Engagement Beyond the Schoolyard – James G. Gimpel and Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz

Chapter 5. Civic Participation and Development in Urban Adolescents – Daniel Hart and Ben Kirshner

Chapter 6. City Government As Enabler of Youth Civic Engagement: Policy Design and Implications – Carmen Sirianni and Diana Marginean Schor

Chapter 7. Local Political Parties and Young Voters: Context, Resources, and Policy Innovation – Daniel M. Shea

Part III. Policy Models from Other Nations

Chapter 8. Youth Electoral Participation in Canada and Scandinavia – Henry Milner

Chapter 9. Civic Education in Europe: Perspectives from the Netherlands, Belgium, and France – Marc Hooghe and Ellen Claes

Chapter 10. Strengthening Education for Citizenship and Democracy in the UK – David Kerr and Elizabeth Cleaver

Conclusion. The Way Forward – Peter Levine and James Youniss

[11/25/09: Please also see my statement on the Center’s federal audit.]

In Tampa, meeting with social studies teachers) For quite a few years, almost all of the federal government’s investments in civic education have been earmarked for the Center for Civic Education (CCE). In 2009, the Center’s earmark from the US Department of Education was $31.9 million. CCE spent most of those funds on “We the People,” a high school government curriculum, and “Project Citizen,” a curriculum for middle school students who study policy issues of their choice and develop responses. CCE provides free texts and materials and offers training for teachers.

The available evaluations suggest that students in CCE’s programs learn the material. We don’t know some other interesting facts about these programs, such as how many students they serve, the students’ demographic profile, or how much the programs cost per student. We cannot compare CCE’s impact or its cost-effectiveness against alternatives. Still, in the absence of public data on those matters, I will stipulate that CCE probably benefits the kids who experience its programs.

However, it is not the role of the federal government to finance curricula or materials that serve a small number of American kids, year after year. The federal government generally doesn’t select particular textbooks that seem beneficial and then provide them free of charge to limited numbers of schools where the teachers happen to request them. Nor should it provide programs like “We the People” or “Project Citizen” on those terms. Thirty-two million dollars is not nearly enough money to make a significant difference for the national student population, if it is spent that way.

Instead, a minimum of $32 million should be spent on innovation and growth. Competitive grants should be given to school districts, schools, other local government agencies, nonprofits, colleges, publishing companies, software developers, and other firms that propose to develop and test new approaches to civic education or to increase the scale or quality of their efforts. Thirty-two million dollars would be useful seed money, and over time it could benefit most American kids.

The Administration is asking Congress to end CCE’s earmark. That seems like the right thing to do, but the next step must be to create a competitive alternative run by the United States Department of Education. Congress and the Administration should fund civic education–the original purpose of American schooling–at a minimum of $32 million for the whole country. Criteria for competitive grants should include: innovation, rigorous evaluation, a potential to grow and survive without further federal funding, and a focus on engaging disadvantaged kids.

(San Francisco) I gave a presentation and moderated a session at the National Conference on Volunteering & Service yesterday. The topic was equity. But I’d rather describe a different panel, one that I attended as a member of the audience. The topic was service as a key to enhance student achievement. Angela Glover Blackwell was the moderator, and she started with an eloquent statement in favor of tapping students’ energies to address social problems and thereby give them skills and motivations for learning. She said that all the excellent social programs she knows include a dimension of civic engagement, because programs work best when people “own” them. She cited Harlem Children’s Zone as a model and referred to a new federal program, Promise Neighborhoods, that intends to replicate that model. Unfortunately, James Shelton III from the US Department of Education had to miss the panel at the last moment and so could not address that initiative.

Lisa Spinali, a friend of mine, talked about a large program that matches volunteers to schools in San Francisco (it is called San Francisco Volunteers, and she’s the executive director). There has been a gradual shift from placing anyone with an interest in a school to identifying real needs and finding the right skills. Early on, San Franciscans might offer to teach macrame and guitar and would be sent to a classroom. Today, a corps of bilingual volunteers translates at parent/teacher conferences.

Anthony Salcito works for Microsoft. He used the formula that I associate with the Gates Foundation: rigor, relevance, and relationships. These “three-r’s” are too often lacking in our schools. Salcito took the line that “service-learning” (combinations of academic study with community service) would help with rigor, relevance, and relationships.

Eric Schwartz from Citizen Schools made the case that the school day and school year are too short; there should be more learning opportunities for all kids during an expanded learning day. Citizen Schools creates a “second shift” of learning, with lots of interactive and fun projects. Volunteering comes into play in two ways. The “second shift” is substantially provided by unpaid volunteer adults and by AmeriCorps members. And the kids do, among many other activities, some service-learning.