During conference calls today, I idly searched for myself on Google Images. Here I am–at least, these are the search results for “Peter Levine.” You’re looking at a successful pop psychologist, the chairman of Lloyds of London, a cowboy singing dude, a rugby player, a runner, and a chef, among others.
Cindy Gibson has published a White Paper, funded by the Case Foundation, entitled “Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement.” It’s groundbreaking because it asks funders, policymakers, and others to look beyond individual acts of civic participation, such as voting and volunteering, and instead to consider people’s collective work in naming, discussing, and addressing problems. If taken seriously, Cindy’s paper would cause major changes in philanthropy and policy throughout the fields of “service” and “citizenship.” I have posted somewhat more detailed comments on a discussion page that Case has set up; many others have weighed in as well.
(Newark, NJ): At Monday’s launch of America’s Civic Health Index, Bill Galston said that Katrina demonstrated a failure of government and political leadership, but also of civil society, because it displayed our inability (or unwillingness) to work together across differences. Nina Rees, formerly a staffer for Dick Cheney, replied that the “private sector” had performed very well after Katrina, as revealed by the massive amount of philanthropy directed toward New Orleans and the Gulf. I’m with Bill, because I think there’s a difference between the total amount of individual voluntary effort (also known as “the private sector”) and civil society.
New Orleans is rich in groups and associations that operate within discrete neighborhoods and ethnic communities–including the extraordinary African American mutual benefit societies. But there is, and was, a dearth of civic institutions. New Orleans had few voluntary associations that crossed community lines so that they could coordinate efforts, allocate resources fairly, monitor the government, organize deliberations about justice, encourage citywide solidarity, and develop plans for redevelopment. In the absence of an encompassing civic infrastucture, New Orleans got bad government and ineffective or piecemeal private aid. Thus the Katrina disaster illustrates the importance of decent political leadership, but also the need for a strong civil society that goes beyond charity and volunteering.
I’m in Newark, New Jersey for a MacArthur Foundation conference on “Digital Media and Learning.” MacArthur is supporting a whole series of edited volumes on various aspects of this broad topic, including a book organized by Lance Bennett on digital media and civic engagement. For that volume, I have drafted a chapter about the benefits of using electronic media for civic purposes in schools. I also discuss the barriers to that kind of work. I examine a wide range of barriers, including the lack of training for teachers and limits on political advocacy; but I focus on the difficulty of building an appropriate audience for students’ products.
Today’s the day that the National Conference on Citizenship releases its new Civic Health Index and an accompanying report entitled Broken Engagement. My colleagues and I at CIRCLE analyzed the data for the Index–combining 40 different measures of civic participation–and helped to write the report, which depicts an erosion of public life over the last quarter century. Particularly striking to me is the big drop in the proportion of Americans who say that they work with others to address community problems–down from about 45% in the 1970s to about 25% in the current decade. The rate of membership in groups has not fallen. Put those two facts together, and it seems that groups have become less likely to promote community problem-solving. We belong to more mailing lists and dispersed professional associations, but fewer grassroots organizations.
Speakers at the launch of the report will include Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former Senator Harris Wofford; Harvard professor Robert Putnam; John Bridgeland, formerly of the Bush administration; columnist E. J. Dionne; and Irasema Salcido, founder of the Chavez Charter School in Washington. I have several radio interviews scheduled to discuss the Index, and here is a Time Magazine piece about it.
[See also Amy Goldstein’s piece in the Washington Post.]