Monthly Archives: May 2013

big gender gap in political leadership

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I must admit that I have neglected gender as an issue in youth civic engagement. My organization (CIRCLE) generally focuses on common behaviors, like voting and community service, and on political knowledge and attitudes as assessed by surveys and tests. On all those measures, young women are somewhat ahead of young men, much as one might expect since young women do somewhat better in school and college. I have obviously been aware that Congress and other powerful institutions are dominated by men, but I chalked that up to campaign finance and other flaws in the political system. Our work is concerned with young people rather than systems, so I thought we could contribute little to the problem of gender inequality in politics.

But CIRCLE’s led researcher, Dr. Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, recently presented at a White House Conference on Girls’ Leadership and Civic Education. In preparing to present, she analyzed survey data and revealed troubling patterns. Basically, young women are more “civically engaged” than young men but much less confident in their own ability to hold leadership positions and less likely to pursue leadership roles. Below is just one example of a troubling result. By the time men leave college, almost one third place themselves in the top 10% for leadership, and that rate has risen since freshman year. Less than one in five women rate themselves that high, and that rate falls from freshman to senior year.

See this page for Kei’s fact sheet and links to other CIRCLE materials. We also propose some strategies for addressing the problem. If you are interested in discussing the issue with a very well-informed group, please consider attending this year’s Frontiers of Democracy conference, which will include a learning exchange on gender.

Justice Souter on civic education

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(Concord, NH) I am here for one of a series of fairly regular meetings on civic education in New Hampshire. Justice David Souter is an engaged and thoughtful participant in the group. To get a sense of his underlying values, see his comments at a Harvard Law School event recently. He was on a panel with Justice O’Connor, Prof. Lawrence Tribe, and Kenneth Starr (in his new role as president of Baylor University). But I thought Justice Souter stole the show with an impassioned and substantive mini-speech that starts around minute 7 on the video below. His thesis: America fortunately promotes freedom and diversity, but we need some commonality to counter the “disuniting tendencies” of our time, the “wealth disparities,” the impact of money on politics, and other “atomizing and disuniting” forces.  Our common ground is a constitutional value-system that is neutral with respect to religion and culture. In order to appreciate that constitutional creed or heritage, you must understand it. That requires facts–hence, civic education.

My own remarks earlier in the same conference don’t seem to be on YouTube, but I had argued for setting a high standard and not settling for kids being able to memorize the answers to a civics test. I made a similar point in my recent CNN piece.

toward a theory of moral learning

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In a series of , I have been developing the idea that anyone’s moral thinking can be modeled as a network: the nodes are beliefs, and the links are various kinds of connections (implications, generalizations, perceived similarities).

This modeling method would work for a Kantian, a Buddhist, a Marxist, a Thomist–it is morally neutral, not a substantive position. However, I have been arguing that certain formal structures are better than others. By bringing your own network more into line with those standards, you can move from your starting point toward an improved moral position.

This is fundamentally a social process because the nodes in your network are shared with other people, and a good network is one that interacts well with theirs. Thus I am implying a theory of collaborative moral learning. It is not a psychological theory about how people do learn, but a moral theory about how we should learn. I am interested in getting this theory right and avoiding philosophical errors. But my goal is to develop an actual method for moral introspection. That would be a contribution to the long tradition of moral exercises that go back to the ancient Stoics and classical Indian thinkers.

Below are some notes about the learning theory. I think it avoids several significant pitfalls. It does not make learning from experience seem automatically beneficial, because people can learn very bad ideas. It does not imply that better educated people–those who have more formal learning–are more moral, which is clearly false. And it addresses the fact that many important moral issues are “socially constructed,” yet there are real differences between good and evil.

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CNN op-ed: Citizenship isn’t about passing a civics test

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In lieu of a post here today, I have a piece on CNN.com entitled “Citizenship isn’t about passing a civics test.” Please read it there, but it begins:

As Congress debates immigration law, it cannot avoid debating citizenship. Who gets to be a citizen? And what should citizens know, believe, and do?

Under current law, would-be citizens must pass the U.S. Naturalization Test, which poses factual questions about civics and history such as: “What are two rights in the Declaration of Independence?” …

This test assumes that a competent citizen knows some basic information about the U.S. political system. Most American students must demonstrate similar competence. All U.S. states have standards for K-12 social studies and, typically, the teacher assesses knowledge with paper-and-pencil tests that resemble the naturalization test.

One question is whether these requirements reflect a worthy definition of citizenship. …. Another question is whether studying for short-answer tests teaches people much …

the Deliberative Democracy Handbook in Japanese

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Here is the new Japanese version of The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, edited by John Gastil and me. A cleaned-up version of the Google translation of the Japanese blurb would say:

Don’t leave it to the legislature alone! This is a practical handbook for a new form of democracy by direct participation of citizens. It describes a method of citizen participation in the political process, describing concrete case studies from other countries, mainly the United States of America. It is a useful single book for all those who are interested in civil juries, deliberative polls, town meetings, and other formats, summarizing both their strengths and weaknesses for local governments, educational institutions, and others.

Compare the Chinese and English covers, below: