My organization, CIRCLE, promotes a set of 19 "core

indicators of civic engagement" as a way of measuring

the level of engagement of any youthful group or community,

and also as a way of assessing the civic impact of a program, class,

or project. These 19 indicators were chosen after an elaborate national

research project managed by Scott Keeter, Cliff Zukin, Molly Andolina,

and Krista Jenkins, who talked to practitioners and young people in

focus groups and then conducted a national survey. Despite its empirical

rigor, their list of indicators provokes an interesting and important

controversy. I have heard the following views expressed:

1. This is (roughly) the right list, because it emerged from a study

of real young people and captures the forms of engagement that are

reasonably common among youth today. Most of these behaviors are becoming

less common over time, but that is a reality that we should face squarely

and not sidestep.

2. These indicators measure an average group of Americans, but they

mask our great diversity. For example, on an Indian reservation, the

important forms of engagement would include participation with the

tribal council, which is not measured on the survey. For Native Americans

and many other subcultures, the list of indicators is inappropriate.

3. This is the right list for assessing the civic engagement of all

Americans over time, but it’s the wrong list to use in program evaluation,

because it is unrealistic to expect a class or other project to change

these variables.

4. This is generally the wrong list, because it weighs old-fashioned

forms of civic engagement (like wearing political buttons) too heavily,

and omits the novel forms that young people are developing today:

transnational protests, blogs and email lists, low-budget documentaries

and public-service announcements, boycotts, poetry slams. The obvious

response is that such forms of participation are not common enough

to show up on surveys. But perhaps they are the most historically

important developments of the present era, and they should be measured

in program evaluations. Perhaps failing to measure them "sends

a message" that what we want is a return to old-fashioned, adult-dominated

politics.