Another Reason For High School Civic Education

Analysts are still trying to measure the impact of social media on the 2008 election. Some are resorting to non-random sampling [gasp!]. The Illinois State University student paper covers one such study.

A Kansas State University study by three graduate students finds that the 18 to 24 year old demographic became increasingly politically active during the 2008 U.S. Election season due to the use of new media, but were not necessarily more politically knowledgeable.

The study surveyed more than 160 undergraduate students, with no indication of their political party, about their use of traditional media as well as new media sources, such as Twitter or YouTube, to obtain information about the presidential campaign.

The sample size is very small here, although the focus of the study is interesting. Political knowledge is a messy metric when it is conflated with current events and we will be unable to gauge the relevance of this measure without the survey instrument.

The study also found that most students were not politically knowledgeable, with no idea of whether or not the student was a Democrat or Republican. Darnisha Monson, junior English education major, found herself to be one of the many students who became actively involved in the 2008 election.

This isn't surprising since young people who are new to the electoral process are still trying to find their way through the political landscape. Thus, it behooves partisans to outreach to youth during this exploratory period - it will be more difficult to persuade them to switch political parties later in life.

Now comes my favorite part of this article: an academic living in the university bubble and seemingly ignorant about it.

"That is the big question," Bradley said, "How do we get [college students] to turn out numbers in an election that is not tied directly to electing a president?"

This is totally not the big question. As we've written about here on FM, and as duly researched by CIRCLE, it's the college students we don't have to worry about. There is something about going to college, whether it be the networks or the the learning that aids these young people in navigating the political process. It doesn't matter that it takes time in some cases; the point is that youth with at least come college experience will be more engaged than those with any college. So, the big question is, if you care about realizing a full, participatory democracy is how do we reach the many young voters who don't attend college at all; they are the most likely to not vote and to not be civically engaged on a range of measures. As for the other part of his question, it is important to think about how to turnout voters during non-presidential cycles (one way might to be encourage more young people to run for elected office, especially the local level, as suggested by Kevin).

Professor Bradley continues to miss the mark with this:

"It is my job as a professor to figure out how to get your generation tuned into local politics, Bradley said.

"College students have a very short attention span so it is my job to keep [college students] interested... you are not going to learn."

Again, see the above retort. Additionally, it shouldn't the job of a professor to teach about civic engagement - it should be done at the high school level. This means we can reach as many young people before they leave mandatory schooling. At the Netroots Nation 2009 youth caucus meeting, I brought up the point that we (youth and civic organizations) are doing the work of the government for them. We educate young people about civic engagement, when that should be the aim of high school curriculum. What makes it so troublesome for us is that we spend time, money and staff on teaching the basics of democracy. If we had comprehensive civic education in high schools, then we could focus on actually persuading and informing citizens about specific issues that take a bit of expertise to understand.