problem-solving

President Barack Obama has told his supporters that the 2012 presidential election will be about two contrasting visions of the nation's future. In his vision, "everyone pays their fair share," so that there is "shared sacrifice and shared opportunities" and the government plays a big part in helping the private sector prosper.

By contrast, the newest Republican candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, pledged to those listening to his announcement speech to free the nation from "the grips of central planners who would control our healthcare, who would spend our treasure, who downgrade our future and micromanage our lives" and to "make Washington, D.C., as inconsequential as possible."

These starkly different messages make it clear that America is now engaged in the fourth debate in its history about the size and scope of government and doing it with all the rancor and heated rhetoric that have characterized each of the previous debates.

The issue was at the heart of the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution when newspaper printing presses were destroyed by those who disagreed with editorials on the issue. Eighty years later, it caused the nation to be torn apart during the Civil War. And 80 years after that, the Supreme Court declared minimum wage laws unconstitutional until a political consensus was framed around FDR's New Deal that not even the court could resist.

Each time the issue of what the nation's civic ethos should be has exposed vast differences in beliefs between generations. And, each time the country experienced a long period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt before the debate was resolved in favor of a new generation's ideas and beliefs. This historical pattern suggests that the best way to predict the outcome of today's debate is to examine the beliefs and attitudes of America's newest generation of young adults, millennials, born 1982-2003.

In 2012, one out of every four eligible voters will be members of this generation. More than 40 percent of millennials are nonwhite, creating the greatest racial and ethnic diversity in the nation's history. Twenty-five percent of them have an immigrant parent.

The generation was raised on messages of inclusion and equity and has translated those teachings into their political beliefs. A majority of millennials (54 percent) favor bigger government with more services, over a smaller government with fewer services (39 percent), almost the exact opposite of older generations' opinions on that choice. Sixty-nine percent of the generation is accepting of homosexuality and believe that a growing number of immigrants strengthen American society, in stark contrast to the beliefs of their elders.

While older generations are split on the question of government regulation of business, millennials come down squarely on the side of regulation by 51 percent to 43 percent.

While these attitudes suggest which way the debate over the country's civic ethos will ultimately turn out, it is the millennial generation's belief in consensus decision-making and pragmatic solutions to problems that hold out the most hope that the tone of today's political rhetoric will also change.

Millennials believe that collective action at the local level is the best way to solve national problems. Just as their parents set the rules within which millennials were free to exercise their creative energies, millennials look to the federal government to set national goals, even to establish mandates for required behavior. However, in the millennial era, the choice of how to comply with these requirements will not be determined in remote bureaucracies, but by individuals in local communities throughout the country.

In the middle of the vitriol of the current debate, it is easy to lose sight of the possibility of the dispute being resolved in favor of some larger and different national consensus. The millennial generation offers the country that hope. If America is to emerge from its current period of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, it will have to look to its newest generation, for both the behavior and the ideas that can bring the debate to a conclusion that the country can support.

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Editor's Note: This piece originally appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on August 29.

As the Senate paralyzed itself yet again this week, refusing to allow an up and down vote for a crucial extension of unemployment compensation, Harry Boyte's op-ed in the Pioneer Press this week calling for a new view of government takes on heightened relevance.

The expert-knows-best culture has spread across Minnesota in recent years, weakening civic life. Local businesses have been replaced with giant box stores. Schools have redefined students as consumers. The local YMCA traded community problem-solving efforts for racket ball courts.

But there are signs of discontent with this state of affairs, and the time may be ripe for change. Research by the think tank Demos has found that the liberal customer-service framework does not work, especially with swing and independent voters. When people are treated as consumers, they are likely to become angry shoppers, not citizens concerned with the commonwealth.

Demos also found that an alternative framework of government as a meeting ground to solve problems generates far more positive sentiments.

Such findings suggest rebirth in the Minnesota tradition of citizen partnership with government. Minnesota Democratic leaders as well as Republicans like Anderson and Quie, once understood the importance of such partnership, and saw it rooted in locally owned businesses, VFW halls, farmer cooperatives, union locals, schools and many other settings.

Whether it's in Minnesota or across the country, as long as we sit on the sidelines attributing expertise to many of those in office, who continue to screw things up, we already lose. Boyte notes correctly that Lincoln's "for the people" quote in the Gettysburg Address included "of the people" and "by the people" as well.

In order to build bridges to our government and our elected officials, our generation must figuratively and literally go to where they are. We must root one end of the bridge in their territory by engaging them in conversations, repeatedly contacting their office on important votes.

We must also remember that politics is never a private matter. Ignore the bit you learned about politics being one of those taboo issues not to be touched in polite company. Following this advice ignores the reality that everything in our society is political. We must not be willing to reach out to our peers, just as we reach out to our public officials, demanding their attention on important, public issues.

It is only through these partnerships that we can begin to solve the myriad problems facing us.

Crossposted at Politics for the Common Good.

Rarely do I intentionally blend my graduate school lessons learned with the material discussed in this blog. I'm starting to realize that's a mistake.

As a graduate student in a Student Affairs in Higher Education program, I endeavor to eventually work on a college campus, encouraging students to mind their civic habits and responsibilities, while simultaneously teaching them about life throughout that journey. In order to fulfill graduation requirements for my masters program, I must work in an office on campus for twelve hours a week; such an experience usually involves creating some form of original work. In working with a leadership institute on campus, I have managed to perform my own bricolage, mixing two seemingly disparate elements together: politics and education. I have organized a series of discussions in which students having no knowledge of politics can contribute to a conversation, along with the political elite on campus, on what politics means to them. I guess one could metaphorically associate this effort with the training wheels needed for what is hopefully a life-long career marrying civic responsibility with education.

My motivation for pursuing what can be an all-too-frustrating task was initially selfish. I was a political science major. I didn't have the guts to denigrate characters in political attack ads or the logical skills needed to practice the law. I liked living and working on a college campus as an undergraduate. Voila. Student affairs allows me to straddle the line between politics and education.

But, as many a graduate student has come to know, this line I speak of is fictional. That's the lesson I have learned this year, perhaps nowhere better than these dialogues. Navigating a curriculum rooted in social constructivism, understanding that there is never a "right" answer, but merely socially-constructed knowledge, has sharpened my realization that politics is in everything we do. Yes, it's in presidential elections every four years. It is in the partisan bickering and strategizing that goes on in Washington. But it is also in fraternity and sorority elections. It is in where you get your coffee in the morning. It is in the choice of news you wish to consume. Politics is everywhere.

My experience with undergraduates at my former place of employment and my current institution reveals to me that I was not alone in seeing the line. Politics can be compartmentalized into a convenient box. Students associate politics with Washington DC, voting, Congress, and the like. In one of our political dialogues this month, one of the students expressed boredom with politics. "Whenever I see politics on TV I change the channel," they explained. "It's just not fun. I don't really want to get involved." Yet, the act of channelsurfing itself is political. They did get involved in their decision to forego public affairs programming.

Unfortunately that involvement was unseen, and small in magnitude. I am recognizing that while student affairs practitioners and scholars spend quite a bit of time on social justice education, we tend to spend less time on civic education, developing the set of tools needed to engage in one's community. While service-learning and voter registration drives have been trendy on college campuses over the last two presidential elections, engagement in local and state politics continues to suffer. It's no wonder students associate politics with dysfunctional Washington.

If we were to take a problem-solving approach in our student affairs practice, we might make some headway.

Embracing a problem-solving approach to learning would be appropriate if we seek to rid higher education of the “mind/body split” that compartmentalizes intellectual discussion from one’s public actions (hooks, 1994, p. 16). A problem-solving approach would require the construction of deep and sustainable relationships between student affairs educators and the rest of the faculty, staff, and administration; a problem-solving-based model would necessitate an emphasis on the common good, meaning that students would see departments and offices role model this approach by collectivizing agendas as much as possible and placing the institution’s mission (which would ideally emphasize problem-solving) above their own. In addition to the construction of strong relationships, a problem-solving approach would encourage student affairs educators to create Freirian relationships with students; with an emphasis on community problem-solving, student/teacher and teacher/student “learn from and teach each other” – “doing ‘with’ rather than ‘for’” (as cited in Manning 1994, p. 95).

In this model, collaboration is the name of the game. The common good is at the heart of this effort, with problems uniting academic disciplines, student affairs staff, and students as opposed to egos, departments that are siloed off from each other, and disengaged students. To get here, we do need to re-examine our social justice efforts.

In order to face society’s problems today, our students must first begin the process of understanding and exploring their identity, their values, and how they view difference. In addition, the educational nature of problem-solving demands from students the ability to see an issue from another’s perspective. Following these tough lessons, students also need to learn about power and privilege, the source of many of the problems our students will be trying to solve.

Politics does not have to be perceived as a bad thing. The derivation of the word -- “polis” is the Greek word for a city or state, thus “politikos,” or politics, means affairs/issues of the city/state -- is hardly negative. However, college students unfortunately associate the broken system currently in Washington with politics; consequently, "politics" gets a bad name and other, more positive opportunities for political engagement become invisible. With just a bit more effort, student affairs practitioners can reveal the other side of politics -- civil conversations, learning from others, changing their realities to help themselves and others -- and align programs with our institutions' "citizenship"-laden mission statements.

Ben Goddard at The Hill comments on the current generation gap in politics. His discussion reminds us of the coalition-based, yet impatient methodology Millennials use to solve problems.

They have not generally gotten involved with candidates or issues because “Millennials perceive politics as a polarized debate with no options for compromise or nuance,” in the words of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. They don’t want to be limited by political party affiliation. They care about issues important to their “community” and will work with anyone who can get something done.

But [Millennials] are impatient. That is why so many seemed to drift away from President Barack Obama as the healthcare debate dragged on and partisanship in Washington got out of hand. For nearly a year and a half their parents’ and grandparents’ generations argued over what — to many — seemed like petty details. They tuned out not because they didn’t care but because they were bored.

Now that there actually is a healthcare bill, it will be fascinating to see if they are willing to re-engage. The Obama campaign showed how to communicate with and motivate this generation in 2008. Re-engaging them will be crucial to the president’s reelection and, arguably, to Democrats’ congressional future. There are 44 million Millennials eligible to vote, which is about 20 percent of the electorate. Most of them are independents — at least in their voting patterns. Recent polls show independents drifting away from the Republican Party as a result of the angry debate in Washington. The Millennials could lead that bloc of voters back into the Obama/Democrat fold if the president can show that together, they are making a difference. Millennials make up a big community confident in their ability to make change and willing to get involved if the president and congressional Democrats send them the right pithy message: Yes, we did.

Goddard's assessment is the first I have encountered that accurately captures the Millennials' move away from Democrats this year. It's not that they are becoming conservative. It's that they are looking at an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress -- a Congress they have more of a stake in than any other in recent history, given their turnout rate in 2006 and 2008 -- and seeing few issues of theirs discussed in a substantive manner. When the focus is on bitter, personal debates -- personality rather than the problem itself -- any notion that representatives and senators might be interested in problem-solving is out the door.

And now we get to why that impacts our country. The obvious answer is rooted in that generational pact seen in American society for centuries -- that each generation is responsible for ensuring that the torch it passes to a new generation burns brighter. We know that the life-long adoption of civic habits like voting are dependent on youth engagement. The more a young person votes when he or she is first eligible, the more he/she will continue to vote later in life. Furthermore, from a large-D Democratic perspective, given the obvious electoral benefits of adding a large, engaged, liberal generation to the voting rolls, the Democrats should be thinking of everything they can do to appeal to young people. In V.O. Key's terms, the PIG (Party-in-Government) must mind the PIE (Party-in-Electorate), designing ways to better communicate the process so that it doesn't interfere with young voters' appreciation of the policy output. Easier said than done, but it must be done.

Bottom line: if we fail to engage a group of young people who are interested in being engaged, we're not only letting them down, we're letting our nation down.