What Makes a Good Citizen?
This is a guest post from James Piltch, a writer road-tripping across the country talking to people about citizenship.
During the 2016 election, I was spending my senior year at Harvard exploring the history of Boston’s civics education for my thesis. During my time in the archive, I read about all the ways young people in Boston learned how to be good citizens: doing chores at home, writing local officials, even cleaning up the streets. At the same time, I was alarmed by how un-civil and un-civic public life was during the election. Hearing people call each other “un-American” made me curious whether there were ideas we do share. To find answers, I’ve spent the last month-and-half traveling across the country talking to people about citizenship.
Throughout this journey, my driving question is: What makes a good citizen?
A common answer to this question in the civics education world is: an “active citizen,” someone who participates in the political process consistently and in informed manner. Peter Levine, in a recent white paper for the Democracy at a Crossroads (#CivXNow) Summit, noted that action civics programs, such as the one Generation Citizen has created, are an excellent way to create lifelong, active citizens. The idea of action civics is that students should be politically active: they should make their voice heard in local and national political arenas in addition to volunteering.
With that in mind, curricula are now providing students experience identifying problems and coming up with solutions inside and outside of class through projects focused on local issues. Students learn how to vote in an informed manner, call senators, protest when needed, and propose community action plans. Active citizenship depends on access to political institutions and civic life and comfort with trying to influence the political system.
During my travels, I’ve been to over twenty states and spoken with over 150 people from all walks of life, and I’ve discovered a challenge to this notion of actions civics: People don’t see political action as the best way to be a good citizen. Instead, they tend to prefer direct service like volunteering with community members and cleaning up and addressing issues in their neighborhood. In fact, people I’ve talked to seem cynical of whether they can really make a difference through the political process.
Only a handful of people I’ve spoken with have used the word “action” when asked about citizenship. Instead, people seem to use “engagement.” Although this distinction may seem subtle, it hints at the fact that, for most people, direct political action isn’t their preference or priority. Michael, a military officer in his mid-twenties who had just moved to Washington, D.C., told me that he’s a good citizen because “I try to stay engaged by understanding the issues our democracy is dealing with.” When he delved into specifics, he talked about knowing the news and talking with friends about politics. Engagement, on the surface, might not sound distinct from action, but it has a broader, and often more subtle scope. Engagement can be a conversation with a friend about issues or make oneself aware in other ways, whereas action for most means trying to influence politics directly.
Even people who did speak directly about action tended to downplay its importance. One of these folks was Adriel, an employee at MOGO Detroit and a lifelong advocate for LGBTQ rights. He said he was a good citizen because he has been “active in social activism…and local politics.” However, he believed his neighbors were better citizens than he because they have a “rapport with the citizens around them.”
The way Michael spoke about of a broader idea of engagement and Adriel downplayed political action raised a question in my mind: what type of civic action are people most inclined to participate in? What I found was that people most often choose direct service: volunteering with an non-governmental organization to address issues in the community or other communities.
Of roughly one hundred people I spoke with who see engagement or involvement or action as the key to citizenship, 75% prefer volunteering to politics.
Dolly, a retired waitress and die-hard Trump support living in Pittsburgh, was the best example. Rather than call her representatives about the hurricanes, she decided to fundraise herself: “We’re working on a music benefit right now for Hurricane Harvey. We have fourteen bands and PR people to get the news station. It’s going to be huge. We came up with this, just me and my two friends.”
This persistent thread of commitment to direct service in community caused me to question why the people I spoke with weren’t taking the kind of “political” action we so often associate with civic engagement. James, an Americorps volunteer in Pittsburgh, explained the reason best: “I am very cynical, about America and the American dream. I’m idealistic in some ways, because I do think there are good and important reasons for why we should do things like AmeriCorps…but it’s hard (not to be) demoralized (about democracy). Everyone’s vote counts, but some people’s votes count for more.”
This theme — that the political process isn’t the way to make a difference — highlights both the need for action civics in schools and potential roadblocks for it. If people, including students and their parents are skeptical about political action as crucial and effective, then it becomes that much harder to convince students that calling senators, or even voting, matters. This is a dynamic some civic learning scholars have termed “civic disjuncture,” when students’ lived realities are disparate from the one they’re presented in school. This disconnect can further existing disparities in civic learning and reinforce distrust in institutions and perceptions of their ability to effect change.
Accordingly, the examples students likely see of active citizenship often involve direct community work. Very few people appear on the news for going to town hall meetings, or calling a representative, or even running for local office (unless they win). Instead, students are likely to see clips of people donating food for hurricanes, building homes for homeless, and tutoring students. My interviews have confirmed that people are skeptical of political action, its impact, and its importance. They don’t use the word and don’t often engage with the political process in a formal sense.
People see community and citizenship as intertwined; for many, it’s easier to feel connected to community when helping someone down the street than it is when meeting with a politician.
And it’s much easier to engage locally than nationally. Even more than that, the lack of political trust that Pew Research Center finds coupled with the unequal access to political action and influence, means that students and teachers face serious challenges in cultivating the next generation of active citizens.
My time on the road suggests that there may be even more obstacles to action than are obvious. But that’s why action civics is needed, and it’s needed from a young age. Instilling in our nation’s young people a belief in participation in our democratic process will be central to empowering active citizens. As Hon. Ed Rendell, Former Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania said at the recent CivX Summit: “If people view our politics as broken, how do you get them interested? By telling them they can fix it. And they can.”
To learn more about James’s journey, visit his website at www.citizensstory.com.
