Civics is at or very close to the top of my education priority list. I’ve often lamented how far we’ve strayed from the founding ideals of public education, which had more to do with preparing young people for effective self-government than college and career readiness. NAEP results reinforce just how badly starved for oxygen civics and history are in our schools. If reading and math proficiency are at crisis levels, civics and history have reached a state of advanced decay. Fewer than one in four eighth graders score “proficient” in civics; in history, it’s even worse—just 18 percent at or above proficient. We don’t even bother to test in twelfth grade anymore. Perhaps we just don’t want to know.
From the Education Commission of the States comes a new brief, “Youth Voting: State and city approaches to early civic engagement.” The report notes that opportunities for youth participation in city and state elections “are becoming part of the policymakers’ toolkit to create engaged citizens and lifelong voters.” Specific initiatives—preregistration to vote of individuals as young as sixteen in twelve states and the District of Columbia; allowing seventeen-year-olds to vote in primaries, municipal races, and school board elections in twenty-five others—are highlighted.
I have to confess that even though civic education matters a great deal to me, efforts to extend to vote to sixteen- and seventeen-year olds don’t quicken my pulse. “Hey, kids! You can vote in primary, municipal, and school board elections! Isn’t that awesome?!” Well, is it awesome to you, adult voter? Voter apathy may be a sign of civic disengagement, but narrowly defining civic engagement as voting strikes me as unlikely to be the antidote our civic malaise. If merely driving more young people to the polls is the goal, just hand out orange slices and participation medals at the polls and be done with it.
Let me offer an alternative: A K–12 education steeped in history, civics, and current events. Consider a move away from the curriculum of narcissism—fetishizing “culturally relevant” novels; writing endless personal essays and memoirs—that was always predicated on the condescending assumption that kids can only be engaged by their own interests and experiences. A good education should challenge students to think, speak and write about important issues in their communities. The world outside the classroom is rich and relevant; children should be encouraged see themselves as players, not spectators, in America’s democracy. If you extend suffrage to high school juniors and seniors, you may get more lifelong voters, but I imagine they will view it the way they do brushing their teeth, eating well, and exercising—an obligation; a civic duty. If they are invested in the outcome of the vote—the residue of restoring civics, history, and citizenship to a first purpose of schooling—we would not need to “encourage” them to vote. They will march to the polls like they do to the DMV on the day they are eligible for a driver’s license. Driving a car is a meaningful act that gives kids a sense of agency and control. Voting should feel the same.
Youth voting? Sure, go ahead. There’s no harm in saying, “Here’s where the levers are, kids, and here’s how to pull ‘em.” But let’s also make sure that kids have the opportunity to learn why voting matters, what’s at stake, and the price that’s been paid to ensure their right to do so. Do that well and they may surprise us by becoming “engaged citizens and lifelong voters” without any further effort on our part.
SOURCE: Stephanie Aragon, “Youth Voting: State and city approaches to early civic engagement,” Education Commission of the States (December 2015).
