Justin is not alone. In a recent study of high school seniors from
California, for example, only 28% agreed that “I think people in government
care about what people like me and my family need” (Kahne
and Middaugh 2005). Related findings are common. A survey by the
National Association of Secretaries of State, for example, revealed that
two-thirds of all young people agreed that “our generation has an important
voice, but no one seems to hear it.” Moreover, those youth who were least
trusting were also the least likely to vote, to believe that government can
affect their lives, or to pay attention to politics (National Association of Secretaries of State 1999). These
findings, combined with numerous other indicators that show low and in many
cases declining civic and political participation, indicate that forms of
engagement required for a participatory democracy to thrive are in need of
attention (Macedo et al. 2005).
In response to such concerns, educators and policy makers have stepped up
efforts to promote young people's participation in political and civic
affairs. A common strategy for doing so has been through service learning
curriculum and community service activities that provide youth with
readily-accessible opportunities to make a difference in their communities:
elementary school students have cleaned up local parks; middle and high
school students have brought food baskets to homeless shelters and
volunteered in local hospitals, old-age homes, and recycling centers;
college students have wet their civic feet by organizing and participating
in a host of community projects to assist those in need. Indeed, unlike many
measures of formal political engagement, rates of volunteerism among young
people have risen dramatically over the past decade (Putnam 2000). Those hoping to foster civic and political
engagement have often been supportive of these developments, believing that
they will help young people recognize the value of giving back, will teach
important skills, and will build their commitment to further engagement. One
principal way this will happen, the argument goes, is by developing
students' sense of efficacy. Eyler and Giles (1999), for example, argue that a sense of efficacy is a key building
block for civic commitment. Indeed, many educators believe that if we shore
up young people's sense of efficacy (their confidence that they can make a
difference), then their levels of civic and political engagement will
rise.
In this article, we discuss some surprising findings from our study of 10
nationally recognized programs that engaged youth in community-based
experiences and aimed to develop democratic values. Many, but not all, of
these initiatives employed service learning activities. We should note at
the outset that our study was not intended to measure the relationship
between efficacy and civic and political engagement. However, data from the
two-and-a-half year study led us to question the common assertion that
efficacious community experiences will necessarily prepare youth for
participation in the democratic life of the community. The observations we
detail below do not constitute a definitive proposition about the
relationship between efficacy and rates of civic and political engagement.
Rather, we offer a cautionary tale of some potential shortcomings of
programs that emphasize efficacy and, likewise, highlight some possible
value to experiences where students encounter roadblocks rather than
success. We conclude by describing some ways educators might respond to some
of the limits of efficacy when preparing citizens for life in a democratic
society.
The Relationship between Efficacy and Civic and Political
Participation
Researchers have identified a strong connection between an individual's
sense that they can make a difference—their sense of efficacy—and their
level of civic participation.1
We adopt a
relatively traditional conception of efficacy in political and
civic endeavors: the belief that what you or those in the
community do can bring positive change (see Bandura 1977).
As Almond and Verba write in
The Civic Culture, their
1963
landmark study:
[T]he belief in one's competence is a key political attitude. The
self-confident citizen appears to be the democratic citizen. Not
only does he think he can participate, he thinks others ought to
participate as well. Furthermore, he does not merely think he
can take part in politics; he is likely to be more active.”
(257)
Similarly, Conway found that those with high levels of political efficacy
are 20–30% more likely to vote than those with low levels of efficacy,
and similar relationships have been found to other forms of civic
participation (in Berman 1997, 44; also see,
Niemi and Associates 1974; and National Association of Secretaries of State
1999).
The strong relationship that social scientists have identified between
young people's sense that they are competent civic actors and their
desire to participate seems to provide a clear rationale for promoting
positive educational experiences that can be shown to boost
participants' sense of efficacy. Evidence from our study, in fact,
supports these conclusions. But we will also show that these
relationships are not as straightforward as they may seem. We will make
two points in this regard:
- Exposure to certain kinds of constraints, although frustrating, can
also help students learn about the ways power structures, interest
group influences, and technical challenges can limit the ability of
concerned citizens to bring about change.
- Shining the spotlight exclusively on efforts to promote efficacy
may lead educators to emphasize non-controversial charitable
activities. When charity and voluntary direct-service activities
become the primary way in which educators teach about citizenship in
a democracy, such curricula can reinforce the assumption that if
individual citizens would just help out where help is needed, that
these acts of kindness and charity (multiplied across a citizenry)
will transform society and offer redress for complex social
problems.
Indeed, emphasizing efficacy may promote a false victory by obscuring the
need to understand how various governmental policies and market
structures can both create and respond to different social problems.
This focus may also distract attention from examination of various
controversial social topics even though learning to thoughtfully and
respectfully engage controversial issues is a fundamentally important
component of schooling in a democracy (Noddings
1999; Oakes et al. 2000; Hess 2002). We will explore these limits of
efficacy in some detail below. First, however, we turn to the supportive
role an emphasis on efficacy can play in developing students' civic
capacities and dispositions.
Opportunities for Efficacy Are Often Desirable
Our two-and-a-half year study of 10 programs that aimed to instill
democratic values in youth and young adults included dozens of
observations, 116 interviews, and just under 600 pre/post surveys that
focus on changes in attitudes related to civic participation. We visited
each program for a few days at least once each year to interview
students and teachers and to observe the program in action. To
illustrate our observations about efficacy we focus on two of these
programs. Both programs were created through partnerships between the
respective schools and outside curriculum developers. We were not
involved in the design of the programs. We focus on these two programs
because (a) they both worked with high school seniors in social studies
classes and (b) the teachers who designed and implemented these programs
employed strategies that had differing impact on students' sense of
efficacy.2
For additional details on
our methods please see Westheimer and Kahne
2004). For information on other programs in this
study, please contact the authors.
By reflecting on our
findings from these two programs, we are able to consider potential
benefits as well as unintended consequences of a curricular emphasis on
efficacy in relation to civic and political engagement.
Madison County Youth in Public Service
The story of Madison County Youth in Public Service demonstrates the
ways an emerging sense of civic and political efficacy can
contribute to students' civic and political commitments. As part of
a Jefferson High School government course, students in this program
worked in small groups with various government agencies on
community-based projects. These internships required that small
groups of students work on public service projects in their county's
administrative offices. One group, for example, studied the
feasibility of curbside recycling. They conducted phone interviews
of 150 residents, undertook a cost analysis, and examined maps of
the city's population density to determine which parts of the city
should be served in this way. These students examined charts of
projected housing growth to estimate growth in trash and its cost
and environmental implications. Another group identified jobs that
prisoners incarcerated for less than 90 days could perform and
analyzed the cost and impact of similar programs in other
localities. Other students helped to develop a five-year plan for
the fire and rescue department.
In all of these projects, students were responsible for interacting
with government agencies, writing reports, and presenting findings.
The students' considerable successes were aided by a great deal of
administrative footwork beforehand. For each of the projects, the
school district's instructional supervisor coordinated contacts at
the appropriate government agencies, worked with those agencies to
structure appropriate and engaging projects, and found liaisons who
were excited about working with students. In short, Madison County
Youth in Public Service was structured for success—designed
so that students succeeded in what they set out to do.
And succeed they did. The group of students organizing the recycling
drive wrote an editorial based on their analysis that was published
in their local newspaper. Making the case for improved funding for
the fire and rescue department, one group of students calculated the
number of minutes it would take for fire trucks to reach the widely
disparate elementary schools in their rural district. Their
calculations were publicized and the community responded with
interest. Another group made a presentation about their efforts on
behalf of the community to the county's Board of Supervisors.
Consistently, when discussing their experiences in this program,
students expressed satisfaction with all they had accomplished and
with the recognition they received for these accomplishments. As one
student explained, “I thought it was just going to be another
project. You know, we do some research, it gets written down and we
leave and it gets put on the shelf somewhere. But, this [curbside
recycling] is … really going to happen.” A different student told
us, “I didn't realize this was going to be as big as what it is. I
mean, we've been in the newspaper … four times.” And another student
reported, “I didn't expect it to have such an impact. I thought it
would be one of those classes where we all talk about it and …
they'd nod and smile, [but] we really had an effect on what is
happening.”
The Madison County program provided numerous opportunities for
students to learn skills and to be exposed to information that, in
addition to their accomplishments, enhanced their sense of political
efficacy. For example, when high school students needed to make
their presentation to their county's Board of Supervisors, each
group worked with their teacher and with their field site supervisor
to plan their presentation. They got tips on how to make their brief
presentations interesting, on how to generate visual aids with
computer software, and on how to insure that their primary message
was communicated.
Perhaps most important from the standpoint of civic involvement,
students linked their sense of efficacy (stemming from their
emerging sense of capacity and from the impact of their work) to
their desire for continued civic participation. For example, Eddie
noted, “I didn't realize we had as much influence as we did. One
person can really make a change in the community.” When we asked him
whether this changed the way he thought about being a citizen, he
replied that, after the experience with local government agencies,
he thought that,
[All citizens] have a responsibility to voice their opinion
by either writing letters or talk[ing] to people who control
the county government, or state and federal government. Just
let them know what you think about something that they're
trying out. Maybe give new opinions or new ideas that you
think would help.
Other students expressed similar satisfaction from what they
accomplished as well as commitments to remain engaged in civic
affairs in the future.
Our quantitative data was consistent with what we heard during
interviews and saw during site visits. As detailed in Table 1, there were statistically
significant changes in pre/post-Likert scale scores on several of
our measures. In fact, we found a significant increase in all three
measures related to efficacy: civic efficacy, leadership efficacy,
and students' sense that they had the knowledge and social capital
needed to effectively promote community development.3
Our measure of civic efficacy included items
which asked if students felt that they, “can make a
difference in my community.” The measure of leadership
efficacy assessed students' sense of their effectiveness as
leaders—assessing their level of agreement with statements
such as “Once I know what needs to be done, I am good at
planning how to do it.” Our measure of social capital for
community development assessed students' sense of their own
knowledge and ability to promote community development. It
asked, for example, if students feel they “know how to
contact and work effectively with organizations in their
community such as schools, businesses, and social service
organizations.” For a complete list of items for these
scales or for other measures used in the study, please
contact the authors.
These gains were matched by
increases in reports of personal responsibility to help others and a
marginally significant commitment to community involvement.
4 Our use of a control group adds to
our confidence in these results. The control group had
similar academic skills and was taught by the same two
teachers. This control group did not show statistically
significant changes on any of the items we
measured.
Madison County Youth in Public Service
Youth Action
Youth Action provides an interesting contrast to the Youth in Public
Service program. The program, part of a district-wide collaborative
effort, was created by the teachers at Woodrow Wilson High
School.5
We are using the
pseudonym “Youth Action” to denote a program that takes
place in a school we have written about elsewhere (Westheimer and Kahne 2004). In this
article we focus on the first year the program was
implemented. After this first year, the curriculum was
entirely restructured, bearing little resemblance to the
curriculum analyzed herein. In writing that concerns
subsequent years, therefore, we gave the program a different
pseudonym so that the two instantiations would not be
confused.
One class enrolled “Academy” students who
were considered to be at risk of dropping out while another worked
with students preparing for advanced placement (AP) exams. The
Academy classes are populated primarily but not exclusively by
African-American, Latino, and Asian-American students while the AP
classes enroll mostly but not exclusively European-American and
Asian-American students. Students chose their own projects based on
discussions in class, readings, and research about problems facing
their communities. One group of students investigated the lack of
access to adequate health care for women and sought to get the city
Board of Supervisors to allocate funds to erect a new women's health
center in an under-served area. Another group sought to challenge a
State Senate bill that could put students and their parents in jail
for truancy and try juveniles as adults for certain crimes. Other
groups investigated child labor practices and bias in standardized
testing. In addition to work in the community, students also
participated in three “summits” where they publicly presented their
projects and what they accomplished.
Students' experiences working on these community-based activities
were uneven. Some students were engaged in in-depth projects that
were powerful; others were engaged in projects that were badly
thwarted. Their problems stemmed from two related dynamics. First,
none of the government, school, and community agencies was prepared
beforehand to expect contact from the students. Consequently, when
students sought to investigate issues they frequently were turned
away, ignored, or, in the students' words, “not taken seriously.” In
addition—and more important for our purposes here—the projects
students pursued challenged the status quo. While students in
Madison County worked with city officials on projects,
those in Youth Action criticized and sought to change various
governmental and educational policies and programs from outside the
system. Not surprisingly, Youth Action students encountered
resistance.
Both qualitative and quantitative data regarding the students'
frustrating experiences indicate that these experiences decreased
their commitment to future civic involvement. In interviews,
students reported high levels of frustration and a growing sense of
hopelessness. They expressed a diminished sense of efficacy related
to community improvement and questioned whether it is their
responsibility to try. One student recalled her frustration this
way:
We were trying to get anyone to listen to us but never got
all the way through because we kept running into all this
red tape that said “no you can't do that” [or] “Oh, you want
to do that, well you'll have to go to that office over
there.” [We] kind of got the impression that nobody really
wanted to do anything about it.
This sense of frustration was widespread. In response to other
interview and in-class reflection questions such as “What did you
learn from these activities?” other students answered “If you go out
into the community and try to do good, someone will pull you down,”
“Basically, they were wasting our time and theirs too,” and “it's
hard to get anyone to listen to you.”
In most cases, the survey results, as shown in Table 2, were consistent with the interview data,
reflecting the frustration students experienced in connection with
their community-based activities. Numerous measures of students'
orientation toward civic participation and community engagement
declined. For example, students reported a sizable (−.50) and
statistically significant decline when asked to indicate their level
of agreement with the statement, “I want to become an effective
leader in my community.” Students' sense of leadership efficacy also
declined significantly. In addition, students' sense of personal
responsibility to help others declined markedly and there were
marginally significant declines in their commitment to community
involvement and in their desire to work for justice.6
Our sense, as is discussed later in the paper,
is that this decline in the desire to work for justice was
due to a diminished desire to be engaged and not to a
diminished sense of the importance of such work.
These declines occurred despite the careful work of the teachers
involved in Youth Action to develop classroom curriculum in which
students would emerge ready to work to improve society as active
leaders and citizens.
Thus, while efficacious experiences promoted civic commitment among
Madison County students, frustrating experiences resulted in
diminished self-confidence and diminished commitment to future civic
involvement in Youth Action students.
The Limits of Political Efficacy as a Curricular Goal
Given that Madison County's approach promoted civic commitments and Youth
Action's program did not, a logical plan of action would be to promote
the Madison County approach over that employed by Youth Action. In other
words, educators interested in promoting young people's political
engagement might focus their efforts exclusively on civic education
experiences that provide students with the sense that they can make a
difference. We would argue, however, that the choice between these two
programs or approaches is not straightforward. While giving students a
chance to make a difference clearly may have benefits, this approach may
also have costs. Our perspective on the issues can be clarified by
considering the difference between internal and
external efficacy as educational aims.
The Difference between Internal and External Political
Efficacy
Those who study attitudes toward political engagement draw a
significant distinction between internal and external political
efficacy (Balch 1974). Internal political
efficacy refers to a person's sense of his or her own ability to
participate effectively in the political process. People with high
degrees of internal political efficacy believe they are capable when
it comes to civic affairs. Measures of external political efficacy,
on the other hand, reflect perceptions of governmental and
institutional responsiveness to citizens' needs and demands.
Although findings are not uniform, internal political efficacy has
generally been found to have a positive relationship to political
activity and the closer the alignment of a specified measure of
efficacy to the form of activity, the stronger the relationship
(Wollman and Stouder 1991). Measures
of external efficacy, on the other hand, have not exhibited a
consistent relationship to activity. Indeed, Shingles (1981) and others have found high internal
political efficacy and low external political efficacy prompted
political activity among African Americans (see also Ennis and Schrener 1987; Harris 1999). Feeling both personal competence
and that government is not responsive to the needs of
African-American citizens prompted many African Americans to
participate in political affairs (often through activities such as
litigation and protest) to bring about more just laws and increased
government awareness and action.
Implications for Civic Education
In many cases, it seems reasonable to structure curriculum to promote
students' sense of internal efficacy—their sense of personal
competence. This goal might be pursued by developing that competence
(and recognition of that competence) through a variety of both
experiential and traditional educational activities.
Structuring curriculum so as to promote students' sense of external
efficacy, however, may be problematic. African Americans and
Latinos, for example, have tended to have a lower sense of external
political efficacy than do their White counterparts (see Niemi and Junn 1998; Abramson 1983). Such results likely reflect the fact
that government and community institutions are less responsive to
African Americans and Latinos than to European Americans. The
appropriate response, therefore, is to increase government
responsiveness—not to try and convince a disempowered group that
mainstream institutions want to respond to their concerns. To do
otherwise is to alter indicators of a healthy democracy
without challenging the underlying ills.7
Highlighting a similar set of issues, Thomas (1970) identified a conservative bias
in measures of personal efficacy. He found that those
holding a conservative political ideology were more likely
to express personal efficacy than those holding liberal
beliefs. Since these judgments may reflect reasonable
interpretations of lived experience, he argued that it
therefore makes no more sense to try and convince liberals
that they should have more efficacy than it does to convince
conservatives that they should have less.
What makes attention to broad notions of efficacy as a goal
particularly complex, therefore, is that curricular strategies that
deal sensibly with external efficacy may not promote internal
efficacy (Youth Action students may have learned valuable lessons
about external efficacy, but their sense of internal efficacy
suffered). Conversely, curriculum that attends primarily to internal
efficacy may not help students consider issues related to external
efficacy (Madison County students may have gained a greater sense of
internal efficacy, but they did not consider many issues related to
external efficacy). We elaborate on these dynamics below.
Revisiting the Evidence8 Since, as we noted earlier, our study was not designed
to examine the differential significance of internal and
external efficacy, our survey measures of civic and
leadership efficacy blended attention to internal and
external efficacy—though our measure of leadership efficacy
focused primarily on internal efficacy. Our interviews,
however, contained much rich detail about students' changing
perceptions of both internal and external efficacy. Given
this limitation, we view our findings as suggestive, but far
from definitive. Clearly, more in depth and focused
attention to these issues would be valuable.
The Youth Action projects engaged high stakes problems that students
found difficult to solve. While many school-based programs might
have students clean up a nearby park or collect clothing or food for
a local charity, the Youth Action students were engaged in ambitious
projects that sought to expose structural injustices, sometimes
forgoing more typical and bounded projects that do less to challenge
existing power structures. Whether to support a publicly funded
health care center for women or how to investigate bias in
standardized tests, for example, are controversial and unresolved
social policy questions. In addition, students were trying to
mobilize for change on their own—rather than by working with an
organization (governmental or otherwise) that was a legitimate
player in the given context. Not surprisingly, when their efforts
failed to illicit a meaningful response—let alone a change in
policy—students' desire to participate in political and civic
endeavors declined, as did their sense of leadership efficacy (a
measure which emphasizes internal efficacy).
At the same time, however, that these experiences may have diminished
students' sense of internal efficacy and thus undermined their
commitment to civic action, they also appear to have sparked
valuable insights related to questions of external efficacy. Kira
reported, for example:
I think it's really hard to get things done that count for
anything. I mean we can pick up litter all day long and get
something done [that is temporary], but to try and get them
to build a women's health center in our community, that's a
tough task and no one wants to do it.
In interviews and in class, students expressed an often-realistic
assessment of how difficult it is to accomplish meaningful and, at
times, controversial tasks. And, interviews and observations reveal
that students were deeply engaged in these activities and that most
took them very seriously. For example, Tony observed that
“We really had no clue that so many people would be
against a [publicly funded] health center, but
when we started to see where people stood on this, it seemed
like, well those who wouldn't get nothing from it, they were
the ones who didn't want it.”
When asked what it would take to get a women's health center built,
Kira responded, “You'd have to change a lot of people's minds about
stuff and organize…. You'd have to fight for it.”
In addition, analysis of the survey data reveals important
distinctions as well. For example, the scale measuring interest in
politics showed no change. However, if we consider three of its
items (see Table 3) we find movement in
opposing directions. Two items related to political action
(“interest in voting” and “interest in working on a campaign”)
showed statistically significant declines of 0.38 and 0.31,
respectively. At the same time, students reported a dramatic (+1.00)
and statistically significant (p < .01) increase in “talking
about politics and political issues.” In fact, this was the largest
pre/post change of any item across all the programs we studied.
Thus, the curriculum appears to have diminished students' sense of
internal efficacy and, as a result, to have diminished their
interest in related political activity, but not their overall
interest in politics. Indeed, their interest in politically charged
concerns and debates increased substantially.
Notable Individual Item Scores in “Interest in Politics”
Scale for Youth Action
The Madison County Youth in Public Service curriculum offers lessons
in this regard as well. While both qualitative and quantitative data
indicate that these students showed impressive gains in their sense
of civic and leadership efficacy, their interest in political
discussion remained constant (see Table
1). We did not find evidence in student interviews, our
observations, or our analysis of survey data that student projects
examined ideological and political issues related to interest groups
and the political process, the causes of poverty, different groups'
access to health care, or the fairness of different systems of
taxation (even though two projects focused on issues related to
health care and taxation). Students focused on particular programs
and policies and aimed for technocratic/value neutral analysis.
De-Politicizing Political Engagement: A Widespread Trend?
What is particularly troubling about this dynamic is that educators often
are making this choice—emphasizing curricular strategies that develop
internal efficacy but that obscure many issues related to external
efficacy. For example, a great deal of curriculum fails to ask about the
ways governments and other institutions respond to various individuals
and social problems. What role is played by power, by interest groups,
and by politics in structuring responses of key institutions to those
who seek reform? What obstacles—political, social, and economic—hinder
the collective pursuit of systemic change? (see Robinson 2000; Barber 1992). Data
that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) collected on
599 college service-learning programs, for example, revealed that 50%
were direct service (tutoring, serving food, clothes collections, blood
drives), 42% provided technical assistance such as leadership classes
and computer training, 7% emphasized physical revitalization such as
tree planting and housing renovation, and only 1% were for political
advocacy such as drafting legislation or building tenant councils (in
Robinson 2000, 145). In addition, surveys
of young people indicate movement in exactly this direction. For
example, a study commissioned by the National Association of Secretaries
of State (1999) found that less than 32% of
eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 voted in the 1996
presidential election (in 1972, the comparable number was 50%), but that
a whopping 94% of those aged 15–24 believed that “the most important
thing I can do as a citizen is to help others.” In a very real sense,
youth seem to be “learning” that citizenship does not require
government, politics, or social action.
Indeed, in a separate analysis related to these issues, we found that the
vision of citizenship embedded in particular curriculum mattered.
Whether or not a curriculum emphasized structural issues or questions of
social justice significantly influenced the kinds of civic and political
insights and commitments that students developed (Westheimer and Kahne 2004). Walker, drawing on her teaching
experiences with service learning at Rutgers University's Eagleton
Institute of Politics, labels this phenomenon a “service/politics split”
(2000). She describes the disposition of
the students she has worked with this way:
[M]ost of them were filled with disgust, disillusionment, and
even dread toward politics. They wanted to “make a difference”
and they believed that the best way to do that was by helping
another person one-on-one…. [C]hallenging decision-making
structures … rarely entered their thinking.
Walker goes on to note that students involved in non-controversial
activities that allow young people to “‘get things done’ and immediately
see results” tend to think of civic engagement as “results driven
activity” that do not challenge institutions in power. They are eager to
feed the hungry but not to think about the causes of poverty or
injustice; they tutor inner-city children, but do not ask why the
schools have little in the way of resources. She concludes that her
students learned a great deal about how to serve but little about
affecting political change (2000).
Thus, while many programs that provide opportunities to work in the
community may foster internal efficacy and may well be an effective way
to increase students' enthusiasm for civic engagement, crucial questions
of external efficacy and the skills needed to be efficacious in
politically charged contexts get scant attention. Moreover, these
programs may diminish or obscure both the importance of politics and the
need to think about the impact and design of social institutions and
structures.9
We also suspect that an
emphasis on experiencing efficacy can sometimes lead to a focus
on doing rather than thinking. Specifically, since careful
analysis takes time away from action and since such analysis
often highlights potential shortcomings of efforts that, on the
surface, appear desirable, a commitment to efficacy may lead
some educators to downplay analysis. This outcome is not
inevitable, however. The programs we studied all emphasized
academic and analytical work related to students'
experiences.
The pursuit of a more just and equitable society requires more than
individual efforts to make a difference. Students need to consider
issues of external efficacy—to whom and in what contexts do government
and other institutions respond. Attention to politics and to the ways
institutions respond to or create social problems is also essential.
The Challenge for Civic Educators
Faced with this tension, what might educators do? In particular, how
might good programs promote commitments to both politics and
participation? Given the importance of experiences that promote internal
forms of efficacy, how might these be promoted without obscuring
structural issues and attention to social justice? We briefly note
several prominent strategies here (also see Kahne and
Westheimer 2003).
The kind of successful strategy employed in Madison County—placing
students in efficacious organizations and having them join others in
meaningful work—can be structured to emphasize root causes of problems
while minimizing the potential sense of frustration and alienation that
can occur when students work on their own on often intractable social
problems. A clear and powerful example of this approach is provided in
Youniss, McClellan, and Yates (1997) study of
mostly African-American students enrolled in a Washington, D.C.,
catholic school. These students worked in soup kitchens and thus became
part of efficacious institutions. This, combined with classroom analyses
of poverty and homelessness did not necessarily provide them with a
sense of complete success—but rather a vision of an ideal for which they
and others could collectively strive. Frustration did not take hold of
these students despite the fact that homelessness was not eliminated.
Students became engaged in thinking about these issues and began to see
themselves as capable of responding to a meaningful social problem.
Other strategies help carry students' sense of hope and vision as well.
The Highlander Folk School in New Market, Tennessee, for example, seeks
to engage students in a supportive community that can motivate and
affirm the importance of challenging political structures and working
for systemic change even when—or especially because—participants
encounter strong resistance from governmental and non-governmental
institutions. Numerous studies suggest that social bonds, a sense of
affiliation, and support from a community with shared commitments can
nurture and sustain civic involvement despite intimidating challenges
and frustrating experiences (McAdam 1988;
Youniss, McLellan, and Yates 1997).
Another program we studied at Berea College in Kentucky called the
Overground Railroad had participants meet with individuals who were
active in the civil rights movement. These individuals, who in some
cases are still active in social change efforts today—individuals who
stayed true to their convictions despite the challenges of their
work—seemed to inspire students and buttress their sense of hope and
civic commitments. They offered a compelling vision of a meaningful life
and of the potential efficacy of collective social action.
Another program brought high school students in a Spanish language class
together with Spanish-speaking adults to help the adults prepare for
their upcoming citizenship exam—a highly satisfying and
efficacy-building volunteering experience. Simultaneously, the students
toured the community and studied the social, political, and economic
conditions of the local town, and of other Hispanic communities in the
United States and in Latin America. Through this work, students gained
an increased awareness of underlying political concerns. Students, spoke
(in Spanish), for example, about the high incidence of lead paint in
houses in this community, about cycles of poverty, and about inadequate
public services.
Rethinking Political Efficacy as a Curricular Goal
Young people today have too few opportunities to recognize their
potential contributions to civic and political life. The Madison County
Youth in Public Service program highlights the substantial impact that
experiences of success can provide. But this is not the complete
story.
The impact of the frustration Youth Action students experienced is also
worthy of careful attention. While the experiences of students in Youth
Action demonstrate that exposure to some authentic community dynamics
can diminish students' sense of internal efficacy and in the process
limit their commitment to future civic or political involvement, other
indicators demonstrate the value of engaging students in analysis of
significant and difficult-to-solve social problems. Part of the
frustration Youth Action students experienced resulted from real world
barriers to change. Students appeared to report low external efficacy
because, in fact, external factors were barriers to change. We are
reluctant to reject the value of these authentic experiences even though
the recognition of their limited external efficacy may have also
diminished students' internal efficacy as well as their motivation for
active involvement in civic action. Emphasizing only efficacious acts
because they permit students to experience success in helping others
without confronting constraints on their external efficacy can advance a
limited understanding of civic and political engagement. Such practices
obscure the need for politics and for confronting root/institutional
causes of social problems. This is made more worrisome by the fact that
numerous societal norms and incentives will lead teachers and students
to focus on civic activities that avoid major social problems and
analysis of root causes of injustice and inequality. Such service
activities are less controversial, easier to fund, and enjoy widespread
public support. They also provide opportunities for promoting internal
efficacy. While increasingly common, we are concerned that such
activities will not provide sufficient preparation for the often
contentious and difficult challenge of working to understand and change
the social, economic, and political dynamics that surround complex
issues such as poverty, caring for the environment, or racism. If
teachers and students decide that such problems are hopeless or,
alternatively, that it is easier to pursue a vision of citizenship that
avoids conflict, the full promise of democracy will not be realized.
At the same time, authenticity alone—to the extent that it conveys a
sense of hopelessness—is not desirable. The Youth Action curriculum
aimed to promote commitments to active civic engagement. The democratic
promise of such curriculum is not fulfilled if students “learn” that
civic and political engagement is pointless. Rather, educating citizens
for a democratic society requires that students gain a sense that they
can make a difference and also identify, analyze, and challenge social
and institutional practices as they work to create a more just
society.
Biographies
Joseph Kahne is the Kathryn P. Hannam Professor of American Studies and
professor of education at Mills College, Oakland, CA. A former New York
City public school teacher, he studies urban school reform and the
democratic purposes of schooling, directs the doctoral program in
educational leadership, and is director of Research at the Institute for
Civic Leadership at Mills (www.mills.edu/ICL). He
is the author of Reframing Educational Policy: Democracy, Community,
and the Individual, published by Teachers College Press. Joe
Kahne can be reached at jkahne@mills.edu.
Joel Westheimer is University Research Chair and professor in the social
foundations of education at University of Ottawa where he co-directs
Democratic Dialogue, a research collaboration for inquiry into
democracy, education, and society (www.democraticdialogue.com). A former New York City public
schools teacher, he writes on democracy, social justice, service
learning, and community. He is author of Among Schoolteachers:
Community, Autonomy, and Ideology in Teachers' Work (Teachers
College Press). Westheimer is currently working on a book on patriotism
and the threat to American Education. He can be reached at
joelw@uottawa.ca.
