How Can We Re-Engage Young People? - Minnesota Civic Youth

Occasionlly we welcome guest authors to contribute to this blog. This post was written by Bruce Acosta, a sophomore at Edina High School here in Minnesota. Bruce was born in Dubai and spent most of his childhood in Canada and Australia. After moving to Minnesota in eighth grade, Bruce developed a passion for government and politics, especially when it comes to young people and their communities.

Informed, engaged citizens are a prerequisite to any republic. Needless to say, when the electorate succeeds in fulfilling their role of participation, government officials are better equipped to fulfill their own responsibility to create programs, legislation, and policies that reflect the interests of the population. However, in contemporary American politics, this is not the case. Despite the universal pride we seem to share in being American, political engagement, specifically in young voters, is desperately lacking. With less than a fifth of voters aged eighteen to twenty-nine casting their ballot in 2014, it becomes clear that no amount of patriotism can compensate for the unwillingness to participate that has been demonstrated by the new generation of Americans.

When we consider that voting rates among younger citizens have failed to exceed fifty percent since 1972, the future political landscape looks even more bleak. To make matters worse, upcoming voters have shown low civic awareness in addition to an insufficient grasp of basic political knowledge, an issue that is clearly evident in national student assessments in social studies. According to performance in the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), more than seventy-five percent of high school seniors score below “proficient” in the civics portion of the test, a statistic that has declined from 2006 to 2010. Given that citizen disengagement is occurring in conjunction with a shortage of informed students, we have to ask ourselves how the next generation will handle themselves when they inherit the duty of government. However, to find a way to integrate them into current systems and institutions, we must first consider the causes of the issue at hand.

What’s Behind this Issue?

A review of the main contributors to political disengagement and unawareness reveals three main perpetrators: low access to quality civics education, political alienation of young Americans and a shift in how young citizens want to participate. Regarding education, it is important that students develop an adequate understanding of democratic principles so that they can actualize their political goals. Despite this, socioeconomic disparities prevent many schools from providing civics courses. When they are available to students, research suggests these courses are frequently lacking in rigor or are offered only as optional classes. Additionally, social studies curricula across the nation often marginalize government classes in favor of other subjects, namely history.

Secondly, young Americans are turned off from participation because of the lack of relatable young leaders in public affairs and the negative portrayal of politics in the media, which breeds distrust with government institutions. This feeling of alienation is fueled even further by campaigns that make little effort to capture young voters, who politicians view as a waste of limited campaign resources.

Lastly, with the most recent generation of mericans, the political focus has moved away from “conventional politics”: voting, petitioning, joining a political party, etc. Instead, surveys of young citizens have revealed a more exclusive involvement in “self-actualization” in the form of protests, activism, and volunteerism because of general dislike for traditional institution-based methods. While it is in part reassuring that young people still want to participate in some capacity, this shift in priorities poses a threat to the traditional methods of participation that rely on government institutions, especially voting.

We Know What We Need to Do

In order to effectively combat civic disengagement and promote political awareness, we must find a way to harness the desire to impact one’s community and establish cooperation between the social institutions in direct contact with young Americans: families and schools.

This post does not necessarily reflect the views of Minnesota Civic Youth or its staff.