Joseph Kahne: Democracy for Some
Filed at 10:00 am on March 31, 2008 in Civic Engagement • Leave a comment
Today’s schools give white, higher achieving, and higher income youth far more civic learning opportunities. Will digital media be any different? In exploring this topic, MacArthur grantee Joe Kahne has received significant media attention. Professor Kahne directs the civic engagement research group at Mills College.
Peter Levine and I just did an op-ed in the SF Chronicle and did a press release that led to an AP story that focused on inequality in the youth vote. We discussed this in relation to the unequal provision of civic learning opportunities in schools. In short, 18-29 year olds with some college experience are 3 1/2 times more likely to vote than those who have no college experience. Our general point is that part of the reason civic participation (particularly voting) is unequal across different groups of young people is that schools give white, higher income, and higher achieving youth far more of the civic learning opportunities that promote these civic and political outcomes. For example, students in classes with higher average SES levels were twice as likely to report studying how laws were made and 1.9 times as likely to report participating in service activities. These findings are based on an article Ellen Middaugh and I did called Democracy for Some: The Civic Opportunity Gap. This analysis doesn’t draw on findings from our digital media survey as those aren’t developed yet - but it is quite relevant to the digital media work.
We are only beginning to analyze the classroom opportunities schools provide that connect digital media and civic engagement—for example, learning how to assess the trustworthiness of information on the web and using the internet to get different points of view about political and social issues. Based on our initial analyses, these learning opportunities appear to be equally distributed across different demographic groups, unlike many other classroom-based civic learning opportunities. We also know that regular classroom civic opportunities are associated with gains in civic outcomes even when controlling for demographics and prior civic commitments. We are now beginning to examine how civic learning opportunities that employ digital media relate to civic outcomes. To the extent that they are related, they may help promote civic outcomes in an equitable way.
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