By Delaney Chase and Emily Richardson
Posted Oct. 3, 2024
After a day interviewing passersby on city streets and exploring issues such as mental health and fair education at YVote’s Democracy Camp, youth participants are asked to consider a question: “What is my role in an ideal democracy?”
The answers swirl around the philosophical and the practical for a generation of young people who, research shows, often mistrust institutions and are less likely to vote than older generations.
“It’s kind of hard to differentiate between the lies and the truth,” says 16-year-old Olivia Cisse, a YVote camper. “The lies kind of mess up the faith that you have in the government.”
Collective anxiety around youth engagement in civic life lurks like a bogeyman in society’s nightmares.
Voter turnout among Generation Z – those born from 1997 to 2012 – has historically been low. In 2022, only 1 in 10 voters nationwide was 18 to 29 years old, according to the Pew Research Center. A June Marist survey predicts about 67% of registered Gen Zers and Millennials combined will vote this November. That’s compared with 94% of Baby Boomers.
The debate over the engagement of Gen Z comes as civics knowledge among Americans has plunged. A 2023 survey found 17% of respondents could not name any of the three branches of government, and just 5% could name all five freedoms covered by the First Amendment.
Educators see civics programs like YVote as a potential guidepost for democracy.
“Every scientist, every doctor, every nurse, every teacher, every brick mason — every person – has a civic duty to our democracy and our republic,” says Robbie Pelkey, a social studies at Plainfield High School in Indiana.
YVote was founded in 2017 by New York high school students worried about low voter turnout among youth and a lack of civics education. The core premise of the group’s camp is that democracy is flawed – and young people have a duty to help fix it.
Over the next year, each camper has to plan and execute a democracy project that they will take back to their boroughs. In New York state, high school graduates can receive a Seal of Civic Readiness on their diplomas to recognize proficiency in civic knowledge.
Two of this year’s YVote campers attend a school in Manhattan that confers the seal. Organizers plan to reach out to ensure the students get credit for their final camp projects, and they hope other schools will follow suit.
“We care a lot about what people do beyond voting,” says Sonja Aibel, 17, a YVote leader. “Even if we have participants who come away from the program not convinced that voting is the right choice for them, they’re still prepared to take action beyond that.”
In Phoenix, Camp O’Connor USA takes students on a five-day journey through the workings of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The camp is part of a slate of educational programs at the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy.
On a day when seventh and eighth graders visited the governor’s office, Ziora Obuekwe, a 13-year-old from Windsor, Connecticut, worked her way to the front for a group photo with Gov. Katie Hobbs.
“I think anyone can play a role, no matter how young they are,” Obuekwe says. “Just getting engaged in democracy and government, just learning about it so when you’re old enough to vote, you can make a difference and make an impact on the leaders.”
The program launched in 2016 with 48 students. This year, 100 attended, and Obuekwe was among 34 out-of-state campers.
The camp concludes with a mock convention, marked by platform speeches and exultant parents and students clothed in red, white and blue and bearing new information about democracy.
A report by researchers at Georgetown University found that participants in a similar civics camp in 2019 saw improvements in their knowledge of history and civics. Ben Maynard, director of civics education at the Phoenix institute, points to one marker of success.
“If we have a student come here that doesn’t remember exactly everything that was said on ‘Executive Day,’ but they go back to their school and they want to be part of their student council, that’s a win,” Maynard says.
A 2022 report by the Brennan Center for Justice found that young people engage in democracy in ways not often recognized, including volunteering, donating money, boycotting and community service.
More than 30% of Americans ages 18-29 have signed a petition or joined a boycott, and about 15% have attended a protest, demonstration or march, according to data from CIRCLE, the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
However, survey respondents who were interested in civic engagement said they often lack information, support and opportunities.
The federal government doesn’t mandate civics education and a 2022 report by the American Bar Association found only 38 states – New York among them – require some form of civics courses in schools.
For those trying to build a curriculum, the nonprofit Center for Civic Education provides model programs for various grade levels. It also provides teacher training, such as an event overseen by the Indiana Bar Foundation in June.
About two dozen social studies, history and government teachers convened at Indiana University Bloomington to learn how to improve their civics teaching skills. They listened to presentations, workshopped lesson plans and brainstormed how to explain difficult subjects such as slavery or contentious elections.
Plainfield High School teacher Adam Ferguson acknowledged in one session that teachers often do not take college courses or get training about how to handle controversial issues. His advice: Don’t avoid the conversations, and don’t call them debates. Use the word “discourse,” because it’s more thoughtful.
Even as some educators, political leaders and academics voice support for civics education as an ideal, tensions are growing over its execution.
Some fear civics learning can veer into indoctrination. Civics Alliance, a coalition of conservative individuals and groups, advocates against what it calls “action civics,” which, the group says on its website, “replaces classroom civics instruction with political commitment, protest and vocational training in progressive activism.”
States across the country have pushed policies that limit or outright ban things such as critical race theory.
In 2022, Florida lawmakers forbid teaching any of eight “specified concepts” related to “race, color, sex, or national origin,” including the idea that based on those factors, a person should be “discriminated against … to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.”
Some young people wade through all the voices, saying they just want space to learn.
“We want to give young people the opportunity to learn about politics and learn about civics and learn about how to maintain democracy without feeling like they have to stick to one side of the spectrum,” says 16-year-old Heba Elkouraichi, a 2023 YVote camper who helped plan this year’s program.
“You can have your views, but you can also work with the greater population toward having everyone’s voice heard.”
Delaney Chase is a News21 reporter. Emily Richardson is a NBCU Fellow at News21. News21 reporters Joshua Harrison-Williams, Hannah Lee and Vivian Serafin contributed to this story. This report is part of “Fractured,” an examination of the state of American democracy produced by Carnegie-Knight News21. For more stories, visit https://fractured.news21.com/.
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