Getting the country back on track: Education and civic engagement
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
Civic engagement - youth participating in community service in their neighborhood
Is not the product of good youth-development and education supposed to be civic engagement? If we are going to take Obama’s words seriously and do our part as citizens to get this country back on the right track, the education system should be priority numero uno.
Civic engagement means being involved and taking part in the duties and obligations of belonging to a community, from voting to attending a community meeting to volunteering in some kind of community service. But do we see our young adults crowding the streets to make positive change? Hardly. There is probably an entire web of issues leading to poor civic engagement, but it all starts with education.
I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I think it is pretty obvious that if someone has virtually no education, they will have a low paying job, maybe even three of them, and won’t even have the time to contribute to their community. Or, their lack of education could leave them oblivious to even the most basic structure of their community and how or why they should contribute. Or, like many people, maybe they do know how the system works, but they also feel they have no power or influence to make a difference. Personally, I can mark the exact minute when I became civically engaged – it was when I realized I could make a difference.
That is what education should be all about. Showing our youth how the system works and how to use it or change it to make things better. Empowering our youth will give them the interest and energy to contribute to their communities. That is what is going to revitalize this great nation of ours.
I wish our City Council would focus on, more than anything else, getting youth involved in community change. City Council should have its own White House-like student interns shadowing its council members and staffers at all times, learning the ins and outs of creating change in a highly political system. City Council should work with youth to have them organize and host community events. City Council should be tightly connected with our local schools to ensure that our youth are becoming civically engaged. Maybe City Council could encourage civic engagement of youth through our neighborhood councils.
This is not to neglect the fundamental, crucial problems in the Los Angeles Unified School District education system. Civic engagement should be the measure of how well the system is working, and that is my point. We need to change the system so it does work – so it produces valuable, productive, effective citizens that can change the world for the better. Can City Council do anything to make this happen?
Please share your thoughts.