Millennials and Civic Engagement
I’m just back from my presentation on blogging at the Citizenship Symposium. I’ll write more about the symposium next week. Today, I just want to take a moment to give you a link to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement’s ne study on students and civic engagement: Millennials Talk Politics: A Study of College Student Political Engagement.
I’m still digesting the research, but I am struck by the idea that our students want the world to be a better place and that they see their role in that. I think we see that during admissions tours and orientation, when students and their parents ask pointed questions about volunteer opportunities on the campus. They have the expectation that we will provide service opportunities.
Does this translate into the political realm. Yes and no. Students believe in grassroots activism, but they also believe the current political system fails them.
If you’re interested in knowing more about how our student percieve politics and civic engagement, you should take a look at the report.
There’s been an interesting discussion around this.
One of the less positive ways to read it is that we live in a society of instant gratification. Politics is a long hard road where one does not necessarily see direct benefits of one’s work. In fact,. you can put everything you have into a political movement, only to lose, or to find that the people you put in power did not carry through.
Volunteer opportunities, on the other hand, where students can observe direct impact, are more attractive.
There’s also been a feeling that politics is dirty, and that it is not service — that the volunteer hours people put into politics are somehow less altruistic than the hours they put in at the shelter. That it’s all spin and personal gain.
Which is odd to me. I worked in a homeless shelter for quite some time and left realizing I had made very little long term difference. I also helped install a Democratic regime here in New Hampshire, and because of that we now have a decent minimum wage and and civil unions, better support for poverty programs, and a renewed drive towards renewable energy.
The frame that politics is not altruistic is actually a right-wing frame, and they’ve done extremely well IMHO propogating that, and turning off a generation to activism… I personally find politics very frustrating and not enjoyable in the way working at the soup kitchen is — but the difference is made up in what can be accomplished.