Civics Engagement: Expectation without Education

I didn’t learn anything substantial about civics until I was 25 years old. Despite mandates to learn about government in school, my public school education left me unprepared for civic engagement. My public school education taught me the basics of government but I didn’t realize how incomplete it was until I was eligible to vote – the mock presidential elections in elementary school are no preparation for the real thing. There’s a push every election season to fire up the youth to pick up the political mantle, but expecting young people to feel empowered to be civically engaged without receiving adequate instruction is nonsensical.
I was born in Philadelphia but most of my schooling was in the William Penn School District. My education was functionally very segregated since my neighborhood was predominantly white while my peers in public school were predominantly Black and Brown. When I say we received a basic education, I mean just that. We learned about the three branches of government that included the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The curriculum introduced the president, vice president, congress, and the senate but never included any local civics education. Lessons were always extremely dry and distant since the information was always framed as theoretical and historical, except during an election cycle. Teachers were tasked with giving us the basics but we never critically questioned the information we learned about civics. While I recognize the precariousness of teachers needing to maintain political neutrality, without critical thinking how can we truly be prepared for any of our civic duties?
School basically showed me parts of a larger whole without ever explaining why politics really mattered. It wasn’t until I became a strategic design fellow that I started to care about politics. As fellows we had the opportunity to use photography to create art ahead of the 2023 mayoral election in partnership with the Lenfest Institutes’s Every Voice Every Vote initiative. We focused on the three areas of emotional and physical safety, grief paralysis, and the lack of resources for those transitioning into adulthood. Before starting the project, we were given a kind of crash course on the structure of the city government. We learned about city charters, the difference between a district and at-large councilperson, what the mayor even does, and how the city’s budget works. This brief overview of local civics was more comprehensive than any I’d received in my twelve years of grade school, which is a fact that I find deeply concerning.
Politics dictate laws and policies that fundamentally shape our lived experience, and we should understand how. For example, I learned the basics about taxes but I never learned what they were actually being used for. When I received my first paycheck at a decent-paying job, I thought there was a discrepancy in my pay. No; it turned out it was just the net pay after deductions from the federal, state, and local wage taxes. In civics class there is no lesson to learn about local wage taxes and why some places have them and some don’t. I never learned that city council members could create taxes like the Philadelphia Beverage Tax enacted by the city government. The tax at the time was framed as a big public health initiative; it was aimed at reducing Philadelphians’ intake of sugary drinks, and it was supposed to create revenue for Philadelphia public schools. Unfortunately, this tax has created controversy as some residents argue there is a lack of transparency. Even controversy and competition are a part of the political landscape locally and nationally.
Politics can be confusing and hard to navigate with competing viewpoints on issues, particularly for young people. Everyone understands that politics are messy, but I was never taught in school about lobbyists, how much influence they have, or that it is possible to basically buy an election. Even wealth and socioeconomic status is political. I didn’t learn until I was in my 20’s that the amount of wealth a Philadelphia neighborhood generates directly determines how much funding that neighborhood’s school district receives. This directly influences how much money schools have to support education for things like books, teacher’s salaries, special programs, extracurriculars, and trips – everything is determined by that funding.
For example, my middle school ran out of paper halfway through the school year. The school board administration is responsible for creating school budgets and decides what and how much to buy of school-related resources, like paper, for example. The school board gets their funding from the state, who is allocated funding from the federal government. Running out of paper was an example of politics in action, and how policies are shaped by the value judgments of politicians. In hindsight, it feels like a missed opportunity to connect a valuable lesson to an impact we were all experiencing.
To come into adulthood largely uninformed about the politics which shape our lived experiences and physical realities is unacceptable. If our goal is to create a generation of young people who are civically engaged and empowered at the ballot and beyond, then that empowerment has to begin with a well-rounded civics engagement education. Educators have lots of opportunity to make civics education come alive for students through examples that they can connect to their real lives. It’s important that our education systems support teachers in providing quality education, as well as adequately prepare students to critically engage in their civic responsibilities. We cannot demand that young people show up to the polls if the education system that brings them up through childhood does not invest in their development first.
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