We all should concern to promote and support civic engagement and political participation to better outcomes in democracy and development. And to encourage this participation and debate, an ethical, correct and effective electoral and political system is essential. Respect to freedom of speech, respect to privacy, an election without fraud are pillars of democracy and to an engaged citizenship. This post is a summary of the chapter one and chapter four and published at http://poli375engage.pbworks.com/f/The+Future+of+Democracy.pdf of the book with the incomplete title above, from the series with the title of, "Civil Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives".
The purpose of civic education, broadly defined, is to enhanced the civic engagement. This definition of 'civic engagement' encompasses some aspects of life that we do not usually tag with that label. For example, fundamental research on cancer promises to provide basic knowledge, which is a public or common good of enormous value. Therefore, a cancer researcher is civically engaged, by my definition. To be sure, science is not identical to volunteering or political participation, it has its own standards, logic, and history. In defining civic engagement, I have not invoked a contrast between self-interest and altruism. civic engagement is behavior that influences public matters. One can work for the narrow interests of one's own group. Or one can act in one's individual self-interest. We may admire altruistic engagement more than selfish advocacy, but they are both legitimate. Although we should not exclude self-interested motivations, it is a mistake to assume that participation is always narrowly self-interested. History provides many dramatic examples of altruism and public-spiritedness, including heroic self-sacrifice. And on a daily basis, people frequently define their identities in ways that are not highly individualistic. Often a person participates in civic life not as "I" but as "we" and the we can range from a family to the entire nation. If people always calculated the potential costs and benefits of their behavior to themselves as individuals, then no one would vote. We sometimes define political actors by arraying them on a spectrum from left to right. However, there is another dimension of politics that is orthogonal to this one. At one end of this civic spectrum is a highly participatory, constructive, deliberative, and equitable polity. At the other end is a murderous tyranny. Quite apart from where they stand on the issues that divide the left from the right, people can either be pro- or anticivic. To be civically engaged means not only pursuing legitimate concrete goals (including one's own self-interested and matters of moral principle) but also caring about political system and political culture. Someone who is engaged does not merely participate in politics. He also pauses to ask: Are most people allowed to participate? Or are many citizens completely alienated or excluded? Do we seriously consider a broad range of positions? Do good arguments and reasons count, or has politics become just a clash of money and power? Can we achieve progress on the goals that we happen to share, or have our disagreements become so sharp that we can not ever cooperate? We should support representative political institutions and norms of equality and participation, public goods that are essential to our democracy. Caring about the quality of our democratic system creates a set of ethical dilemmas. The Progressive reform of the early 1900s provides a cautionary example. In an effort to enhance the quality of public discourse and civic participation, Progressives supported nonpartisan newspapers . They restricted the influence of political parties, on the theory that citizens should choose individuals not slates of candidates prescreened by party bosses. One major result of these reforms was to reduce voter turnout, which was lower in 1924. It is much more difficult to participate as a independent, critical individual than as a member of a party. The quality of public reasoning possibly improved after the reforms. It is important to be concerned about the quality of public institutions and debates. While most citizens engage politically as members of some party, we also need citizens to fill nonpartisan roles, ensuring that elections are fair and government is transparent and ethical. While it is useful for editorial writers and bloggers, we also need neutral and factual reporters. We also need organizations to worry about the overall political process and culture. The definition of "civic engagement" that has emerged so far is any action that affects legitimately public matters as long as the actor pays appropriate attention to the consequences of his behavior for the political system. We need citizens to be concerned about our political system and culture and try to improve it, without favoring any particular ideology. Yet, ideological and even self-interested participation is also civic engagement and is part of the system. In this chapter I move to the psychological and developmental benefits that young people may reap from civic engagement itself. It is clear from surveys results that young people who are civically engaged also tend to develop in healthy ways. There is some debate about causality. Civic engagement could improve educational and health outcomes, or the reverse could be true, or both outcomes could arise from some third factor. In one longitudinal study, the correlation between volunteering and success in school was explained by the fact that the more seccessful students chose to volunteer (not the reverse).In that study, volunteering increased participants' interest in pursuing meaningful career, rather than simply making money. It can be profoundly alienating to treat adolescents as potential problems or threats who have nothing to offer a community until they grow up. Voluntary civic engagement may be especially valuable in a culture, which offers most adolescents very little responsibility until they leave their families. Most high school students have little scope for "initiative". a key word in Erik Erickson's developmental theory that Reed Larson defines as "self-directed attention over time". Larson cites evidence that students who work in community organizations learn new ways of speaking about projects that reflect longer time horizont, greater cognitive complexity, and more psychological investment. These changes will serve the youth well in the workforce. In adolescence, Erikson believed, the main task was to develop an identity that would be the basis of career aspirations. They are more likely to form healthy and ethical identities if they have opportunities to join groups that define their membership in ethical terms: for example, service groups that enroll anyone who is truly willing to help. Perhaps more important, the Positive Youth Development approach meets some of our core moral institutions, a long tradition of ethics when he argued that we have two fundamental duties in life: to develop our own character and virtues and to help other pursue reasonable ends of their own choice. To corral other people into behaviors that we find desirable would violate their autonomy. But if we fail to support their development into autonomous, reasonable decision-makers, we shirk a duty. To be sure, children lack full autonomy and can be directed toward a desirable outcome in the interest of their own freedom as adults. This attitude is always the most ethical way to treat other human beings, so long as our efforts to respect their autonomy do not backfire for practical reasons. James Younis and Daniel Hart have more than a dozen studies that follow young people into adulthood and ask questions about their civic engagement and values. One possible explanation is that some people have a personality trait, moral value, or other internal characteristic that predispose them to participate when they are young and still applies when they are older. In that case, the correlation between civic experience and civic values, skills and habits does not reflect causality, it results from some underlying psychological characteristic of an individual. Those who have the right predisposition will participate as soon as they find an opportunity, even if they must wait for adulthood. Our best hope, then is to change hearts and minds:to make people feel more civically responsible. Civic education is mostly a matter of moral exhortation or exposing youth to role models. Young people's behavior within this autonomous sphere is enormously consequential. If an adolescent joins a gang and commits a crime, he can easily ruin his life as well as that of his victims. If he joins the political debate team, then he and his friends can substantially increase their chances of attending a college and thereby boost their capacity to serve their community. It is important not to jump to the conclusion that peer effects are usually bad and that teenagers should be prevented from creating their own social networks. Furthermore, today's adolescents are closer to their parents than their predecessors were. Parents, other adults and institutions should certainly try to influence identities and peer networks by providing some mix of guidance, positive opportunities, and penalties for bad decisions. However, there are limits to what adults and institutions can acomplish, given the opacity of youth culture and young people's resistance to being manipulated. Therefore, it is important that young people themselves have the skills and the right values they need to make their own sphere as constructive as possible. If they know how to create and sustain positive voluntary associations, they may be less likely to join criminal gangs for support and fellowship. If they have skills for conflict resolution, their conflicts are less likely to turn violent. If they have the skills necessary to influence authorities with good arguments, they may be able to change policies that are counterproductive. All of these skills and values are civic. They are the same characteristics that will later make youth effective citizens of the adult polity.
