Youth Civic Engagement
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Meira Levinson
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Date:听February 28, 2013
Abstract
The United States suffers from a civic empowerment gap that is as shameful and anti-democratic as the academic achievement gap targeted by No Child Left Behind. Schools--especially de facto segregated schools serving mostly low-income youth of color--should help reduce the civic empowerment gap by teaching collective action, openly discussing the racialized dimensions of citizenship, and provoking students by engaging their passions against contemporary injustices through action civics.
Speaker Bio
Meira Levinson听is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research interests include civic education, multiculturalism, educational justice and youth empowerment. Levinson draws upon scholarship from multiple disciplines as well as her eight years of experience teaching in the Atlanta and Boston Public Schools and she is currently working on a project on 鈥淛ustice in Schools鈥� that will combine philosophical analysis and school-based case studies. Her recent published works include听No Citizen Left Behind听(Harvard University Press, 2012),听Making Civics Count: Citizenship Education for a New Generation听(Harvard Education Press, 2012), and听The Demands of Liberal Education听(Oxford University Press, 1999). She received a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Politics from University of Oxford.
Event Photos
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Meira Levinson, Associate Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, at the Boisi Center on February 28, 2013.
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Photos by Christopher Soldt, Boston College MTS Photography
Event Recap
American public schools are charged with educat颅ing children so that all are capable of full partici颅pation in the economic, political and civic life of our nation. Broadly construed, this is the civic mis颅sion of schools, and it encompasses (and requires) the traditional ends of education for literacy and numeracy. Unfortunately, civic education is frequently shunted aside in schools today even as schools continue to put more emphasis on high-stakes testing and evaluation.
The result, argues Harvard education professor Meira Levinson in an im颅portant new book, No Citizen Left Behind, is a profound 鈥渃ivic empowerment鈥� gap that is every bit as pro颅found, shameful, and anti-democratic as the academic achievement gap targeted by the federal No Child Left Behind program.
Levinson spoke at the Boisi Center on February 27 about the root causes of the civic empowerment gap and how a civic education rooted in what she calls 鈥渁c颅tion civics鈥� can turn the situation around. Action civics de-emphasizes (but does not entirely reject) old-school requirements to memorize lists of presidents or facts about Congress, and focuses instead on teaching young people to 鈥渄o civics and behave as citizens鈥� in their lo颅cal communities. Drawing upon her years as a middle school teacher in Atlanta and Boston public schools, Levinson described specific civic projects her students undertook and the sense of empowerment they earned from relatively small victories such as gathering sig颅natures on a petition that convinced the city council to repair streetlights or clean up a local park.
Action civics also supports a new way of teaching American history that students in disadvantaged com颅munities can relate to, one that speaks of struggle and oppression as well as uplift and liberty. Levinson argued that American history demonstrates the power of collective action, a profound point that marginalized young people (i.e. individuals) today can take as a call to find common ground, promote the common good, and slowly close the civic empowerment gap that plagues our country.
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Further Reading
Sigal R. Ben-Porath.听听(Princeton University Press, 2009).
Eamonn Callan.听. (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Amy Gutmann.听. (Princeton Univeristy Press, 1999).
Meira Levinson.听. (Harvard University Press, 2012).
Meira Levinson.听听(Harvard Education Press, 2012)
Meria Levinson.听. (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Stephen Macedo.听听(Harvard University Press, 2003).
Erik Owens.听"Religious Freedom and Civic Education in American Public Schools".听American Institute for Contemporary German Studies听2007.
Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti.听.听(Yale University Press, 2001).
Martha Minow, Richard A. Schweder, and Hazel Rose Markus.听. (Russell Sage Foundation, 2010).
Patrick J. Wolf, Stephen Macedo, David J. Ferrero, and Charles听 Venegoni.听. (Brookings Institute Press, 2004).
OTHER RESOURCES
Robert N. Bellah's lecture on听, given at Emory University in 1985.
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann and Harry R. Lewis.听.听Harvard Magazine, March-April 2012.
Visit the website for Harvard Graduate School of Education's听, co-convened by Meira Levinson.
See recent research on the civic and political engagment of young Americans at听听at Tufts Univeristy, particularly the 2003 Special Report:听.