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Topics: Youth

Towards a New Theory & Practice of Civic Education
An Evaluation of Public Achievement

Melissa Bass

In partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, May 1995

Index

I. Introduction
II. Public Achievement: Background Information
III. Public Achievement in Contrast to Other Approaches
IV. Lessons from Public Achievement
V. Conceptual Questions and Practical Tensions
VI. Have Public Achievement's Goals Been Realized?
VII. Conclusion, References, Appendices, Notes

Contents

I. Introduction
II. Public Achievement: Background Information
III. Public Achievement in Contrast to Other Approaches
IV. Lessons from Public Achievement

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education."

Thomas Jefferson

Introduction

Public Achievement was designed to give young people the opportunity to be producers and creators of their educational and community environments and of their educations, not, as is now in vogue, simply "customers" or "clients" being serviced by their schools and communities. The goals of the program in its pilot project stage were to test whether young people could learn to impact problems in their schools, churches, and neighborhoods in a serious way; and learn to define this work in political terms. An additional goal has been to integrate civic education into institutions that work with young people. Over the past five years, we have learned that young people can have an impact, but their understanding of the political nature of their work, and the change in institutions has been less certain. These points will be explored in detail in section VI.

Citizen politics. Public Achievement's political ideas and language are drawn from a conceptual framework called citizen politics2. At the core of citizen politics is an understanding that

"the politics of serious democracy is a give and take, messy, everyday activity in which citizens set about dealing with public problems, the issues of our common existence. Politics is the way people become citizens: accountable players and contributors to the country."3

Building on lessons from the civil rights and community organizing movements, citizen politics requires an education in political ideas and skills, and environments in which people can learn and practice political arts. Public Achievement provides both.

The redefinition of citizenship as a process based on work, rather than a status based on birthplace; and politics as the activity "of the citizen," rather than the partisan activities of elected officials alone, is supplemented by the redefinition of other words as well. Among these are self-interest, public, and power.

Arguably the most controversial concept in citizen politics is self-interest. It is used broadly to lead people into public life and "root" people in their work: it is what brings people to the table and helps keep them there. Drawing on its Latin root, inter esse, or "to be among," self-interest is defined as "self among others," to distinguish it from selfishness. In this case, self-interest is relational; it connects one individual's history, perspectives, needs, desires, and concerns with those of others'. The usefulness of self-interest as a concept has been contested both on theoretical grounds and in practice, as will be discussed in sections IV and V.

Perhaps the theoretically most powerful concept is that of public. Degree of openness and diversity distinguishes public life from private, with community falling in-between. In citizen politics, public is used in three ways. First, "public" issues or problems are those that affect more than a singular group of people. Second, "in public" is where diverse, organized groups of people (also known as "the public") act to solve problems that affect them collectively. Third, when in public people need to act in a "public" manner, that is to say that they act differently and use different skills when working in public. Public Achievement incorporates all three uses of the word in its work.

Of the citizen politics concepts, power is the most familiar, only most people don't believe that they have any. By broadening the definition of power from having weapons, money, or position to having the capacity to act, influence, or create, people come to see the ways in which they can and do have power. Public Achievement is about young people developing their capacity, their power, to solve problems and create change.

Structure and organization. Although Public Achievement is sponsored and staffed by Project Public Life, a variety of institutions and individuals make up the program.

The structure of Public Achievement. The youth teams are the basic organizing unit of Public Achievement. Teams of six to twelve young people work within their schools or other organizations, with coaches, to solve public problems that are important to them and in the process learn the ideas and skills of active citizenship. The partner organizations (largely public, private, and parochial elementary and middle schools along with a few community based organizations and high schools) create, maintain, and support the teams of young people. They also work with and support their teams' coaches, participate in the Public Achievement working group, and provide leadership in integrating a civic learning approach into the mission of the institution.

Public Achievement coaches are college students, adult leaders of the youth institutions, and in some cases community leaders, who act as guides for the youth teams as they engage in their public problem-solving and civic education work. College student coaches work closely with their classmates, professors, Public Achievement staff, and their host organizations to ensure that they gain an understanding of, and practical experience in, citizen politics and can integrate this into their academic work.

The Public Achievement working group is composed of the leaders of the organizations that have created Public Achievement teams, and Public Achievement staff. While the group has discussed taking on a larger governing role, it has to date acted in an advisory capacity to the staff. The staff, made up of 1-2 part-time graduate assistants with additional support from the Center for Democracy and Citizenship's administrator, in turn coordinates Public Achievement. This includes recruiting and training coaches, organizing conferences and training for the teams, coordinating the working group, and providing support and information to the partner organizations.

The staff has been challenged to organize and implement Public Achievement with extremely limited resources. While Public Achievement, and Project Public Life more generally, is working to address the most fundamental problem facing our country, namely the crisis of legitimacy in, and deterioration of, public life, its citizenship framework is counter-cultural, and hardly the dominant model for reinventing either government or education. Because Public Achievement consciously challenges the dominant models (see Section III), it is heading in a direction funders have not yet recognized as a legitimate path. Public Achievement's focus on building the civic capacity of young people and institutions does not fit neatly into funders' education, youth development, or community development categories, although funders are beginning to rethink their categories. While shifting resources toward Public Achievement and Public Achievement-like programs is important, the fact that the program can be successfully run on so little money is one of its strengths.

Methodology. Public Achievement's basic approach to civic learning is to combine conceptual discussion with hands-on practice. This is done within the context of the public problem the team decides to address over the course of a semester or year. Coaches, who work directly with the teams on a weekly basis, are largely responsible for introducing the concepts and guiding the teams' work: They mentor, teach, facilitate, and encourage, all while trying to maintain focus and discipline. Because each team, institution, and coach comes to this work with different experiences, interests, values, and skills, the process is designed to be flexible and responsive to everyone's needs and capacities. Nonetheless, all teams do do the following to a lesser or greater degree.

Teams, in cooperation with adults, decide how they are going to function: what rules they will follow and what roles people will play. Ideas introduced at this point include public, respect, and accountability. Teams also work early on to either define or clarify the public problem they will address, learning again about public, and about self-interest. Teams then learn to map their environments in order to understand the relationships they will need to develop to solve their problem. Here, coaches focus on the importance of diversity, understanding others' self-interest, and power. Next, teams develop strategies to take public action, from taking surveys and writing letters to meeting with parent groups and the principal, then follow through with their plans. Teams practice the skills of public speaking, negotiation, and learn the importance of being organized as they further their specific goal. Finally, teams learn to evaluate their work and their roles to further develop their capacity for political action.

III. Public Achievement in Contrast to Other Approaches Public

Achievement was created as an alternative to both mainstream civics and service learning, currently the two dominant approaches to civic education. All three claim to develop young people's capacity for participation in public life. However, each defines public life, and politics, differently, and so each presents different ideas and teaches different skills. What is at stake is young people's understanding of what it means to be a citizen.

From the perspective of mainstream civics, public life and politics are defined much more narrowly. In fact, "public" and "government" are often used interchangeably. Politics is rarely presented as anything more than strictly partisan activity, the end to which is winning elections, not solving problems. Because of this, mainstream civics focuses on teaching government process and the skills to influence and participate in this process.

For most of us, civic education calls to mind high school government class. For fifty minutes a day we were drilled in checks and balances, quizzed on how a bill becomes a law, and compelled to spit back a dizzying array of numbers (How many electoral votes does it take to become President? and so on). We learned about powerful presidents, committee chairs, party leaders, and lobbyists. But powerful citizens? Students are lucky if they even hear the word. In mainstream civics, citizens, as citizens, play only a symbolic, intangible role that often goes un-named. Citizens, perhaps, are the "people" in "We the People," and the "we" the teacher refers to on the first day of class, when she explains that "In America, we are the government." But after the opening lecture, citizens in the abstract become taxpayers, voters, and constituents, members of interest groups, and Constitutionally protected individuals in the concrete. The skills taught in mainstream civics reflect this understanding. For example, young people learn how to register to vote and critically evaluate campaign information; how to discern their representatives' views on policy issues and effectively communicate their own views back; and what rights they have guaranteed by the Constitution.

From this, young people learn that democracy is government by "them" for "us." As Americans we have the God-given right to plead, complain, and make demands, as individuals and in organized groups, to have our problems solved. We can threaten to "throw the bums out," and make real the threats if we aren't satisfied. Yet with all of our rights, we are still outside claimants; the only way in is to become one of "them," a real option for only a few and a distasteful prospect for most.

The service learning movement grows out of the recognition that years of teaching young people government process and exhorting them to vote has done little get them involved with their communities (or even get them to vote), and even less to solve America's serious public problems. Through community service, young people directly work to end problems like hunger, homelessness, and drug abuse. Reflection components are designed to help young people process, and learn from, their experiences.

Although programs vary widely, the service learning perspective generally holds that public life can be a-political, non-governmental, and in fact privatized. Service is seen as an alternative to politics and as a remedy for the failures of government. Taken collectively, individual acts of voluntarism ("a thousand points of light") are seen as the key to revitalizing America's public life. Based on this point of view, service learning seeks to inculcate in young people an ethic of care and concern: A good citizen is one who helps others. As Robert Bellah and his co-authors write in Habits of the Heart,

Generosity of spirit is thus the ability to acknowledge an interconnectedness—one's debts to society—that binds one to others whether one wants to accept it or not. It is also the ability to engage in the caring that nurtures that interconnectedness. It is a virtue that everyone should strive for . . . a conception of citizenship that is still alive in America.5 Service is a means of civic education "because it engenders self-esteem, empathy, and a sense of care—qualities important in 'good citizens.'" In addition, "engaging in service of genuine value to the community educates young people for citizenship,"6 in and of itself.

Through service, young people learn to be altruistic and charitable; through reflection, they learn how to measure their own personal growth and assess the value their service has on the individual or community served. Although "community service can create occasions for students to consider questions like the relationships between self-interest and public good, between morality and politics, and between community and the public world,"7 these questions are rarely asked. So while service teaches young people an active understanding of citizenship, the public and political nature of citizenship goes largely unexamined.

Unlike both mainstream civics and most service learning programs, Public Achievement's perspective on civic education works to bring young people into both the processes of decision making and taking action, and helps them see this as the expressly political work of the citizen.

IV. Lessons from Public Achievement

Over the past five years, Public Achievement has involved over 750 young people, 70 coaches, and dozens of teachers and institutional leaders at over 25 sites. Public Achievement team members have shared their experiences at conferences, with their coaches, and through the stories they have written about their work. Coaches have kept journals, written evaluative papers, and discussed at length what works about Public Achievement and what does not. Teachers and other institutional leaders have provided valuable feedback on how Public Achievement impacts their students beyond the time and space allotted to the program. The staff has not only collected, sorted through, and worked to make sense of this information, but has been on-site every step of the way. By acting as coaches, coach session facilitators, and liaisons to the institutional leadership at the sites, the staff has been fully integrated into the week to week operations of Public Achievement. Taken collectively, this work has generated a number of important lessons. In this section, I explore five of these lessons in depth.

First, when young people have opportunities to take action on problems they help to define, they develop a sense of individual and collective efficacy. For example, when asked what they have learned from Public Achievement, the two most common responses young people give are that they have learned that they can make a difference, and that they have learned to appreciate the importance of teamwork. As one team member explained,

"It gave me a feeling that I could do anything. . . . the single most transforming event of my life, an incredible confidence builder. The process of being involved, in seeing change happen, in seeing my ideas count, and my actions produce a response in the community shows me as a kid that it's important to take a position, to get involved, to not be a bystander. Once I had that kind of power, I had the responsibility to take action, to get involved in what's going on around me."8

The words of another participant echo many others, "We have to work together in order to succeed."9 Coaches, teachers, and principals have noticed the change. One coach remarked,

"I can see the difference in the ideas that the students have now and the way that they ask questions and think about things. They used to assume that they couldn't do anything about the problems they see, like gangs in their neighborhoods. Now they see that they can have a petition, talk to people in the business district and get their support. They have specific ideas, and there is a real feeling that they can do something. The more they do, the more they believe this and see that it is true."10

The principal of St. Bernard's, Dennis Donovan, tells the story of three fourth graders who, before Public Achievement, often came to his office crying about how the children in their class were treating one another, and them. After participating in Public Achievement (around a different issue), they approached the principal and asked if he would be their "coach:" They wanted to work to change their classmates behavior using the Public Achievement model. The girls wrote and acted out skits on the effects of children picking on one another, and asked the class to sign an agreement that they would treat one another with more respect.

Second, the specific "success" of a problem-solving effort, while important, is secondary to what young people learn about citizenship, their communities, and their own skills and potentials. Many teams start with large issues, like racism or gender inequity, and have difficulty narrowing them to workable problems with solutions they can implement. Others set goals that may be unrealistic, for example eliminating school uniforms in a Catholic school, and much time passes before they focus on a goal they can accomplish, like changing part of a uniform. Even with a realistic project, teams need to work through an often complicated process: making decisions in their group, securing permission and support from parents, teachers, principals, and others, and doing the other work necessary to see their plans through to completion.

When teams meet for only one hour, once a week, solving a particular public problem can be difficult, and many teams do not in the time that they have. Because of this, several teachers have been reluctant to support Public Achievement: They were concerned that children would be discouraged if they did not realize their goal. The children have proved them wrong. Even on teams that do not reach their ultimate goal, they accomplish smaller victories, like conducting a survey, meeting with the principal, or sending out a letter. Furthermore, through evaluation, young people come to recognize and value the skills and ideas they have learned. And when they understand why they did not achieve their goal, they learn what they would do differently in the future.

Third, through Public Achievement, institutional leaders, college student coaches, and team members see themselves in relation to larger social and political arenas. As their students exercise leadership outside the classroom, teachers are prompted to make changes in the classroom. Principal Dennis Donovan has attempted to turn his school into a "laboratory for civic learning," in which children are prepared for the lives they are living now and will live tomorrow, and not just prepared for the next grade. In his words, Public Achievement "challenges teachers to think about how they teach—to set up partnerships with their students to create the type of environment they will learn in."11

For college students, Public Achievement provides an opportunity to move outside of the classroom and connect to the community. As one coach explained,

"In almost five years at the University, the majority of my educational experiences have been confined to the classroom. It was not until this quarter's project with Public Achievement that I was able to put my education in political science to use by relating what I had been learning to "real world" experiences. Public Achievement has provided me with a way to link education with application; the politics of academia with the politics of communities."12

As one professor has noted, "University students need more than book learning, if they are to be prepared for active citizenship. They need to experiment in civic learning, not only in the classroom, but in the broader classroom of public life."13 Public Achievement provides that broader classroom.

Young team members also get a chance to connect with a larger community. For example, the three teams that chose to work on improving their school lunches had to learn to communicate with and influence officials at the school district level. And while they were focused on improving lunches in their own cafeterias, the students did recognize that their actions could have an impact district-wide. At two schools, teams worked on playground issues. Although their goals were to establish a playground for one school, and get new equipment and clean up the grounds at the other, both teams ultimately had to work with neighborhood residents around issues of safety in the wake of a shooting and fears of gang activity.

Fourth, Public Achievement needs a strong, supportive environment that includes staff development and institutional involvement at all levels to become sustainable. Unlike other youth programs that are led by outside personnel or volunteers (Scouts, Junior Great Books, and the like), Public Achievement cannot be implemented by individual teachers and coaches alone. Because young people are working to make changes in their schools and neighborhoods, all school personnel, and especially school principals, need to understand and support the educational goals of the program. This does not mean, however, that officials need to rubber stamp student projects; it means that they work with students to understand how they can become a part of school and community decision-making.

St. Bernard's School is a prime example of how, with institutional support, Public Achievement and civic learning in general can flourish. Five years ago Public Achievement began with the support of the principal and one teacher and involved only a handful of students. For the past two years, well over one hundred young people each year (nearly all of the students in grades four through eight) have participated. Furthermore, following staff development, teachers who were once wary of the project are now acting as coaches, and reinforcing Public Achievement's lessons in the classroom.

At J. J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, Public Achievement began eighteen months ago with only lukewarm and variable support from the principal, and concern on the part of the most teachers. However, due to incredible commitment on the part of one particular teacher, this year the entire staff is behind the program, parents are calling to express support, and the principal is slowly coming on board.

The success at St. Bernard's and J. J. Hill is all the more striking in comparison to other sites. Several teachers in other schools have started Public Achievement in their classrooms without discussing the program with other teachers and administrators. In most cases, these efforts have faltered. It has become clear that teachers who sponsor Public Achievement need to be organizers as well as educators; they must get their institution to support the program. And although the program has succeeded attached to individual classes, the strongest sites have teams of students from different classrooms and grades working outside of structured class time. Both of these points reinforce the idea that Public Achievement is a community effort.

Fifth, the most successful coaching experiences come from practica connected to college classes. Most important, the college students' coaching activities are deepened by their intellectual work, and vice versa. In the process of coaching, college students learn, practice, and critically evaluate citizen politics theory, methodology, and gain an active understanding of citizenship along with their team members. This is best done in relation to course readings, lectures, and discussions. In addition, by coaching with a class coaches have the opportunity to discuss their successes and difficulties and get advice and support from others. Coaches have universally agreed that meeting together after their coaching sessions was an invaluable experience.

On a programmatic note, having coaches receive credit for their work creates an effective accountability structure. In the past, some coaches have had difficulty committing to work with their teams every week. This has undermined support for Public Achievement in the organizations, disrupted the teams, and disappointed the kids. For volunteers, Public Achievement is secondary to their classes. For practicum students, Public Achievement is part of a class. When coaches earn credit the expectation level is raised and attendance takes on added significance. This is certainly not the most important aspect of the practica, but it does help the program run more smoothly.

Index

I. Introduction
II. Public Achievement: Background Information
III. Public Achievement in Contrast to Other Approaches
IV. Lessons from Public Achievement
V. Conceptual Questions and Practical Tensions
VI. Have Public Achievement's Goals Been Realized?
VII. Conclusion, References, Appendices, Notes