Citizenship Civics Education for 21st

Citizenship

Civics Education for 21st Century "Digital Natives": Educating the Next Generation of Citizens

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. - Thomas Jefferson

Given the nebulous but increasingly dangerous nature of the threats being arrayed against the United States and its interests abroad, young people today desperately need to understand just how important it is to remain vigilant in the exercise of their constitutional rights, particularly their right and responsibility as citizens to vote when they turn 18 years old. In this regard, Lawson and Scott (2002) report that citizenship is a status that is afforded those who are full members of a community: "There is no universal principle that determines what those rights and duties shall be, but societies in which citizenship is a developing institution create an image of an ideal citizen against which achievement can be measured and towards which aspiration can be directed" (181). Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines the important role of "citizen" as being, "One who, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, is a member of the political community, owing allegiance and being entitled to the enjoyment of full civil rights" (244).

In 2002, the federal government announced a new set of history and civic education initiatives that were intended to foster national identity and pride. These initiatives, President George W. Bush maintained, would serve to "improve students' knowledge of American history, increase their civic involvement, and deepen their love for our great country"; the president added that in order "to engender a sense of patriotism in young Americans, we must teach them that America is a force for good in the world, bringing hope and freedom to other people" (quoted in Westheimer at 608). Unfortunately, many civics classes in the nation's high schools are still failing to inculcate this sense of responsibility to the political community and many young people are entering their adult lives as lifelong taxpayers without any true sense of what it means to be an active citizen in a democracy. In this regard, Parker (2005) emphasizes that, "People who customarily refer to themselves as taxpayers are not even remotely related to democratic citizens. What taxpayers do not do, and what people who call themselves taxpayers have long since stopped even imagining themselves doing, is governing. In a democracy, by the very meaning of the word, the people govern" (344). Furthermore, the nation's high schools are both tasked with this responsibility and are in an excellent position to rectify this situation by fine-tuning their existing civics curricula to better meet the needs of young learners today (Parker 344).

Purpose of the Study.

The purpose of this study is to provide a description of the current problems facing young people today as they seek to achieve full participation in the political community and why many of them lack the education to do so. To this end, a review of the scholarly and peer-reviewed literature provides a relevant background and overview, an analysis of the changes that have taken place in recent years in education, a discussion of the need for alternative civics education approaches, and what the implications of a failure to do so might be. A summary of the research and salient findings are provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

The need to educate the next generation of voters (and taxpayers) concerning the responsibilities and benefits of citizenship has assumed increasing importance in recent years. According to Beckerman, Kim and Parks (1996), an increasing number of high school students in the U.S. lack a sound understanding of American civics and studies have shown that a majority of these students do not have any depth of understanding of this important subject and what it means to be a citizen. For instance, while almost all high school seniors possessed a rudimentary knowledge of civics in terms of elections, laws, and constitutional rights, only about half of them understood specific government structures and functions (Beckerman et al. 171). The trends that have been emerging in recent years are even more alarming, and only 6% of the high school seniors surveyed by Beckerman and his colleagues had any type of knowledge and understanding of governmental institutions such as the cabinet or the judiciary. Likewise, the results of a 1990 National Assessment of Educational Progress Report Card (NAEP) in Civics indicated that just 38% of 8th graders in the United States knew that Congress was responsible for making laws in this country (Beckerman et al. 171). The results of the 1998 NAEP civics examination were just as disheartening, indicating that fully 33% of fourth-graders could not explain the meaning of "I pledge allegiance to the flag" on a multiple-choice test and a majority of fourth-graders were unable to answer the question why "citizens elect people to make laws for them" in a democracy (Paige 2003:37).

The results of the NAEP 2001 U.S. History Report Card also reflected a similar lack of proficiency; once again, fourth-, eighth-, and 12th-graders were tested and the results indicated that fully 89% of high school seniors, 84% of eighth- graders, and 82% of fourth-graders were ranked below the "proficient" levels (Page 37). According to Paige, "The most recent data we have on the current status of civics knowledge in the United States is discouraging, to say the least. Some might even say that we have reached a crisis in this country with regard to civics education" (emphasis added) (37). In this environment, high school teachers are scrambling to identify better ways to deliver educational services but the playing field has changed in substantive ways for the young learners involved and educators must take these changes into account in order for such initiatives to be successful, and these issues are discussed further below.

Changes in Study Population and Their Implications.

Although the function of public schools in the United States has not changed in any fundamental way in recent years, the curriculum and the student body certainly have in ways that can be used to good effect for civics education, but only if these differences are recognized and understood by educators. For example, Prensky (2005) reports that, "Our students are no longer 'little versions of us,' as they may have been in the past. In fact, they are so different from us that we can no longer use either our 20th century knowledge or our training as a guide to what is best for them educationally" (emphasis added) (8). According to Salopek (2003), young people today have been accustomed to using technology all of their lives and now work and play at a completely different pace from previous generations in what Prensky has termed "twitch speed." In January 1998, Prensky defined the new learning environment for young people today as follows: "This generation grew up on video games ('twitch speed'), MTV (more than 100 images a minute), and the ultra-fast speed of action films. Their developing minds learned to adapt to speed and thrive on it.... The under-30 generation has had far more experience at processing information quickly than its predecessors, and is therefore better at it" (3). Some of the more relevant points made by Prensky in this regard that may provide new opportunities for improving the delivery of civics education in the nation's high school are described further in Table 1 below.

Table 1.

Differences in Learning Styles between "Digital Natives" and "Digital Immigrants."

Cognitive Style

Description

Twitch Speed vs. Conventional Speed

Little in real life moves as fast as the stimuli that confront learners on a daily basis. For instance, MTV, video games, streamed media all develop an unprecedented level of media expectations; learning offerings are challenged to not only meet the pace of "twitch speed," but to exploit this capacity to its fullest extent.

Parallel vs. Linear Processing

The occurrence of multi-tasking has become the norm among young learners. Whether listening to music while studying; while in classroom; downloading music while surfing the web; speaking on the cell phone while writing a paper, the capacity exists among young people for extensive parallel processing.

Random Access vs. Linear Thinking

The impact of new media has created a generation of learners that diverge from a single path approach. Hyperlinks, CD-ROMs/DVDs, and the internet in general have all been designed to allow maximum flexibility in navigation. The learner today has access to numerous resources that has never existed before. These resources will allow learners to create and explore in exciting new ways. The challenge will be to structure learning experiences so that students will have new opportunities to be creative and use their access to knowledge.

Graphics First vs. Text First

Graphics were previously regarded as a learning aid that reinforced the message communicated through text. Today, though, the opposite has become the norm. Modern learners, heavily influenced by music and the sound and video clip culture, increasingly perceive text as an aid to support audio and visual messages.

Connected vs. Stand-alone

Communication revolution has moved from a world connected by telephone (a synchronous and asynchronous) including e-mail, bulletin boards, broadcast messages and chat rooms. As a result, new learning tools have developed to access knowledge.

Active vs. Passive

There is much less tolerance for passive situations such as lectures, and digital natives need and want interactive learning opportunities.

Payoff vs. Patience

The same attributes that keep young people engaged for hours to learn and master a computer game can be tapped to improve the quality of civics education as well; the challenge remains for educators to develop similar interactive rewards dynamics for learning content.

Fantasy vs. Reality

Young learners' lives are pervaded by fantasy elements through television programs and video games; therefore, learning experiences should be structured to include such fantasy elements to be more interesting.

Technology as Friend vs. Tech. As Foe

Digital immigrants" perceive technology as something to be feared and merely tolerated; by contrast, digital natives regard technology as their friend. Young learners today actively search out ways to use technology to construct a new cognitive environment.

Source: Prensky 1998:3.

Notwithstanding these challenges and constraints, though, the nation's high schools are in fact the perfect setting to provide students with democratic citizenship education. According to Parker (2005), "The main reason is that a school is not a private place, like our homes, but a public, civic place with a congregation of diverse students. Some schools are more diverse than others, of course, but all schools are diverse to some meaningful extent" (344). Nevertheless, while there is abundant evidence for the existence of a strong positive relationship between educational attainment and a variety of civic orientations and behaviors, how this process is accomplished in school and the causal connection between formal education and democratic citizenship remain unclear (Lawson & Scott 2002:83). "Taken together," these authors add, "studies reveal that variables related to the formal instruction of civics, such as civic curriculum and teachers' qualifications, yield at best only moderate, and immediate, effects on youngsters' citizenship orientations and knowledge" (Lawson & Scott 83).

Studies have shown time and again that instructional strategies that encourage active student participation in the learning process are more effective in promoting student learning than traditional methods such as lectures alone. According to Hannafin and McDonald (2003), "Many researchers, administrators, teachers, and parents advocate using technology to improve and increase student learning and motivation" (459). Likewise, Freeman (2003) points out that interactive learning opportunities enhance critical thinking and improve student skills; furthermore, interactive learning opportunities serve to increase student's interest thereby reinforcing the content learned as well as its retention. One approach that has proven effective for this purpose is the use of educational games in the classroom, and these initiatives are discussed further below.

The Need for Alternative Civics Educational Curricula.

The review of the literature makes it clear that so-called "digital natives" require different teaching methods than have been used in the past. The need for providing superior alternatives to the traditional pedagogy as they apply to civics instruction is therefore clearly a priority today. For instance, Brown (1996) reports that, "The adage, 'Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught,' haunts me when I know that I daily face students who are the products of numerous expository, sermonizing social studies lessons that bored them to tears" (224). Whatever approach is used, the concept of citizenship remains the same. According to Lawson and Scott (2002), "The concept of citizenship is composed of a number of key elements. These are the notion of participation in public life, the idea that a citizen is one who both governs and is governed, a sense of identity, an acceptance of societal values, and rights and responsibilities" (1).

Communicating this comprehensive concept of what it means to be a citizen in a modern democracy to young people requires a different approach from traditional teaching styles such as lecturing, and many educators have incorporated educational games into their curriculum to take advantage of what their students already know. For instance, Braithwaite and Westbrook (2001) report that, "There is widespread use of simulations, role-plays, software packages, interactive multimedia, and Web-based learning tools in an attempt to deepen and broaden the learning experience. No academic discipline appears to be untouched, with recent reports of applications in fields as diverse as, for example, accounting, strategic management, business administration, economics and welfare work" (89).