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"It doesn't seem to
make any difference who gets elected—nothing changes.
Why should I care?” This could be the voice of
any of a hundred million or so adults over 18 in the
United States who won’t cast a ballot on November
2. Turnout for federal elections has steadily declined
from 1960—when 63.6 percent of the voting-age
population voted—to 2000, when the figure was
51.3 percent.
But the same sentiment applies to growing numbers of
high school students. In last year’s annual survey
of college freshmen sponsored by the American Council
on Education and UCLA, only 21.5 percent reported voting
frequently in high school elections—a slight drop
from the previous year and a plummet from the record
78.7 percent in 1968.
Adults’ apathy toward the electoral process is
often explained by widespread cynicism about politicians’
vested interests and Beltway power broking. Could it
be that those attitudes take shape long before people
are old enough to vote?
Daniel McFarland, an assistant professor of education
and (by courtesy) sociology, and graduate student Carlos
Starmanns are studying student councils in hundreds
of high schools across the country. Their preliminary
findings suggest that, at their best, student councils
can fulfill the lofty aims of well-meaning administrators:
to promote community spirit, give students a voice and
train future leaders. Frequently, though, there are
grounds for the cynical view that councils are little
more than puppets of school administrations; that school
elections are empty popularity contests; and that students
who run for office care more about impressing college
admissions committees than serving their classmates.
Student government “is a really important socialization
environment,” says McFarland, but in many cases
it may be doing more harm than good. “It’s
[students’] first experience of representative
government, and if it’s a joke and it doesn’t
matter and has no authority or influence, what are they
learning?”
McFarland and Starmanns began their study by examining
the written constitutions of 207 public and 66 private
high schools. They plan to continue with interviews
and a rigorous analysis of the effects the high school
experience has on adult political participation.
In public schools, the Stanford researchers found a
striking correlation between student power and a school’s
socioeconomic level (determined using the percentage
of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches).
By and large, students in more affluent districts have
councils with influential student participation, while
councils in poorer, minority schools wield no influence.
Student representatives in wealthier schools are far
likelier to have the power to raise and spend money,
make recommendations to the faculty and, with enough
votes, even override faculty vetoes of their decisions.
In one well-to-do New Hampshire public school, McFarland
learned that students served on the committee to select
the new principal, passed changes to disciplinary procedures
and proposed a schedule of special events for Martin
Luther King Day. When the principal vetoed the proposal,
the student council members considered appealing the
decision to the district, but decided against it, in
part to preserve their relationship with the principal.
McFarland and Starmanns also found a great disparity
along socioeconomic lines in the quality of written
constitutions. Poor schools tend to have skimpy documents
with only a vague description of the council’s
purpose and procedures and the powers of each office.
Wealthier schools generally have well-defined written
frameworks. One 20-page constitution, complete with
a preamble clearly modeled after the American Constitution
(“We the students . . .”), lists strict
attendance guidelines, spells out what to do in cases
of conflict, describes each office’s powers and
responsibilities in exhaustive detail, and specifies
precise requirements for amending the constitution.
It reads very much like a living document, open to change
and relevant to the life of the school.
McFarland’s current research substantiates patterns
he first noticed in yearlong field studies of two schools
in the Midwest. He found, for example, that in the poor,
rural school, few students even bothered to run for
student council. In one grade, every candidate ran uncontested.
And candidates ran without any kind of platform or campaign,
just as you’d expect in a government without real
power.
Whatever the reasons for the lack of meaningful student
government in impoverished schools—principals’
fear of students, more pressing claims on meager resources,
or attitudes students may bring from home—these
findings distress educators who believe public schools
ought to empower future citizens and help level society’s
playing field.
Abundant research “exposes the differences in
educational quality in this country between public schools
in affluent and in poor neighborhoods,” says Eamonn
Callan, an associate dean at the School of Education
and author of the 1997 book Creating Citizens: Political
Education and Liberal Democracy. “What I
find revealing and troubling in Dan’s work is
that opportunities for civic engagement within the school
are also distributed differentially.”
“One could say that poorer schools are likely
to create apathetic citizens,” Starmanns reasons.
Political apathy is one of the social-cognitive “loops”
identified by psychology professor Albert Bandura in
his book Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
(1997). Simply put, powerlessness discourages participation,
and failure to participate ensures lack of impact. But
if educators effectively engage students in school government,
students should come to see themselves as people who
can make a difference.
William Damon, director of the Stanford Center for the
Study of Adolescence and a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution, notes that while young people are quite
involved with their families and friends—and to
a lesser extent their schools—the picture changes
in matters of citizenship. “When it comes to what
it means to participate in a democracy or even to be
an American or someone who imagines herself as one of
the future leaders of this country, that’s where
we see the radar screen being kind of blank,”
he says. Since 1972—the first year 18-year-olds
could vote in a national election—voter turnout
in presidential elections among those in the 18- to
24-year-old group has shown a downward trend, the main
exception being 1992.
Alternative schools—charter, magnet or private—seem
to offer opportunities for meaningful political participation
greater than even the wealthiest public schools. Student
councils typically consist of 20 to 40 officers, regardless
of school size, so these generally smaller schools enable
a greater percentage of students to hold office. And
because alternative schools tend to have a clear mission,
their constitutions try to uphold school values—by
encouraging the election of moral exemplars, for example.
However, alternative schools also tend to give faculty
tighter control over students (including reins on elections),
leading McFarland and Starmanns to wonder whether such
schools raise citizens who are not used to thinking
for themselves.
Nearly two centuries ago, visiting Frenchman Alexis
de Tocqueville observed that Americans tended to belong
to voluntary associations, and he argued that this “associationalism”
taught us civic virtues indispensable to self-government.
Today, social scientists such as Harvard’s Robert
Putnam have noticed a disturbing trend in the past several
decades: Americans no longer seem to be a nation of
joiners. In his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse
and Revival of American Community, Putnam gives
examples of sharply declining membership in organizations
from bridge clubs to charities, service groups to school
ptas and even bowling leagues. He cites dwindling involvement
in activities such as working for a political party,
attending a political rally or running for office. An
erosion in civic engagement, Putnam believes, may weaken
the glue that binds our democratic society.
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Tocqueville showed that a foreign eye sometimes can
see what is invisible to locals. Similarly, McFarland
says although most high schools think they should have
student councils, social scientists haven’t bothered
to study the institution. “People think of student
government as a frill, like band and art,” says
Callan. Callan was born in Ireland and lived for 20
years in Canada, so he is well acquainted with civil
tensions that can threaten to tear a democracy apart.
Starmanns, who spent most of his life in Spain, Germany
and Argentina before coming to the United States to
study political philosophy, says that while the American
system of student government is probably the most advanced
in the world, that doesn’t necessarily mean students
here have better chances to participate.
But socioeconomic differences don’t explain everything
that ails American schools, in Damon’s view. He
cites Columbine High School—“a place that
was reeking of disengagement,” he says—as
a stark example of a spiritual poverty that can coexist
with material wealth. (In Putnam’s terms, divisive
cliques work against “bridging social capital,”
the stuff that ties a society together across racial,
cultural, religious and class lines.) Conversely, Damon
points out that there are inner-city schools where students
actively participate because principals have faith in
their charges. Under the best leadership, he insists,
economics need not be destiny.
Some would disagree, and discussions of American education
have a way of quickly turning political—especially
when the subject is politics itself. But scholars can
probably all agree on one thing: all students deserve
a good education and appropriate opportunities to engage
in civic life. |
