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The Future Needs To Be Informed By Zach Preiss
“We the people” are beginning to ignore the need for civic education. As students, citizens of America, and participants of the free world, we must do our very best to maintain the precious democracy we currently possess. As your friend, neighbor, and fellow citizen, I beg for your participation and understanding of our government. We must continue to grow, learn, and evolve in order to keep up with the rest of the world. If our democracy fails, our nation will as well.
I personally enjoy politics and can not remember a time in which my family didn’t watch the news or read articles on our government. Lately, however, I realize this is an anomaly. Many families don’t spend time to understand what the government is doing. This is not necessarily wrong, however, I question whether they have the proper knowledge to vote or question the government when necessary. Subsequently, many of my peers also do not see the importance of keeping up with the Hill. However, eventually we will be voting and becoming full citizens of our country and we will need to act knowledgeably and appropriately.
According to a Harvard study, approximately 60% of teenagers know very little about politics and the current state of our government. Furthermore, “just 10 percent of Americans between 18 and 24 met a standard of ‘informed engagement’”(1). This information is shocking. If out of 10 young adult voters, only one is making educated decisions, what does that say about or community? Our Democracy? Nothing good. Consequently, this could be extraordinarily dangerous and could impede our government from acting for the people.
Ultimately we can blame our communities. “Civic education is increasingly viewed as controversial by the public. A quarter (24.8 percent) of the teachers surveyed by the Commission thought that parents or other adults in their community would object if politics was discussed in their course” (1). We can not blame anyone but ourselves for this impending crisis as we have prevented our teachers from properly teaching our students how to form their own opinions and understand how our nation’s government functions. We cannot expect our nation’s democracy to flourish if we are preventing our youth from understanding how it functions.
“We the people” are beginning to ignore the need for civic education. As students, citizens of America, and participants of the free world, we must do our very best to maintain the precious democracy we currently possess. As your friend, neighbor, and fellow citizen, I beg for your participation and understanding of our government. We must continue to grow, learn, and evolve in order to keep up with the rest of the world. If our democracy fails, our nation will as well.
1- “Groundbreaking Report Released on Educating America’s Youth for Civic & Political Participation.” The Institute of Politics at Harvard University, iop.harvard.edu/about/newsletter-press-release/groundbreaking-report-released-educating-america%E2%80%99s-youth-civic.