The 100+ responses to my civic engagement post are nothing short of extraordinary. What an incredible wealth of good ideas and insights. I just spent a couple of hours summarizing them for the benefit of our working group, and I have no doubt that they will be of tremendous help as we move forward.
The bad news is: you’re not done yet. Not by a long stretch. We need you to come to the meetings (which I will announce here as soon as I know when and where they are). We need your feedback on the ideas that we put out initially so that we can refine and improve them. And of course, in the longer term, we need you to get, and/or stay, engaged so that whatever initiatives get put in place as a result of this process have a shot at working.
So thank you very, very much for your input. And stick around — there’s much more to come.
Also: if you’re going to follow through on the internships/recruiting students, it’d be good to post that information soonish (within a couple of months) as many students start doing their applications/figuring out summer plans in December-February.
I’m getting bored with vacation time. đŸ˜‰
First congratulations on your very deserved appointment.
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I have a perhaps overly simple question. What does the committee define civic engagement to be?
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Here is one from from Thomas Ehrlich
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It’s actually the central question that we’re dealing with. The general, vague, fuzzy concept is, I think, that “civic engagement” is about people feeling like they have a stake in their government, and in civic life generally (Deval’s line that people need to feel like they have a stake in their neighbors’ lives as well as their own), and that their government is listening to and responsive to them. But translating that notion into policies and structures that can be put in place to make it happen — that is the challenge. That’s what we’re working on.
I went away for the weekend and I missed the whole discussion. Congrats on the committee, David! Just remember all those times your mother told you to turn off the computer and go outside…and she was wrong!
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All kidding aside, I’m wondering what people might think about lowering the voting age for local elections. possibly state elections, to age 16. I’m a big proponent of the “get them while they’re young” theory of, well, jst about everything. As soon as you make voting something that people have just always done, I think you’re a good portion of the way there to make it something they always will do. Combining that idea with with civics education people on these boards have proposed might bring a whole new poweful civic reality to people under the age of 18 that they’ll hopefully carry with them for the rest of their lives. Imagine being 16, talking about an election in class…and then going to vote.
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Obviously the idea is mostly geared to generating turnout and engagement over the long term. Would it result in a less mature electorate? I don’t think you can paint the issue with that broad a brush. For instance, I know some seriously immature adults.
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Anyway, I was wondering what people thought about that idea.