Now that my second year in college is finally over, I actually have time to post on Kos. At 19 (almost 20), I fit into that category of voters that, in nearly every election, is dimissed as a non-factor, as no shows to the party. While this is not necessarily true (voter turnout among the 18-29 age group has been steadily rising in national election years), it can be difficult to argue with that central idea: young voters are unengaged and don't vote. There's a reason politicians have spent the better part of, well, forever, pandering to older Americans.
Why is this the case? Why do people my age avoid voting? Why do they not care about the issues that affect them? Why are they so "unengaged?"
From personal experience, the biggest issues that seems to keep young people from voting/being engaged are that they don't understand or know about the issues that will affect them, and/or they don't realize that those issues will actually affect them. In most cases, their level of understanding barely passes beyond the stereotypical characterizations most often used to describe issues.
More below the fold.
The sad fact is that most people my age don't have a clue what's going on in the United States, let alone the world. Most don't even have a clue what's happening in their own state, or their own communities. They really just don't know.
Practically nobody I know at college reads the news daily. Sometimes I wonder if they read the news ever. These are college students I'm talking about. Bright, intelligent people, that can and will make a difference in the world someday. These are my friends. And they don't have a clue about what's happening on the national or global stages most of the time. It's disheartening.
This causes an even more troubling problem. Because an understanding of the issues currently in play is nearly non-existent for most people my age, they don't care about those issues. While perhaps a student at my university might know that we are involved in Libya, they don't understand what that involvement is to a level where they might care. What's worse is that this holds true for most topics - social security, healthcare, education, you name it. Either they don't see a reason as to why they should care, or they don't believe that they are capable of doing anything constructive anyways - a basic state of being completely uninformed.
So why is this the normal state of things? Don't they teach kids in school about government and politics and issues?
Well, Government & Politics is a required course in the great state of Washington (where I'm from). Except, it's not offered until a student's senior year of high school. And up until then, there really isn't any discussion about modern government or politics. Practically none, outside of U.S. History, which is taken as a Junior in High School. So, no, government and politics are not really discussed in school. This is a big problem.
The biggest issue though, in my opinion, comes from the teaching approaches used when we actually did cover government and politics in school. The focus was really left on how the governmental and political systems operate and work, mixed in with a minimal amount of history concerning government. These classes really served as kind of informational seminars on subjects like, how a bill is passed into law, or what various amendments of the constitution have been defined to mean, or how the government is set up. Important information, to be sure. But presenting that information with little to no application to contemporary issues renders it little more than useless random facts to recall on a test. And that is the biggest problem with these classes (and many classes in general): there is rarely an attempt to show why an issue should concern us, or how information might be applied on a realistic level.
From my perspective, and the perspective of a lot of my peers, too much emphasis has been put on getting students to memorize very specific information and skills - not just concerning government and politics, but all other areas of education. The focus has become getting students to pass standardized tests (and while I don't want this post to turn into a discussion on that, it is an important issue here). Even though Government and Politics are subjects that are not (as far as I know) tested on standardized tests, you can still see the creep of that style of teaching, "teaching to the test," into those classrooms. And that is a big problem when dealing with subjects like government and politics.
Why is this especially an issue with subjects like government and politics? Well, simply put, with all the focus on learning information, there isn't much focus on the question of why these topics are important, or why students should care. Those two subjects are probably hurt the most by the lack of the "why" question - you simply are not going to be able to get high schoolers interested in either subject without giving them a reason why they should be.
With math, reading, and writing, it's pretty difficult to make it anywhere in life without those skills. Most high schoolers get that, and that can be a pretty strong incentive to perform well there. But what about a comprehensive understanding of government and politics? For most people, it's pretty easy to get by without worrying about those topics. And thus, the only real incentive you can provide for them to pay attention and learn something is by demonstrating just how much those subjects can affect people's lives. For me and my peers, that didn't happen in high school. And as a result, the brightest people in my school, those capable of making a real difference, didn't and probably still don't care. The odds that most of them will vote for anything outside of a presidential or gubernatorial election in the next 10 years are pretty slim. And that's a problem.
To sum it all up, the education system failed me and my peers in trying to get us interested in subjects that matter. It seemed as though our showing up to class, as required by law, somehow guaranteed that we would care. It didn't. And as a result, another generation of young voters probably won't wake up to vote regularly for quite some time.
As an aside, this is not meant to diminish the quality of the educators I encountered in my K-12 education. There are only a very small number of teachers that I can honestly say should not have held their jobs. In fact, almost all of my teachers were great at teaching the required information in ways that made it easy to learn and understand. Those teachers are excellent teachers. I just feel like the system has corralled them into a narrow style of teaching that only benefits a few students greatly, while giving a rest a real "meh" education. I really blame the administrative side of education and standardized testing.
Well, that's quite a long post, and I apologize for that. I look forward to responses. Also, if any of my statements/arguments seem a bit disjointed, I wrote this over several days (not all in a row).
11:41 AM PT: Thanks guys for all the replies and recs! And thanks to the Rescue guys for putting this on the community spotlight!
