| De: |
Daniel Roth [ Profil ] |
| Sujet: |
Political Party Activity and Youth
|
| Envoyé: |
Aug 29th, 2006 - 10:39:44 |
|
| |
------ Forwarded Message
From:
Date: Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:04:10 -0700 (PDT)
To:
Subject: [freechild.org] Political Party Activity and Youth
The Freechild Project
Connecting young people and social change
The following is a clip from Peter Levine's blog. He's a researcher at the
University of Maryland's CIRCLE program, and writes a great deal about youth
civic engagement. Here he promotes a new book about the social advantages
for youth from living in a politically healthy community:
"Growing up in a politically competitive community turns out to have
important educational advantages. Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht (see link
below) find that young people who live in communities with competitive
elections are more knowledgeable about politics, more confident in their own
capacity to make a difference, more trusting in government to be responsive,
more tolerant, and more likely to discuss politics than their peers, holding
many other factors constant.
Competition probably enhances civic learning because politicians and parties
must reach out to citizens when elections are close. They reach out with
messages that make people feel important and that convey interesting
information. Also, regardless of how politicians behave, one can learn from
growing up among roughly equal groups of Democrats and Republicans. In
politically diverse communities, young people are exposed to divergent
political views and understand that disagreement is inevitable. (The same
advantage also arises from religious diversity.)
Political competitiveness can compensate for economic disadvantage. In fact,
Gimpel and colleagues found that in poor communities with a mix of
Democratic and Republican voters, young people grow up more knowledgeable
than their peers who live in wealthy, single-party suburbs. Political
competition boosts the level of discussion "by an amazing 17 percentage
points among those with no plans to attend college," because exposure to
robust politics compensates for their relatively poor formal educations."
Learn about the book at
http://www.brook.edu/press/books/cultivatingdemocracy.htm
Read Levine's blog at http://www.peterlevine.ws/mt/
--
The Freechild Project is a program of CommonAction, a national nonprofit
youth engagement organization.
Ph: 360.753.2686
Fax: 360.943.0785
Email: info (at) freechild.org
Web: http://www.freechild.org
------ End of Forwarded Message
|
|
Message
Retour aux messages 
