YES
Linda Ulrich-Hagner:
With help, students will 'do the right thing'

When students have the opportunity to focus on people, issues and events that they feel are important and when they are armed with research and strategies to communicate effectively, the results are incredibly rewarding. Looking at difficult issues in the classroom admittedly is not easy. At times we are met with cynicism and negativity. But the goal is worth it: Grassroots activism helps foster skills that students will use the rest of their lives. A teacher’s role is to facilitate the process by walking students through it and helping them gain confidence as future citizens, one success at a time.

I’ve seen it work in my classroom. During the past two school years, my high school students have joined with parents, teachers and staff, consumer groups and nutritionists to become a powerful force in the battle over a common practice among cash-strapped school districts--signing exclusive "pouring-rights" contracts with soda companies. These sugary beverages become the only drink of choice in the schools. Although the students did not want to give up access to soft drinks altogether, they realized that this arrangement was fueling poor nutritional decisions by adolescents as they opted for beverages that offer only empty calories, cause nutrient displacement (for example, inadequate consumption of calcium) and contribute to obesity.

The students wrote letters to state administrators, federal and state representatives, and the U.S. secretary of agriculture. The pouring-rights controversy was the June 2000 feature story in our student newspaper at Kenmore West High School. In addition to sending a petition to the local board of education, my students participated in an hourlong broadcast on cable television that dealt with the issue. Knowledgeable students in the audience voiced their opinions, and three of the six call-in comments were from my students, each with a different spin.

In class, we used a Socratic format of "probe questions" to discuss pouring rights. It required my students to go beyond just giving their opinions. Pouring rights was a controversial dilemma--one that provoked disagreements among students and staff. We grappled with it as a class and took action. Because of the students’ work on this issue and similar grassroots efforts around the country, Coca-Cola is now encouraging its bottlers to abandon exclusive pouring-rights contracts.

I believe that students who are asked to reflect on a substantive social problem and are armed with knowledge will rise to the occasion every time. I challenge my colleagues to step up to the plate; guide their students to take a stand on local, national or international issues they feel strongly about; and show them the way.

NO
Paul Rogat Loeb:
Not if we don't nurture active citizenship

Despite clichés of pervasive generational apathy, the idealism of today’s students has produced some powerful fruits. But most young men and women face serious barriers to becoming and staying engaged as active citizens--barriers requiring our conscious help to overcome.

Fewer young citizens are voting, and surveys suggest that each year students care less about the environment, racial understanding or even discussing political issues. From my own contact with students, I believe these responses don’t reflect indifference but rather a learned helplessness: a sense that an individual’s actions can’t affect the major issues of our time. They’ll do valuable work volunteering one on one, because that’s concrete and safely bounded. But when asked to imagine themselves taking on the deeper roots of the issues they care about, they are overwhelmed.

Our culture--influenced by what students learn in school--denies them the models they need to take action. Instead, we’ve taught them civic resignation--that serious issues, from environmental crises to the deformation of our democracy by money, are too complex to address. The students’ withdrawal helps make this myth a reality.

Even students who care deeply often suffer from a paralyzing self-doubt regarding public engagement. "I’m just not the kind of person who takes a public stand" is the typical explanation. Acting effectively, they decide, requires impossibly perfect standards of knowledge, standing and skills. We have failed to teach them that history is created not by saints, but by ordinary individuals, with ample hesitations and flaws.

A decade ago, we thought that getting students involved in community service would produce further engagement. But volunteerism doesn’t automatically lead to speaking out on public choices, even on students’ core concerns. As educators, we need to present students with role models, present and past, to illustrate how they might make their actions matter.

As one student told me, "We learn the conclusions: ‘Lincoln freed the slaves. Women got the vote. Some unions were organized. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in D.C.’ We never learn how change actually occurred." To give students the courage to think through what they care about most--and to act on it--we need to offer examples of people who take action despite their uncertainties and who keep on despite apparent failures. Students can get these models from books we assign, stories we teach, local activists we invite into our classrooms. But they have to get them somewhere. If we don’t offer them, who will?