Social Capital and Service Learning

Trends in the political engagement of America's high school students present a paradox. At the same time that an unprecedented number of opportunities exist for American adolescents to get involved in activities with a political flavor like student governments, model United Nations, model Congress, Young Republicans and Young Democrats, and debate clubs, both interest and participation in political activities among high school students is low and declining. This is not unlike what has been observed among adults in the general population. A proliferation of advocacy groups has not resulted in more Americans getting involved in politics. Nor has a never-ending supply of political news on TV and radio, in print, and online led to an increase in the nation's attention to political matters. It would be too presumptuous for me to claim that there is a direct causal connection between an increasing supply of opportunities for extracurricular political activities among young people and their declining rates of civic engagement. A more modest claim does seem plausible, however: politics has increasingly become a niche activity, pursued by that relatively small slice of the population who are, as Robert Dahl (1961) famously put it, “ homo politicus ,” i.e., “political junkies.” Television channels provide a telling analogy. Whereas once, events like national political conventions and presidential press conferences would preempt all network programming, they are increasingly shunted off to all-news cable channels and C-SPAN. Ironically, a greater supply of political news has meant that it is easier for people who are not pre-disposed to seek out politically-oriented programming to avoid it.