Metaphor from the Midwest

Civic engagement cannot simply be demanded from citizens, it must be cultivated among them.  In this presentation (pdf), we offer a few of our favorite quotes as guidelines for understanding civic engagement as an ongoing process through which citizens gather skills and become more aware of and more involved in the issues that impact their lives.  We hope that you can find some time to reflect on and engage with the issues that impact your community over the holidays.  In the new year help plant and cultivate the seeds of citizenship.

Civic Engagement Falling

The latest Civic Health Index report from the National Conference on Citizenship indicates that 72% of respondents reported a reduction in civic engagement even though the need for engaged citizens is greater than ever.  In fact, there is very little good news for the world of civic engagement in the report.  The report suggests that many Americans are losing faith in the abilities of their government to deal effectively with the problems we face and are less likely to take time out of their busy lives doing work for their communities.  Yet Americans are still helping each other out by doing things like giving food or shelter to those in need.  Take a look at this report share your thoughts.

Advancing Literacy: Time to Act

The Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy has issues a report which indicates that we are not adequately preparing our students with the literacy skills needed to understand the complex materials they will encounter in high school.  If they cannot master these skills they will have difficulty understanding the complex issues they will encounter as citizens. The “Time to Act” report has four primary sections; “The Vision”, “The Challenge”, “The Keys to Successful Reform”, and “The Agenda”.  The conclusion section offers action advice for several groups of people.

Here at American Values Are…® we are trying to build the higher order literacy skills needed for engagement in the 21st century into the process of civic education.  For example, see this presentation we used in training Americorps workers.  Community groups, faith communities, and families can all help build the needed literacy skills. Share your thoughts on what is needed and how we can strengthen civic capacity for our youth and for our country as a whole.

Words Matter!

Words are more than just emotional triggers.  “Fascist” and “socialist” are not simply synonyms.  When we use words simply to spark emotion without understanding or respect for their definitions, we erode civic capacity.  When words are used with respect to their meanings and with the purpose of conveying a critical point of difference, we invite thinking and build comprehension and understanding.  In order to bridge differences we need to be able to use the language and thinking skills required for difficult dialogues.  Without these skills our attempts at dialogue will likely prove unsuccessful, possibly even degenerating into simple bickering.

If we are truly interested in building civic capacity, we need to think about the way we use words.  In our American Values Are…® discussion guides we talk about definitions because words are extremely powerful and dictionaries very precise about what vocabulary they use in their definitions. Furthermore, it is important to respond when words are misused because misuse creates a flaw in the foundation needed for both trust and sound analysis.

We invite your thoughts on what we can we do to bridge the gap between the collective thinking skills we have and those we need to participate effectively, and any other thoughts you have on why words matter.

Focusing on the Structure of Engagement

It is surprisingly important to establish a structure for citizen engagement.  Without a structure, your engagement process can become easily derailed, becoming nothing more than a venting session.  I recently sat through one of these sessions as an observer.  While I was happy to see several different groups of people normally opposed to each other in the same space, it was disappointing to see that there was no purpose or forward movement to this “dialogue” session.  It is certainly good to let people air their grievances and begin to understand each other but if the process doesn’t aim toward resolution then nothing positive can come of it and the energy to tackle the issue at hand can dissipate.

As we mentioned in the last post, we have looked at some of the specific steps that can be taken in working toward resolution and we have created this presentation for The Communications Center, Inc. This describes our addition to the two Public Agenda’s and The Harwood Institute’s tools, a list of “Ways of Working Toward Resolution”.  In addition to focusing on the endpoint of a deliberative process, we include possible methods that communities can use to build the relationships they need for sustained dialogues and to reach sustainable resolutions.  We invite your feedback.

If you have trouble with the powerpoint, make sure you are clicking on “Read Only” or download this pdf version without any of the nice animation.  Sorry OpenOffice users, still no support for password protected ppt files so you will have to use the pdf.

The Learning Curve and The Stages of Community Life

In November of 2008, Daniel Yankelovich, the Chairman of Public Agenda gave a presentation outlining his idea for “New Pragmatism”.  In this he outlined both what he believes to be the barriers to engaging citizens on the difficult issues we face today and his idea for how we can work through.  Here he offered us the “Learning Curve” and indicated that the American public is still at the stage of consciousness raising.

A few months later, the Harwood Institute launched a new website and offered us their idea of the five stages of community life that run from a community waiting to engage and a community that is engaged in the sorts of dialogues that lead to real and regular changes in policy.

While it is important and essential to understand both the barriers to reaching resolution and the stages communities will go through on the way to an inclusive and responsive system, we believe that you must also pursue an understanding of what we can specifically do to reach these goals.  Our next post will look at some specific steps that can be taken to reach resolution.

Moving Beyond Negative Norms

As we mentioned in some of our previous posts, dialogues are regularly plagued with the sorts of oppositional behaviors (finger-pointing, name calling, ridicule) that make constructive solutions to real problems difficult to achieve.  Other factors undermining effective dialogue include wishful thinking, simple dismissal of alternative viewpoints, insistent oversimplification, jockeying for credit, and unwillingness to trust in others.  If we are to make dialogue a part of our self-governance, how do we go about moving beyond these negative norms?

This is no easy task.  What we may require is a sea change in the way we do politics.  What must we do to create a truly inclusive and functional public sphere that leads citizens into dialogue, helps them collaborate to develop the knowledge needed to make good decisions, and then results in those decisions being reflected into policy and action?

The Open Government Directive

The Obama administration recently completed a three phase online open government dialogue process designed to gather public opinion and work toward developing policies for a more transparent and open government.  The first phase was a brainstorming session in which citizens were asked to submit ideas which were then refined through discussion and voted on to decide which ideas were best.  The format in phase one was similar to a blog but the voting added a layer of complexity.

The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) then took these ideas and developed phase two, a discussion period in which citizens were asked to dig deeper into some of the difficult issues raised during the brainstorming phase.  During this phase, the OSTP posted blog entries and citizens were asked to make comments in regard to the specific topic.  In this fashion, the discussion was more focused than the brainstorming session.

Finally, in phase three, participants were asked to draft specific recommendations for increasing government transparency and openness.  This platform allowed participants to write recommendations of their own and rate and remix the recommendations made by others.  The OSTP is currently reviewing these recommendations.

While this was an innovative and interesting process, the time windows were short and it was inherently only able to reach an online audience.  In our last several posts we have asked you to consider the value of dialogue with boundaries and the ability of our citizenry to participate in intensive and informed dialogue.  Here we would like you to consider how effective this open government dialogue can be.  Did it go too quickly?  How can we move from this sort of dialogue format toward real policy?  These dialogues were largely moderated by the community, yet, a great deal of discussion was off topic.  How can we focus online discussions such that they lead us away from bickering and toward constructive dialogue?

From Dialogue to Policy

In our previous post, we indicated that interlocking sets of bounded dialogues may be necessary to make broad scale public dialogues more productive in evaluating or implementing policy changes.  While many can agree that dialogue is a useful tool for public engagement, it is not so clear how this dialogue can or will intersect with or influence the legislative or regulatory processes that lead to changes in policy.  And dialogue cannot be expected to replace procedural or other safeguards inherent in those other processes.  Sustained and informed dialogues that are designed to interact with those processes could over time help make those processes more accountable to the public, and serve both to educate the public and inform decisionmakers.  Americans indicate that they want greater involvement with, and greater transparency and accountability from, their government, yet, it is unclear exactly what this means.  Is the general public prepared for intensive and informed dialogue?  Why or why not?

Dialogue With Boundaries

It is often assumed that dialogue should be an open forum in which everyone gets to speak their mind.  Not  everyone though is comfortable with this sort of dialogue and thus fail to bring their concerns to the table.  Not all who do come to the table are informed or interested in learning.  Yet, the myriad and pressing problems we face today require public dialogue that is both informed and inclusive, and that builds the understanding needed to create a broad-based political will to change.

We might make more progress by creating more dialogues with boundaries  -  that is, dialogues, whether in person or online, that are focused by mutual understanding and acceptance as to their purpose, moderated for civility, and organized into discernible threads that help new ideas emerge in coherent ways.

How do we create an inclusive dialogue on major policy issues and still have boundaries? One way might be to have multiple dialogues at different levels that are networked.  People enter dialogues at many different levels. The Office of Science and Technology Policy has recently started a blog that is working to develop a national conversation on how we approach policies, and other groups like The Right Question Project have started dialogues that help citizens learn basic skills needed to participate in everyday democracy.  Citizens have also been encouraged to host house parties to discuss health care and other issues. How can such efforts be linked? How do we build and share knowledge? What would help us to better understand the intersections between issues? To what extent does blog technology allow us to have the sorts of dialogues that can lead to real and productive policy changes, and what are its limits?  One of our commentators, commenting on the post below titled “what makes discussion meaningful or productive” suggested fielding panels of speakers on key topics of interest to help citizens become more informed about issues.  Could we build “information gateways” – attendance at an event, reviewing written materials, or viewing on-line videos — for participation in a moderated blog?  Are there other approaches we should be taking to gather our resources and make the best decisions possible?

Here is a quote to consider from Woodrow Wilson:

I not only use all the brains I have, but all the brains I can borrow.

Our primary question is, how can we best use all of our brains?