Like many young people, Paula Rondon-Burgos, 17, was turned off by politics. “I’ve never been interested in it … I always thought politicians were really corrupt and evil people and weren’t out for the good of anyone, but were just in it for themselves. I thought government was a bad idea, too.”

Until last summer. Now—also like many young people—she’s an activist and a political junkie. Devoutly Catholic and a self-described “moderate Republican,” Rondon-Burgos was troubled by local authorities’ approval of Planned Parenthood plans to open a clinic near the school. Since the summer, she’s attended several Board of Supervisors meetings and spoken out at protests in front of the site. She’s joined several of the political clubs at Albemarle High School (AHS) in Charlottesville, and says Advanced Placement government is her favorite class.

She credits her transformation to gentle pressure from her friends (“I had to get informed if I wanted to be able to talk politics with them at lunch”), and the strong avenues for civic learning and action at AHS.

That young people are generally politically disengaged is no newsflash. Since the 26th Amendment lowered the voting to 18 in 1971, voting rates for Americans age 18 to 24 have dropped steadily—more steeply than any other age group.

Educators in Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville are tackling the problem of youth disengagement in innovative ways. Here, politics is truly a living curriculum.

State Standards Promote Change
Civic education may have fallen out of favor in recent years. But, says Patricia Hughes, social studies coordinator for Albemarle public schools, “It’s back and back big.”

States have discretion in the subjects emphasized in their Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. Virginia includes civics in the 8th and 12th grade tests. For this reason, districts like Albemarle devote time and resources to civics courses and activities.

At the 1,800-student Albemarle High School, both the Advanced Placement and general enrollment government classes undertake interactive campaign projects.

Learn more about the Youth Leadership Initiative

And political education is extra-curricular too: 30 students take part in the Youth Leadership Initiative club, or YLI. It’s part of a national initiative by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. The club runs a school-wide mock election and holds debates. In addition, there are Young Democrats (20-25 students) and Young Republicans (30 students) clubs. The Politics is Good club—affectionately called “PIG,” neither donkey nor elephant—aims to bring students of diverse ideologies together. The numbers aren’t staggering, but they are growing.

For each club, there are announcements over the PA and fliers on the walls, but the most successful recruitment strategy is word of mouth.

“It’s ‘retail politics’ as we learned about in class. I’ll see someone in lunch whom I met once and I’ll go talk to them. If you ask them personally, they come,” says Kimberly Walters, a 17-year-old senior. It worked for her friend Rondon-Burgos, after all. “But you can’t talk to every person in the school,” Walters adds.

It’s easier to get kids interested in a high-stakes presidential election year. But true civic engagement extends beyond elections, and into everyday life choices and awareness.

“It’s not just about getting kids to vote. It’s about establishing a culture, starting in kindergarten, about what it means to be a citizen in a democracy—the importance, the responsibility, the magic, even, of being a citizen,” says Hughes.

The West Wing – of Albemarle High
“Ms. Strong, did you see this?” a student asks. The bell has not yet rung in Julie Strong’s third-period class, and the students are filing in. The student hands her a page ripped from a magazine. “It’s from Newsweek, about the Liberty Act. I saw it this weekend and remembered our talk about it.”

I saw it this weekend? This is not the disaffected crowd of young people the media so often portrays, plugged into cell phones and I-Pods and rocking anything but the vote. During class, several students sit with their sweatshirt hoods up over their heads, or slouch in their seats, long legs in big boots splayed out beyond their desks. But these kids ask tough questions on complex tissues. Today’s topic: campaign finance reform: McCain-Feingold and the 527 loophole. Discuss.

Strong keeps her 90-minute class moving with video clips and music. She shows campaign ads from major and third-party candidates, which the students dissect and interpret. She shows a Saturday Night Live segment parodying the Swift Boat Veterans issue ads; another parodying Kerry himself. Students watch the Daily Show, Hardball and other talk-TV segments, and listen to J.C. Fogerty’s 1970 song, “Fortunate Son.”

Throughout, they are pushed to respond critically, to ask questions and provide the often-missing context.

Caitlin Johnson spoke with three AHS students, all seniors in Julie Strong’s Advanced Placement government class. (From left: Paula Rondon-Burgos, 17, Jason Moran, 17, Mrs. Julie Strong and Kimberly Walters, 17) Click here for more perspectives from the students on politics, issues and their classmates’ opinions.

Some discussions get heated, but Strong works hard to build an atmosphere of trust and respect. But she doesn’t shy away from issues like civil liberties, abortion, race and gender. “If they’re not going to talk about them in a class like this, they won’t get discussed. And they need to be discussed,” Strong says.

She keeps her own ideology to herself, and often plays devil’s advocate when voices are absent from the debate. “The idea is to present balance and get students to think and make decisions for themselves… I have students who become activists on the left, and have kids who are very activist on the right,” she says.

The fun stuff—which happens also to be weighty, substantive stuff—begins mid-semester. In Strong’s Campaign Project, students are split into six teams. This year, there’s one for each major presidential party, a far-left third party candidate, a far-right third party candidate, and each of the two candidates for Virginia’s 5th District House seat.

In each team, students play a role for the life of the project. Every aspect of a campaign is covered; in addition to the candidates, there are campaign managers, advisors, lobbyists, communications directors. Each team must produce public service announcements digitally or on video, and create campaign literature.

Says student Jason Moran, 17: “There’s like this personal connection that I think you have with it when you have those kind of experiences. … To a degree, it enhances your emotions and how intensely you feel about certain subjects and it just makes it all the more interesting.”

Getting Local, Hitting Close to Home
What about students who aren’t in the AP-level classes? Melissa Wilson teaches government, and says most young people have difficulty connecting politics to their everyday lives. Bringing it closer to home can help.

“The theme for the entire year is local, which makes sense because that’s where students feel the impact. It makes it relevant to students; ‘how will this impact me?’ We’re examining issues they already know about,” say Wilson.

Traditionally, government classes emphasize federal processes, which are what tend to show up on SOL and Advanced Placement tests. But Wilson and her colleague Hal Hankins have made the shift to a more local perspective, in part because of training they and 18 other teachers in the region have received through the Civics Education Initiative grant from the Annenberg Foundation for Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wilson and Hankins received stipends of $10,000 and a 10-day comprehensive training workshop in Washington DC at the start of the school year. Further training will come at the end. During the school year, they benefit from the support of other grant recipients who stay in touch via e-mail and occasional phone calls, sharing strategies and curriculum ideas. (The Annenberg initiative is being piloted in Albemarle County, Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; and New York City, New York.)

To counter student apathy, Wilson puts them to work investigating their communities—and focuses more on experiential learning than traditional lectures. A community mapping project had students catalogue 20 elements they see in their communities—businesses, residential areas, development, landfills—and use magnets to identify these on a map.

“Students started seeing that all the magnets were going in the same place. So we talked about growth and development and who makes these decisions. What is our local government and what would happen if there weren’t people making these decisions?” says Wilson.

The yearlong Citizen Action Project builds on this initial activity by arranging students in groups to tackle a local issue of their choice—they research it, devise an action plan, and implement it.

Wilson’s Annenberg-funded training will, she says, permanently change the way she teaches government.

Rock the Mock

In mid-October, the mock election organized by the school’s YLI club was the big buzz at AHS. Signs and posters were everywhere, proclaiming Rock the Mock! in bold colors or striking black and white. For two days—Monday October 18 and Tuesday October 19—students came to the AHS lobby, some in classes escorted by teachers, other alone during free periods, and registered and voted at one of roughly 30 I-Book polling stations.

The YLI club—a dedicated group of about 30 sophomores, juniors and seniors who meet before school every Tuesday—prepared campaign brochures and information on Bush, Kerry and Ralph Nader as well as the incumbent Congressman Virgil Goode, a Republican, and his challenger, Democrat Al Weed.

At Albemarle, 956 students voted - more than 50 percent. In the Presidential contest, Democrat John F. Kerry took 52.22 percent of the vote compared to 43.02 percent for Bush. Minor-party candidates and write-ins received less than 5 percent combined. Ralph Nader was not on the ballot.

AHS students also gave the edge to Democratic challenger Al C. Weed II in the 5th Congressional District. Weed took 56.78 percent of the AHS vote, compared to 40.92 for incumbent Republican Virgil H. Goode, Jr.

Similar events were held at schools around the country. Next week, the Center for Politics will tally the final results.

The Mock may be over, but civic learning and engagement will continue at Albemarle High, both in the classrooms and through clubs like YLI, which will turn its attention to local races in 2005.

Resources

• Albemarle High School
• UVA’s Center for Politics
• Growing Voters and Election 2004 has materials and resources for this election
• You can read the first chapter of Jane Eisner’s Taking Back the Youth Vote online.