Engaging Young People in Civic Life [Library Binding]

James Youniss (Editor), Peter Levine (Editor), Lee Hamilton (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826516505 | ISBN-13: 978-0826516503 | Publication Date: August 17, 2009

The myth of generations of disengaged youth has been shattered by increases in youth turnout in the 2004, 2006, and 2008 primaries. Young Americans are responsive to effective outreach efforts, and this collection addresses how to best provide opportunities for enhancing civic learning and forming lasting civic identities.

The thirteen original essays are based on research in schools and in settings beyond the schoolyard where civic life is experienced. One focus is on programs for those schools in poor communities that tend to overlook civic education. Another chapter reports on how two city governments--Hampton, Virginia, and San Francisco--have invited youth to participate on boards and in agencies. A cluster of chapters focuses on the civic education programs in Canada and Western Europe, where, as in the United States, immigration and income inequality raise challenges to civic life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This important book tackles head-on one of the major concerns of our day, that too many young people, especially those who don't attend college, are ill informed about and disengaged from politics.
--Anne Colby, Senior Scholar, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; author, Educating for Democracy.

About the Author

James Youniss is James R. and Wylma R. Curtin Professor of Psychology at the Catholic University of America. He has published four previous books on youth civic identity.

Peter Levine is Director of CIRCLE (Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement), Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, Tufts University. He is the author of The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens, among other books.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 304 pages
• Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press (August 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826516505
• ISBN-13: 978-0826516503
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,342,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Peter Levine (www.peterlevine.ws) is Director of CIRCLE, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement and Research director of Tufts University's Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Levine graduated from Yale in 1989 with a degree in philosophy. He studied philosophy at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, receiving his doctorate in 1992. From 1991 until 1993, he was a research associate at Common Cause. In the late 1990s, he was Deputy Director of the National Commission on Civic Renewal. Levine is the author of Reforming the Humanities (in press), The Future of Democracy: Developing the Next Generation of American Citizens (2007), three other scholarly books on philosophy and politics, and a novel. He also co-edited The Deliberative Democracy Handbook (2006) with John Gastil and Engaging Young People in Civic Life (2009) with Jim Youniss and co-organized the writing of The Civic Mission of Schools, a report released by Carnegie Corporation of New York and CIRCLE in 2003 (www.civicmissionofschools.org). He has served on the boards or steering committees of AmericaSpeaks, Streetlaw, the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, the Kettering Foundation, the American Bar Association Committee's for Public Education, the Paul J. Aicher Foundation, and the Deliberative Democracy Consortium.