Political participation is seriously unequal. For example, young adults who finish college vote at almost three times the rate of contemporaries who have dropped out of high school. That gap translates into disparities by race and class. Effective civic education can reduce such inequality and make our democracy more representative. Teaching…

Public discourse suggests that volunteer work will transform youth into productive citizens by connecting youth to their communities. However, the meaning and practice of "community" is rarely defined or investigated. Using interview and observation data from a study of 47 volunteers aged 15-23, I argue that there are three different types of…

In a democracy, agents of political socialization, such as schools and parents, generally emphasize the importance of voting. While college students may be exposed briefly to voter registration as a barrier to participation, there is little evidence that the topic is given serious attention in the classroom. This research addresses how classroom…

Hong Kong has become a political city since 1997 after the return of sovereignty from Britain to China, and the issue of democracy and universal suffrage is still a question. Since then, there have been constant demonstrations in the streets to struggle for social justice and true universal suffrage, participated in by thousands of Hong Kong…

The strong relationship between education and civic engagement is what leads Fraga and Frost (2010) to describe the U.S. school system as a "center of democratic governance" (p. 119). For immigrant communities, schools also serve to foster political socialization and incorporation. This chapter considers schools' democratic roles from an…

Teacher education is charged with the goal of training teachers who will prepare the next generation of citizens. Since Horace Mann's common schools, teachers have been the purveyors of political education, often through teaching patriotic songs and celebrated historical events and individuals. Through liberal education and critical pedagogy,…

Community colleges occupy a growing role in the American education system. Their unique cross-section of students poses a challenge for teachers of political science. This paper uses information from a survey completed by over 2,000 students at 20 colleges and universities across the United States to shed light on some of the most significant…

Bernie Ronan's "The Civic Spectrum: How Students Become Engaged Citizens" comes at a critical time in the effort to strengthen the role of higher education in a democracy. In the last 20 years, higher education institutions have begun to pay a great deal of attention to the civic engagement of college students. By now, nearly every campus around…

While various recent studies have sounded the alarm about young people's civic and political participation, schools are often cited as an important means of counteracting this trend. Not only do schools prepare students for the "real" world but they also provide them with essential resources required for political participation. However,…

The recent decline in voter turnout, a trend largely attributed to lack of youth participation, has focused the attention of many scholars on the study of young people and politics. While great strides have been made in understanding youth disengagement, one dimension of the field that remains understudied is the development of political interest.…

Frances Alice Kellor (1873 - 1952) is most famous for leading the Americanization movement that greeted immigrants from 1906 to 1921. The movement has been damned as coercive in the name of conformity in the historical literature. This dissertation argues that Kellor's Americanization movement promoted immigrants and immigration, Americanized…

Background/Context: Student governments are the first direct experience that youth have of representative government. However, very little research has been done on student councils in spite of their ubiquity in American high schools and consistent references to their positive effects on the political socialization of youth.…

Adolescent voluntary associations are particularly well positioned in the life course to encourage voting as youth become full citizens. Extracurriculars socialize students into voting by habituating them to civic engagement and by connecting them to politically engaged cultures. We establish this argument by testing the effects of high school…

This study examines the patterns and interplay of college students' political orientations and socialization toward citizenship and civil society in the Chinese sociopolitical context, alongside China's move to mass higher education. Data were collected from a nationwide survey conducted in 12 Chinese universities in 2007. The analytic framework…

Citizenship education was introduced as a statutory subject in England in September 2002 with the aim of promoting civic and political engagement. However, whilst education is undoubtedly a powerful socialisation force, it is not the only factor that is likely to influence young people's civic and political participation. Political science…