As we approach another presidential election cycle, I am bracing myself for the recurring question: Will the youth vote show up in 2024?
I know from my years working directly with youth and now leading a national youth civic engagement organization that it is the wrong question. Instead, especially as students head back to school, my fellow adults should be asking what we are doing to engage young people in this electoral process and democracy at large. After all, in 2024, Gen Z and millennials will make up 48.5 percent of the voting population. With that sizable share of the electorate, young people will be in position to dramatically impact elections.
It is foolhardy to think that the problem with youth voter turnout is apathy. Young people care. They care deeply and they have insightful, thoughtful and novel ideas about how to address some of our country’s most pressing issues. But they are also keen observers of the dysfunction and inequities in our current system of government and society. They see deep problems that directly affect them, like climate change and gun violence, receiving short shrift from people in power. They see abuses of power. So it’s no wonder they’re unsure how much government and elected officials are the solution to the problems they see around them.
It’s our job to provide the support, training and resources that young people need to be civic leaders for a lifetime. Engaging the next generation in civics will lead to greater turnout, a more informed citizenry, and a healthier democracy. Candidates must reach out to young voters on their terms, and — particularly in this politically charged landscape — schools must commit to teaching civics.
There’s ample room for improvement. Civics education needs both a boost and a re-imagining.
My colleagues at iCivics found that “only seven states require a full year of civics or government for high school, only seven have stand-alone civics requirements for middle school, and most elementary schools allot only a half-hour per week to the social studies.” Is it any wonder that just one in five eighth-graders is at or above civics proficiency?
But improving civics education is not just about doing more of the same.
For schools, increasing civic engagement involves helping students understand how government works and equipping them with the words and techniques they can use to drive change in their communities. Educators who are skittish about getting caught up in the culture wars can rest assured, teaching civics isn’t about telling young people what to think (that would never work anyway). Teaching civics is about giving young people the support and strategies to explore their passions, identify sources of power, surface problems, explore solutions, and advance progress. It’s about focusing on real-life projects and letting students take the lead.
The youth civic engagement group Mikva Challenge, which I lead, also takes this learning outside of the classroom, by placing students in elected official’s offices through internships and running citywide youth councils to bring young people directly into policymaking.
This approach recently played out with a high school student from central California, Melissa Zavala. Melissa and her classmates developed brief speeches about topics they are passionate about, such as how vital farmworkers, like Melissa’s parents, are to agriculture and the economy at large, and how much people tend to take them for granted. When our organization brought Melissa to Washington, D.C., this spring for our first annual National Youth Summit, Melissa had the chance to meet with staff members from her congressperson’s office. They were moved by Melissa’s advocacy, and last week Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren introduced a bill to create an annual Farmworker Appreciation Week. Melissa helped craft the legislation.
It’s a civics equivalent to the famous line from “The Field of Dreams”— if you build it, they will come. We must engage our youths in not just learning about voting but thinking about why they want to vote — what issues matter to them the most, what are the effects of voting or sitting out, what is the history of suffrage and the current demographics of voters. Then, it’s up to us to make it as simple as possible to vote.
Once we commit ourselves as a country to youth civic engagement, we may be surprised to find that the benefits extend well beyond increased voter turnout. Pollster Frank Luntz asked 1,000 adults in 2020 what could heal our country’s political divides. What was the no.1 choice, regardless of political party?
Civic education.
Verneé Green is CEO of Mikva Challenge, a national leader in the field of youth civic engagement that works with over 300,000 students in 16 states. She has worked in the field of education for 25 years, including three years as a teacher in Chicago Public Schools.