America loses its civic sense

The News Virginian / News Virginian
Published: September 26, 2007

When school board races go uncontested, it is a fairly safe bet that the district superintendent is pleased. Effectively CEOs, superintendents wield considerable power running districts that are the equivalent of mid-sized businesses, with hundreds of employees and multimillion-dollar budgets. Still, these top administrators must answer to school board officials, who sometimes have altogether different ideas about the way things should be run.

That is not a problem for Augusta County Superintendent Gary McQuain. All seven school board seats up for election this year are uncontested. School officials generally interpret uncontested races to be indicators of a well-run school system, one that keeps controversy at bay, produces results in the classroom and satisfies the expectations of parents. All of that appears to apply in Augusta County, a positive reflection on board members and McQuain alike.

But another factor perhaps is at play in the absence of contenders for Augusta board seats, and it is one that ought to trouble us. Study after study has reached the same conclusion: Fewer Americans are voting in local elections, fewer are running for public office and fewer can name their elected representatives. It is what is known as civic disengagement, and it is a dangerous trend.

Before Tom Brokaw came up with the catchy book title and apropos label for the Greatest Generation, the men and women who struggled through the Depression and then conquered tyranny in World War II were known as the civic generation.

They returned from battlefields abroad and factories at home not only to build the foundation of wealth and power upon which America stands today but to volunteer in their communities, holding public office, joining local organizations and clubs, even founding some of those groups themselves.

As that remarkable generation passes into the night, its legacy is flickering. Election turnout has plummeted over the last 35 years, from almost two-thirds of eligible voters to about half. UCLA studies show that slightly more than a fourth of college freshmen believe following politics is important compared to 60 percent in the 1960s.

Determining where to place blame is difficult, and it largely depends on which side of the ideological fence one stands.
Conservatives point at liberals for fostering a mentality that has Americans increasingly turning to government to ask what it can do for them, an ironic reversal of President Kennedy's charge.

Liberals fault conservatives for a system that leaves many people feeling disenfranchised.

Still others cite massive societal shifts, including the advent of the dual-income society, a transient workforce that leaves many people rootless and the predominance of distractions such as television and the Internet.

More important now than identifying the causes is recognizing the problem.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam roughly equates civic participation with social capital, which he has carefully documented as being in dramatic decline in America. The ramifications, Putnam argues, are dire, including loss of public trust, less confidence in institutions and a lower perceived quality of life.

We would add another consequence: the slow, steady disintegration of democracy. A society that rejects the significance and responsibility of civic participation cannot expect to remain truly free.

As Putnam has written: "High on America's agenda should be the question of how to reverse these adverse trends in social connectedness, thus restoring civic engagement and civic trust."

And preserving the uniquely American spirit for which so many of the civic generation fought and died.