Educating for democracy

Abstract

Young people today do not seem to be concerned about politics. They have almost no confidence in representative democracy's main actors and institutions, and consequently many of them just do not vote. The problem is that they seem to feel less connected to the society they live in than previous generations did, so some sociologists call the 18-24-year-olds the ‘self-centred generation’. In the present article we will see that young people are more concerned than it seems, but they are reluctant to get more actively involved in public matters. The reason is that, generally, the education they receive does not give them the cultural background necessary to analyse and understand the world they live in, and either they have a very low opinion of politicians or they find them totally uninteresting, a political passivity that could be fatal for our democracies.

Introduction

Madrid, 15 May 2011: the Indignados (Indignant) movement became a reference point for young protesters around the world who, among other concerns, wished to do away with the party system of representative democracy. They were not alone. In Italy, only 4.2% of young Italians between 15 and 24 years old had confidence in political parties and only 4.6% in the Italian Parliament (Demos and Pi 2013). Italian teenagers, young people (ages 15-23) and young adults (24-34), expressed very low levels of confidence–-one might even say ‘minimal’–-with regards to representative democracy's main actors and institutions, and their scepticism extends to the entire state.

The same feelings also appear in France, where youth are extremely reluctant to join a political party (1%) or a trade union (4%) (Muxel 2013), and in the US, with movements such as Occupy Wall Street, whose web page defines the effort as ‘a leaderless resistance movement with people of many colours, genders and political persuasions’ sharing in common that they are made up of ‘the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%’ (Occupy Wall Street 2012).

The problem is that this serious disaffection is becoming more pronounced as the connectedness and community involvement of the young have been severely eroded over the last several decades (Putnam 2000, 277). But is it true that the young people of the twenty-first century are really less interested in politics and society at large than previous generations were?

A selfish generation?

In their research into the August 2011 riots in England, Morrell et al. (2011, 53) concluded that decisions about getting involved were based on what young people thought was right or wrong and on whether they felt the benefits to themselves outweighed the risks.

Moreover, Ball and Clark (2013) ask themselves if Britain has raised a new ‘heartless’ generation of those who grew up under Thatcher (and, arguably, under Tony Blair) and if this marks the slow death of solidarity. For instance, today's young adults in the UK are less supportive of the National Health System than their parents were, despite being far more likely than their elders to be unemployed. Also, 24% of 18-24-year-olds disagreed that it is important to get to know your neighbours, versus just 11% of over-65s. This tendency might explain why youth tend to show a sceptical attitude towards social benefits. A full 48% of 18-24-year-olds and 46% of 25-34-year-olds disagreed with a statement suggesting that unemployed people receiving benefits were ‘for the most part unlucky rather than lazy’–-almost twice as many as in the over-65 group, of whom only 25% disagreed with the statement.

If the polls are any indication, twenty-somethings, belonging to the Y Generation (born between 1980 and 1992), deserve to be called the ‘self-centred generation’.

Do they really not care?

But things are not that simple. In fact, youth are far more interested in politics than it seems. Even if they clearly dislike official politics and show a lack of interest in elections, they are more than willing to participate in demonstrations and protests, as, for instance is the case among 50% of young French people. It is not, then, that young people are not interested in politics but that they have a new approach to it (Muxel 2013).

Along the same line, Urquizu (2012) points out that young Spaniards are now highly motivated in politics. The Indignados movement is made up of people under 35 in Spain, 70% of whom are university students or graduates. What is really striking is that, contrary to popular belief, more than half of these outraged youths did participate in the elections of November 2011, voting overwhelmingly for small parties (79%) rather than for the nation's two primary political forces. The Indignados movement thus contradicts one of today's most widely held stereotypes. But if the polls show that political interest among men and women under 30 rose by 10 points between 1989 and 2009, it is still true that young people who take an interest in politics are still a minority. Why it is so and how to raise their number are crucial questions that deserve to be answered.

Not stupid but politically uneducated

Often cited is the witty quote from Francois Guizot, France's prime minister under King Louis Philippe, who, in office just before the 1848 revolution in Paris, said that ‘not to be a republican at 20 is proof one has no heart; to be one at 30 is proof that one has no head’. The statement is not necessarily true in our day. We have the example of Harold Wilson, Britain's Labour Prime Minister, who sought to exploit the wisdom of Guizot's famous aphorism as he looked to secure an election win by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1969, only to go on to a shocking defeat against the Tories in 1970. Young people do not necessarily follow clichés, simply because they are not stupid. A good way of understanding, then, why most of them are politically passive is to focus on the kind of education they receive and examine more concretely how well it prepares them for getting involved in community life.

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) used to say that, in democracies, each generation is a new people. This means that democracy does not sustain itself and cannot survive passivity. It must be renewed with every generation. In his masterpiece The Revolt of the Masses, José Ortega y Gasset stated that, to be maintained, civilisation requires education, and each new generation must equip itself with the resources necessary to solve the problems of its era. This is the reason he believed that Europe was lost if its destiny was not placed in the hands of truly contemporary people who appreciate their historical legacy, understand the nature of life today and repudiate all archaic and outmoded gestures (Ortega y Gasset 1986, 124).

This pessimistic view of Ortega's seems to be ratified when we see how populist parties are triumphing in European politics today by employing demagogical tactics. The most worrisome part is that, in order to successfully resist populism's facile arguments, one must have a certain cultural level of knowledge and a capacity for critical thinking which allows one to look beyond the situation today and place it in its historical context. Are our young people today adequately educated, enabled to resist populism and demagoguery?

Unfortunately, they are not, for two reasons. First, the generation emerging from adolescence today was born during a spectacular economic boom during which Western society achieved the greatest levels of wealth in its history. This was a time of prosperity that was largely illusory and built on deception, as became evident when the bubble burst in 2008. Before the economic crisis, young people enjoyed unprecedented levels of material abundance, which led them to believe that everything was easy in life and could be achieved with minimal effort. Now they are starting to realise that this is unrealistic.

The second reason is the collapse of the educational system. Never has so much been spent on education, and never has it been spent less effectively. Historically, society's leaders possessed literary and philosophical knowledge, and considerable classical education, which was, at the same time, perfectly compatible with mathematical and scientific knowledge. As pointed out by Edwards (1999, 9), the American revolutionaries rebelling against British rule, for example, envisioned themselves as new Romans, founders of republican institutions inspired by heroes from the ancient world. Though George Washington lacked a classical education (unlike many of the leaders of the American Revolution), his favourite play was Addison's Cato (1713), a story celebrating the self-sacrifice of a Roman republican hero. America's first president, who forewent the planter's life to serve as the nation's leader, was himself hailed as a new Cincinnatus. The rule of a foreign monarch overturned, the political classes of the 13 states declared they would follow the examples of Brutus, founder of the Roman republic, and Publius Valerius Publicola, another semi-mythical figure credited with initiating key elements in Rome's constitution. The Americans’ founding document, with its provisions for balance, they claimed, was based on that of ancient Rome, as described by Cicero and Polybius. Rome could offer Americans dissatisfied with British rule an alternative model of government sanctioned by centuries of tradition and associated with classical education, which remained a prime marker of elite status in the young republic.

Today, our best students receive a totally unbalanced education. The study of literature, history and philosophy is not only out of fashion but disparaged. The humanities are only studied by the ‘fools’ of the class, and there is the widespread perception–-held by too many teachers, parents and students–-that only those strong in mathematics are successful in life. Today, for example, few wish to study history, but without historical knowledge one cannot contextually situate oneself in the present. Moreover, young people today do not read, and many have serious problems writing.

It is true that these developments are, in large measure, due to the technological revolution, the Internet, social networks and the communications revolution, which keeps young people in a perpetual state of distraction, busy on their smartphones and computers, but without any need to read, ponder, reason, analyse or express themselves effectively. It is also true that too little is done by schools and universities to counter these trends so deadly to their intellects, because they are not given the requisite assistance or guidance to acquire a broader culture and the analytical capacity necessary to understand the world in which they live.

The problem is that, as Furlong and Cartmel (2007,1) point out, young people today have to negotiate a set of risks which were largely unknown to their parents, due to drastic changes in modern societies having come about within a relatively short time. Therefore, they lack points of reference to clearly orient them, hence suffering a great deal of uncertainty, a source of stress and vulnerability. And generally, the education they receive does not help them to function as informed, mature and civically capable citizens.

This might explain why today's leaders are essentially made up of financiers and business managers–-the very same types who pushed us into the worst economic crisis since 1929. None of this should surprise us when our children receive an education largely focused on business in our schools and universities, which is all the more troubling when it has been precisely an obsession with finance which has mired the world in the crisis in which it is stuck. Today's ‘managers’ of international politics do not envision long-term solutions but seem to only see the day to day and make short-term decisions, without a view to long-term consequences.

In the case of Europe, the absence of an analytical focus is particularly appalling, because one of the continent's great assets benefiting it as it seeks to compete in the world with the US and Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa ought to be its rich cultural heritage, acquired over the centuries. After all, Europe is not only where democracy was born, but it is the EU which boasts the greatest levels of social equality in the world. The bad thing is that our young people take all this for granted, without realising or appreciating the achievements which it took generations of Europeans to realise. It has been a long road to get to where we are today, and without renewed efforts, we face the threat of sliding backwards and losing the hard-won advantages we now enjoy.

The end of democracy?

Given this situation, we must ask ourselves what kind of role young people can play in the political realm. Until now, their influence has been limited, because most are jaded with and reject the entire political class, which they view as a band of aloof elites who are out of touch with the populace. Apathy and mistrust have grown and festered. As we look forward to new elections for the European Parliament in June 2014, let us remember the shifts in the percentages of those not voting, which are illustrative: abstention rates of 38% in 1979, 41% in 1984, 41.5% in 1989, 43.3% in 1994, 50.5% in 1999, 54.6% in 2004 and 56.8% in 2009. This is a troubling trend, which is also being observed in the US, in both legislative and presidential elections (Roberts 2009).

The feeling that nothing can be changed explains the growing political apathy among the citizens of democratic nations, to the point that we are witnessing the consolidation of a trend towards chronic abstention (Subileau and Toinet 1993). This is extremely acute in the young generation, as our youth has the feeling that it cannot make a difference in the system, that politicians represent a class which essentially engages in maintaining its privileges while ignoring the people, protected by parties (in Spain, for example) which only offer voters fixed lists of leaders determined by opaque internal processes, with the voters left out.

No wonder young people have grown so sceptical that they ask themselves if our democracies run the risk of resembling the political regimes defined by ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky and Way 2002, 52), which some scholars define as partial or diminished forms of democracy, and Linz (2000, 34) believes may better be described as a diminished form of authoritarianism. In any case, if the rising generation does not get involved in politics, it is clear that our democracies are in serious danger.

Uninteresting politicians

How can this dangerous trend be averted? Ball and Clark (2013) mention the opinion of Bobby Duffy, the managing editor of Ipsos-Mori's social research unit and the man leading the company's generational work, according to whom the younger generation is not uninterested in current affairs but is rather focused on particular problems that they want to resolve. ‘If politicians want to take something positive away from all this, then instead of writing youngsters off as people who won't vote, they might want to consider offering them help with practical problems, such as housing’.

Walters (2013) goes further and believes that politicians have to take much of the blame here: for their constant striving for consensus, for their attempts to attract the most voters with watered-down statements, and for their public relations teams, which have weakened our political system, turning it into some kind of staged drama where personality is stifled and conviction controlled. Young voters need to be inspired, they need encouragement from politicians who are not afraid to go against the grain and say something controversial, inspirational or daring. In the words of the post-punkers the Stranglers, there are ‘no more heroes any more’ (Stranglers 1977).

The future in their hands

Could our democracies survive without young people? Obviously not. This is the reason that effort should be made in our societies to educate, motivate and convince young people that the future is in their hands. As Kofi Annan affirmed, ‘no one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts itself off from its youth severs its lifetime: it is condemned to bleed to death’ (Annan 1998).

To advance in this direction, it is necessary for our young citizens to be educated in pluralism and in the cultural tradition which has made them what they are. Only thus equipped will they be able to deal with the challenges of the era in which they live. Too many young people today are concentrating exclusively on landing specific professional positions, achieved through ultra-specialised and utilitarian studies. It seems to be bound up in the very nature of the current education system that students should not waste their time acquiring general knowledge, mastering the art of expressing themselves properly in speech and in writing, or learning how to structure their thinking. But young people are much more than specialised parts of a machine, and all the more so because this machine is changing as rapidly as it is fundamentally. They will have to know how to adapt to new circumstances. Do we want to educate our youth for democracy? Then we should help new generations discover an exciting new world in which they can and should be the protagonists, the visionaries and the creators.