Elections as an Opportunity of learning Civic Education and Political Participation for teenagers

Abstract

Developed countries are recently experiencing an unprecedented decrease of political participation involvement among young people. While there is robust evidence that education increases civic and political participation in developed democracies, it has been argued that there is no clear correlation between education and increase of political participation. In this article, we suggest an additional educational instrument in school that might contribute to the awareness of political participation and increase involvement in politics. This qualitative study seeks to understand whether teenagers can show more interest in elections with an additional instrument kit in schools. The research study was conducted toward national elections, and the theoretical proposal was reinforced by interviews as an exploratory research. In total, 20 teachers from social science and citizenship studies were interviewed, in two colleges in the center of the country. The article provides a better understanding that this theoretical proposal booklet can provide robust citizenship orientation in high school and might contribute to the increase of citizen engagement.

Keywords

political participation the system of education citizenship elections civic education and civic engagement

Introduction

The sociologist Eisenstadt (1976) defines democracy as a regime that provides the legal practice opportunity to replace governments through elections. Thus, elections express the essence of democracy. Democratic elections give expression to democratic values and principles such as pluralism, tolerance, majority decision, restriction of power, the rule of law, and consensus. Arian (1975) describes the elections as the essence of democracy and voting as a political action which expresses the spirit of democracy and its value. In the twenty-first century, democratic countries have witnessed a decline in voting numbers both on the national and local levels. Israel is no different from the rest and few of the reasons are the lack of trust in the political system and in the electoral system, lack of interest in politics and the weakening of parties.

The Ministry of Education in Israel provides different instruments to youth in high school to enhance their skills of civic education and political participation. However, one of the big challenges of political participation phenomena is to increase the involvement of youth in the state. It can be seen in general that there is reduction of voter turnout from the 1990s and onwards (Blais, 2006; Franklin, 2004; Saunders, 2014). From this perspective, we will analyze the attitudes of young people toward political participation in elections in particular. Recently, there is low voter turnout in democratic countries and also in Israel on the national level and on the local level (Zvulun, 2009). There are few explanations for that: lack of trust in the politicians among the public, apathy toward politics, and toward the electoral system, weaknesses of the political partisans and of the responsibility of the public (Atmor and Hadar, 2006). The main argument in this article is that practical experience with different instruments in school will provide a better understanding of political participation among youth which will encourage them to be involved. We have presented an instrument whose goal to provide this preparation. There are reflections on the use of the instrument in a pilot that was conducted among young people in high school.

When looking at the term “political participation,” we come up with few definitions that can be found since the last century until today. Verba and Nie (1972) defined the term political participation as an action of citizens that have a specific goal to influence senior officials. The classic scholars from the last century concurred that there are few forms of political participation, such as, elections, party actions, activity in communities and organizations, activity from personal interest, and political actions with violence or non-violence. Eventually, the term refers to citizens who aspire to influence elected representatives. According to Huntington and Nelson (1976), McGregor (1960), and also Milbrath and Goel (1977), political participation is defined as the availability of suitable opportunities for people to take part in decision-making.

Scholars from the 1990s have introduced slight changes in the definition: Parry et al. (1992) define participation as citizens’ action intended to influence authorities’ decision-making. Participation can involve either altering attitudes of decision makers or protesting against a decision that has already been taken. Birch (1993) extended the definition and identified more sport activities, games, dialogues, practical democracy that can increase the solidarity in the community. In fact, political participation is an effective action among citizens who want to take responsibility in particular when it comes to elections (Aldrich, 1993; Gaventa and Valderrama, 1999; Verba et al., 1995, Mintrop). The citizens learn how to use democratic tools that enhance understanding of the meaning of political and social participation and decision-making both on the local and national levels.

There is research that shows the correlation between education and political participation. In other words, education impacts political participation in different ways; for example, development of cognitive skills and knowledge (Mayer, 2011). Therefore, the more education, the higher the chance that citizens be involved in political participation (Converse, 1972; Delli and Keeter, 1996; Rosenstone and Hansen, 1993; Verba et al., 1995).

Furthermore, literature argues that education plays a significant role while thinking about how to implement civic engagement and citizenship, as Mayer (2011) notes, “indeed the breadth of the consensus has led some researchers to conclude that education’s role as a primary mechanism behind citizenship is generally uncontested” (p. 633).

Having said that with all the support and even the recent support from different scholars such as Sondheimer and Green (2010) and Marshall (2015), it can be seen that there are opponents to these claims. Kam and Palmer (2008) argue that the relationship between education and political participation is unclear: the visible weaknesses are in the educational effect in the parental and young adult characteristics. Support for that can be seen also in Mayer’s (2011) work who argues that education has hardly increased political participation.

So far, it can be seen that there are two meanings for education through political participation where one can contribute and the second can hardly contribute.

It will be interesting to look at the Israeli educational system as a case where implementing these ideas as we mentioned above and the civic studies in school contributes to the encouragement and assessment of political participation in particular during election time at school. We argue for the first meaning as mentioned above that such an instrument we offer might help young people understand the political systems and the importance of voting on elections.

Political education in Israel: Lessons from the Israeli curriculum and programs on civic studies and political participation

Political education, democratic and civic, is transmitted in different ways in the Israeli system. It comes with different programs and in particular in the field of civic studies. However, it is also assimilated through social lessons in school and in different projects at school, such as special programs. In the curriculum of civic studies (Ministry of Education, 2011), there is emphasis on the democratic rule in particular from the legal point of view. The students learn concepts and ideas about the democratic regime.

Teachers want less to address, name, and frame how the formal systems work in the political reality and the way the democratic concepts are being implemented in the daily work in Israel. There are differences between what has exactly been taught in schools and the real political issues.

In the curriculum programs, there are also emphasizes on the general issues of democracy, such as majority decisions, restrictions on the regime, and other principles of democracy. For example, if the subject refers to the rule of law, students will learn on the procedural characteristics and law enforcement (Ichilov, 1984; Ichilov, 1999).

A recent study on young people’s attitudes toward politics and the question whether citizens influence decision-making was conducted in the Knesset research department (Heler, 2005). The research included young people aged between 15 and 18 years. It was found that one-third of them do not know how they can influence decision-making or believe that there is no way to influence officials (Heler, 2005). Furthermore, this study has found that, in general, teenagers believe individuals or groups have no capacity to influence officials. Less than 8% of the participants in this study claim that their parents or friends’ parents have the power to change things. These details raise questions regarding the educational official system in Israel and the perceptions of political participation of young people.

An extended chapter in the curriculum is dedicated to the authorities and it teaches the rules of each authority in the regime and the balance between different authorities. The program hardly touches on psychological and sociological aspects that compose the Israeli political and cultural society. Subjects such as personal motivations to participate or not, participation and involvement and political apathy, interests groups are not presented in this program. The understanding of government components and management do not give the young students a whole picture about the democratic political system, the Israeli society, the polarization, and different slits.

Avnon (2013) compares the theoretical structure of the high school curriculum in the field of civic studies with the old version. Avnon argues that in the existing program, there are still amendments to be done because of the big challenge that the Israeli society is facing and the attitude toward the class teaching in schools. The preparation for the matriculation does not contribute to the dissemination of democratic values in Israel among teenagers. One of the consequences is that students have the difficulty to understand the importance of the value of participation in a democratic society. Nonetheless, issues that encourage deliberation on democratic practicing and issues such as discrimination among different ethnic groups, socialization, creating a structure of political participation are all absent from the program (Avnon, 2013).

In the current program, there is priority to discussion of the democratic principles, and the structure of the regime, rather than to discussion about disagreements and political behavior. The curriculum gives more explanations from the perspective of the law than the sociological and behavioral aspects (Avnon, 2013).

Some of the teachers avoid talking about actual issues and find it difficult to deal with teenagers’ opinions which sometimes oppose their own. There is also difficulty with extreme students’ opinions and parents who blame teachers for involvement in politics. As a result, the education system tends to avoid arriving at practical political conversation issues, on one hand. On the other hand, they require teaching political subjects such as the religious division and the national one. At the same time, the teachers are required to be objective and professional. In sensitive political issues, it is difficult to keep objectivity and therefore, teachers avoid talking about these issues. They do not want to be understood as holding a personal opinion (Karmnitzer Report Form, CEO, Ministry of Education, 2011).

In the curriculum for high school, civic studies refer to the state of Israel as a Jewish Democratic (Eden et al., 2001; Ministry of Education, 2011: Civics Curriculum). In every component in the civic studies program, the teaching focuses on key ideas which create, as called according to the authors, “civic language.” Most of the time, the student engages in identifying ideas and the terms (of democracy) in different incidents and in different texts from reality. Citizenship, if so, is a field that includes analysis of events by technical orientation which uses plot components (Ichilov, 2002). The matriculation exam indicates orientation toward civic education where students are required to be precise in how he or she addresses the terms and uses it to explain different issues and cases.

This article suggests to integrate constructive aspects in the teaching – learning process (Kirschner et al., 2006). The main focus in the lesson should be the student, and he or she will be assigned different challenging missions which are based on high order thinking exercises. Instead of repetition or review of terms and definitions and identification of them, the student will be required to analyze the political–social reality while giving a critical opinion that he or she consolidates with different opinions. Indeed, the main lesson will be in class but to aim at the goals of civic education, the student has to be exposed to the civil society and be in touch through the media or other opinions such as meetings, workshops, and trips. The civics lesson has to deal with assignments that acquaint the student with a variety of social groups and different opinions. The main goal is to form the citizenship identification that contributes to the state.

The field-teaching goal refers to two elements in the lesson: plot and process. In terms of the plot, it can be divided into two groups: one emphasizing the affinity to society and state, the importance of being involved in the community and the obligation to obey the law and the rights. The second emphasizes the rule of social pluralism that includes different groups, different perceptions, and the legitimacy of expressing and being organized in different organizations achieving the multicultural aspect.

Marushak and Saver (2005) present a unique educational program that has seven concepts of democracy, starting with liberal democracy and ending with feminist democracy. They show 10 sessions of workshops, experiential and emotional, deliberating on democracy and based more on the emotional and cognitive sides. This program emphasizes the students’ actions compared with his passive status in the normal program at school.

How education can contribute to and promote political participation can be seen more broadly in few other scholars that have written about this topic, for example, Hess (2002), McAvoy and Hess (2014), Parker (2003), and Gutmann (1999).

Hess (2002) discusses the controversial public issues (CPI) in school and examined them in junior and high school social studies classes. She argues that school and education enhance the young students’ knowledge and promote political participation. Teachers teaching their students to participate more effectively in CPI discussions (Hess, 2002).

Hess and McAvoy (2014), in their recent book, argue that teachers can teach political issues better if they aim toward creating “political classrooms,” which engage students in deliberations about questions that ask, “How should we live together?” and “How to be more involved in political participation.” Based on the findings from a large, mixed-method study about discussions of political issues within high school classrooms, their results in the book show in-depth and engaging cases of teacher practice, paying particular attention to how political polarization and social inequality affect classroom dynamics (Hess and McAvoy, 2014).

Parker (2003) adds that education for good citizenship in a democratic country should be implemented in school but not only in school, outside schools and in the community. Parker examines approaches to citizenship education in democratic societies. School attendance could be a major influence on young students.

Parker examines three approaches to citizenship education, each “effective” in its own way. The first looks beyond schooling altogether. The second and third consider schooling, but in sharply different ways: The second addresses years of schooling without looking at what goes on inside schools; the third takes us inside. Pulling these together under one lens should help explain how students improve the students’ interest on political and social issues in the society (Parker, 2001).

Further support regarding the contribution of school to political participation can be seen in Hahn’s (1999) research, a comparative study of civic education in six countries; Britain, the United States, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Australia. The book includes political content and opportunities for students to explore and express opinions on public policy issues and to engage in decision-making. Young people (aged 15–19 years) appear to be more interested in the political arena than in those contexts in which they do not have such experiences (Hahn, 1999). Support of the contribution to political participation through schools can be seen in Gutmann’s (1999) work as well.

The Ministry of Education (2011) few years ago provided a unique type of program for students. The lesson changed the student into an analyst of the complex social reality and of special cases of civil problem in the everyday life. It was expected from the student to be able to think independently and to have capacity of learning and of implementing, comprising, understanding, estimating, and criticizing text, which describes social reality (the civics curriculum Ministry of Education, 2011).¹

A critical view among the civics studies, Neuberger (2000), claims that schools should do more actions regarding democracy and education and it is not enough to lead the students committee, to establish different about political clubs, but it has to be imbued by the democracy subject as a main component in most of the disciplines that are taught in schools.

A proposal to the curriculum program that enhances young people to be involved in civil responsibility during election time

This article offers didactic instruments for the implementation of the election subject, which provides the teacher with different ways of teaching civic studies. The kit involves value clarification dialogues for the deeper meaning of being involved in civil life, community, public responsibility of young people to strengthen civil society in order to cope with social apathy. The kit is a booklet of different activities referring to election time. The activities are aimed at a variety of aspects of the subject and can be discussed both in home room classes and civic lessons.

The activity booklet that has been proposed invites students to get practice in experiential studies in elections that are not offered by the usual program of the Ministry of Education. This is the process of elections, the students’ and the public’s attitudes toward elections, a critical view of election propaganda, and deep observation of parties and their leadership.

The main advantage of this booklet is the variety of activities, which provides the teacher and every student a choice of the activity that he likes, in order to prove the importance of the civic education field. There is a choice of three to five activities the teachers can choose according to the amount of time they have, to the level of knowledge of the students and to the students’ interests. Another important principle of this booklet is group work in permanent groups. Through the process, students work with the same groups and therefore the teacher has to plan in advance how to divide the students into groups.

Here are some samples of the activities:

Quiz of mastery of the notions connected to the field of elections.

Directions to create a wall bulletin in class that will accompany the process of elections with different sections: Law Section, where students have to present laws and rules concerning the elections in Israel; Party Section on different ideologies and policies; Personal Section, in which a presentation of information about main representatives of Parties will be presented; Survey Section, where there are texts from the printed media; Main Terms Dictionary – definitions of different terms such as ballot box, election threshold, national electoral system; Announcements from the electoral commission, that will present different documents such as note to the voter and other sections.

Opinion questionnaire ranking the spectrum of apathy–involvement regarding elections in class. Students have to rank their consensus regarding statements such as “I would like to establish a party,” “I believe that if I vote in the elections,” “I will be able to gain influence on the national level,” “I am terrified of the results of the elections which may influence our society.”

Party following the election process. Each one of the steps can be carried out in a different lesson. It has been recommended to use the computer room that has access to The Internet or The library. The resources that will be offered to students are Internet, newspaper, and television. Example of activity – each group will discuss the parameters of the chosen party. The group will document the process. For first step, the group has to write a rational of the choice of this particular party and why it is so important to study about it.

“My Favorite Prime Minister” – the teacher distributes cards which have character attributes. Then each student will be asked to write to himself three character attributes that are the most important in his opinion to the role of Prime Minister.

Summary of the activities on the eve of the elections – to the end of this project it is recommended to give the groups tasks refer to the commercial election on TV.

The task for the groups will be comparison between the survey on TV and the survey that the students have done in the streets. Each group has to give a report about the elections, the survey, comments on the Parties, and how the analysis has presented the outcomes.²

The theoretical proposal was reinforced by interviews as pilot research. In the interviews, there were 20 participants who were teachers in two high schools in Israel which were interviewed by two researchers. There were 15 male teachers and 5 female teachers. Most of the teachers have had experience with this field of subjects (civic studies) and have taught for 10 years at least. All the teachers claimed that they studied in educational college in Israel and not in university and their qualification in the degree was in citizenship studies and social sciences.

All participants have been reminded of the ethics principles which consist of terms of privacy, the right to leave the study (interview), acceptance of recording, and clarification explanation about the research goals. The interviewee is asked two questions. First, whether the instrument has influence on the student’s attitude regarding political participation. The second question is, “Does this instrument-encourage students to be positive regarding voting in the next elections? The last survey, which was conducted, by Shamir (2013) from the Israeli National Election Studies in 2013, showed that the youngest group between 18 and 22 years included the highest percentage of people (17.7%) who declared that they would not participate in the first elections in their life.³

A semi-structured interview

Questions were asked during the interview which were leading to the subjects’ “activity action,” “knowledge and value,” “encouraging to vote on the next elections,” “the value of being part of the community,” and the last “any negative reaction to this program.” There were open questions regarding these subjects. We allowed the teachers to answer and cite their students from their own experience.

All the interviews were conducted in the school area at lunch (break time) or the end of school hours. Each interview was between half an hour to maximum of 1 hour. The interviews were recorded with consent of the participants.⁴

The interviews were conducted face-to-face with each teacher and they were different from regular interviews. We interviewed the teachers and not the students, how they saw the program and what they had taken from their students during the pre-election time according to the subjects above.

We identified substantial themes during the interviews regarding the questions and the subjects that we directed to the participants. During the analysis of the verbatim, quotes were divided into statements. These statements helped the researchers to figure out the main ideas and values of this program and what the most important issues were.

Reflections on activating the program as a pilot

There were significant insights that were raised in the interviews.

The program expresses significant learning principles, the students see high value in this program, and it is creating high involvement in favor of these different activities which connected students to actual processes in society and in the case for discussion courses around them. Teachers gave the students’ consent for free thoughts about democracy and politics.

From the teachers’ interviews, “following the lessons I have become a fully activated participant in all family discussions referring the coming elections.” “It was really important to discuss what was happening towards the elections because we are becoming citizens that have a say and vote which is our responsibility.” These statements support Hess and McAvoy (2001) who argue that “Political Classroom” can encourage young people to be more active in their environment. Furthermore, in the booklet, paragraph 3 shows the apathy–involvement regarding elections in class which also provide support to these statements.

The level of knowledge and understanding of the election subject, in particular the civil society, increased the existent process:

in the first lesson we were administered an exam about election knowledge and we hardly knew. After we had talked about the elections and started to know about the parties and their ideology, our knowledge and understanding in these subjects increased.

This is the first election that I am going to vote.⁵ It was always obvious that I vote according to my parents’ political orientation. However, following this program, I know to assess the different parties by myself and their ideology and it feels that the vote I will cast in the ballot will expresses my real opinion.

According to the booklet, there is a task that groups have to hand in a report about the elections and other activities that they have done regarding the elections. This shows us that according to the interview, the mass of knowledge in elections around the activities have part of the differences between those who do not have the knowledge and those who do. Some evidence shows that education increases political engagement and other form of political participation (Putnam et al., 1994; Sondheimer and Green, 2010).

The program contributes to the political identity of most of the students. From the students’ voices, “In the major part of the lessons we had to understand the different political conceptions among citizens and this made us think what makes people think different and what about each way of these concepts regarding Israeli society.” School in Israel is conceived as a place of personal growth and of the development of the political identity of young people. Schools provide social opinions and through them the teenagers consolidate their political opinions (Ichilov, 1996).

“I loved these lessons, because in each one of them, I felt that I understood, where I was in terms of the political sides and to which political party I was attached.” In the booklet, paragraph 4 claims that resources such as library and Internet will be offered to students in order to understand better and to gain knowledge that will build their confidence to be involved in discussions in class, debates in class and outside. This can also be supported by Hahn (1999) who shows in her comparative study among six countries that students in school whose teachers provide civic education contents aged 15–19 years appear to be more interested in the political arena than in those contexts in which they do not have such experiences.

Following the program, students see the potential in the civil actions and see the expression of the theoretical term “political participation” in democracy that has been taught in civics lessons. For instance, “after the lessons in citizenship studies, I understood the utmost importance of political and social involvement which starts in the elections.” “I have never understood why people say that elections are a right and not a duty. Today I cannot even think of the possibility to lose the chance of going to vote.”

Some of the students stimulate that this program makes them antagonistic toward the political–social leadership and builds distrust of the official offices. Students expressed frustration from the lack of influence on politics as a citizen and the way the leadership works. For instance,

what I gathered from these lessons was very sad. It does not matter how far the ideology that is presented by parties is good and appropriate. After the elections, politicians forget about citizens that have voted for them and our influence is too low.

Moreover,

I don’t think that I will bother to vote. We have gone through different activities in class that we had to put ourselves in the line or ranking between apathy and involvement. Today, in the end of this project my apathy level is really high, more than in the beginning, due to the understanding how manipulation and games operate in politics and I don’t like it.

The booklet has reference to the attitude of students who develop antagonism to politics and participation.

There is demand for teamwork outside of classes referring to the elections. For example, “I am more likely to work with my group. When you work in a group, each one contributes his own knowledge and we share the ideas together much better.” It is more interesting and enriching when working outside the class. We had activities like street survey, analyzing election commercials, or the eve of elections. This is the real life and if the government wants us to be good citizens, we must read newspapers, visit party branches, ask people what they think. It is more important than the discussion in class. Through the entire booklet, there are activities in groups, which provide a robust support to the statements above. For example paragraph five talks about dividing into groups and each group has activities.

Discussion

This experience shows how important it is to prepare young students toward the elections and in particular in civic studies lessons which is a social political agent and becomes stronger for building civic society, pluralistic concepts, and institutionalization of political participation (Mayer, 2011). Our findings show that an instrument such as a booklet might contribute to young people increasing their participation and becoming more interested in politics. The two questions that have been asked in the interview, whether the instrument has influence on the student’s attitude and, second, whether the instrument encourages students to be positive regarding voting, show us, according to the answers of the teachers, that the answer is generally in the affirmative. The semi-structure interviews were leading to the following topics: activity function, knowledge and value, encouragement to vote in the next elections, the value of being part of the community, and any negative reaction to this program. These subjects were mentioned in the interviews by students after the teacher had cited them. It can be seen that because of these topics, students were responsive to the program and were satisfied by what it offered. There were some students who were not happy with the program, making them more negative regarding politics and participation. However, as mentioned, they were only a few. Our booklet provides the teacher with a good basic of understating of the young students who are less interested in our democracy and education of the public and as mentioned earlier, civic studies should be more prominent in the topic of democracy in the curriculum (Noyberger, 2000). It teaches us that the formal program at school lacks the methods for how to influence students to be more involved in their country and their democracy.

Evidence of the influencing of youth can be seen with Australian democracy, in which “the Youth Electoral Study sought to understand the process by which young adults become politically informed and engaged citizens in Australian democracy as well as to understand youth behavior and attitudes towards enrolment and voting” (Print, 2007: 341). They found that there is no single or simple methods to improve this situation of lack of understanding among youth, but that schools are a very important place to change it and a formal and informal curriculum can help.

According to Print (2007) different elements in school of the informal curriculum such as voting in school elections, volunteering, raising funds for charities, and so forth can provide a great opportunity for improvement and engaging young people with democracy. Furthermore, informal curriculum promotes and develops civic engagement among young people, in activities such as debating, students’ elections and political clubs (Print et al., 2002).

Conclusion

It is better for young people to become more involved in politics through schools. Schools provide the opportunities for young students to become familiar with democracy and how to participate in a democracy (Galston, 2004; Torney-Purta, 2002).

In order to create democratic civic society at its best, it is needed to cultivate political socialization processes in the education system. The elections are great educational opportunity to make discourse with value that directs increasing the involvement and public responsibility awareness. It is out of question that the election subject be decreased because it has a lot of different aspects such as philosophy, law, psychology, and concepts in political sciences, and also anthropological and sociological sides, provided that values will give better implementation in the educational system. If these values come with experiential activities such as those that were offered in this article plus the evidence from the teachers, we can indicate that different instruments play a substantial role by encouraging young people to be involved.

Furthermore, teachers also played a significant role in this part of activities. In this study, while teachers observing their students, and having more experience, we found that this booklet can provide further research to seek the measuring of increasing political participation. The study shed more light on the fact that teachers have extra influence while teaching civic education or citizenship studies. We have learned that the program that we offered did assist the teachers and students to change their mind in engaging in the Israeli political participation. We cannot give a statement in this study how much percentage or the quantitative way to show figures but we know that this small number of participants has shown a positive attitude toward participating in elections in the future.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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