What is this "Civic Engagement" We Speak of?

     The concept of “civic engagement” may encompass various classifications depending on whom you ask to define it. To a young adult, a form of civic engagement may be informing peers about participating in an upcoming event to support breast cancer, or to encourage neighborhood residents to “reduce, reuse, and recycle” items that are fit to do so. To an older adult, this concept can mean voting in local and/or national elections, maintaining the beauty of a park landscape, or even volunteering time to assist the elderly population. However, these ideas of what constitutes civic engagement does not have to be dictated based on age, gender, sex, or socioeconomic status (amongst other variables). I believe that civic engagement is ultimately defined by the individual who carries out what they see as “civic engagement”. To illustrate this concept, I will unite two pieces relevant texts by utilizing each of the author’s personal beliefs together as vehicles to explain my understanding of what “civic engagement” encompasses.

     In “Where Need Meets Opportunity”, the fact that Jane Quinn maintains her belief: “[Early teens] willingly participate in programs they find attractive and responsive to their needs” (96) can be seen as reason as to why early teens need to enroll in youth development organizations. Similarly, Betty Smith Franklin, the author of “Reading and Writing the World” realizes that the assigned texts, community organizations, and the environment of the work her students embark on represents the level of overall contentment and self-fulfillment that the students embody (24). These two viewpoints seem to paint a picture that civic engagement must be cultured during the most formative years of one’s life. However, they each pose a conflict on the setting in which this engagement must take place.

Quinn places an emphasis on providing a program outside of the traditional educational setting whereas Franklin engages us in a dialogue that encourages an educator supported service-learning initiative. Furthermore, she also maintains that several separate domains—charity, civic engagement, and social action—should be incorporated into the agenda (24). Is one approach more important than the other? Are there qualities in each respective approach that is impossible to attain using the other approach? Does a lack of any quality invalidate either approach as defining civic engagement?

When looking at the challenges that each approach faces, we see similarities and differences between them. Using Quinn’s approach, we see issues arise regarding participation, access, funding, effectiveness, and coordination with other youth services (104-113). When examined on the surface from Franklin’s perspective, there seems to be an immunity from these issues as her ideal demographic is college students who, through their tuition, are paying the institution to utilize this opportunity to provide a civic service to a community. However, when we further analyze one of the issues Quinn poses—funding of the programs—we begin to discover issues that can pose a problem for Franklin’s definition as well. For example, Quinn explains that due to differences in the diversity of funding, program experience will vary greatly between different demographics of youth due to the instability of funding sources many programs have to deal with (107-108). Likewise, while Franklin’s students are able to serve at any of the chosen agencies that represent one of the domains she listed, they too will have to endure the realities of serving in different environments that may not receive equal funding. In addition to this, the program effectiveness—which can be, but is not always a result of funding discrepancies—can affect Quinn’s demographic by not fostering an environment where the youth feels they are being motivated to benefit themselves and the community and also affect Franklin’s demographic by enabling the students to feel that their impact as rather educated individuals is not being felt by the community they are serving; in addition to this, Franklin’s students would be forced to revisit their discontent through writing while Quinn’s students can presumably move on. This synthesis of the authors’ beliefs begs the question: Is civic engagement defined by the level of self-improvement that an individual sees after they take part in internal or external engagement, or is it defined by the “mere” action of joining a community to perform civic engagement regardless of whether it is a self-fulfilling activity or not?

     After analyzing each author’s perspective on this concept using one other as a lens looking upon the other, I am able to define civic engagement as a combination of each author’s theory. Civic engagement can be a youth program in which youth are engaged in extra-curricular activities that can be diverse and range from Boys & Girls Clubs of America to Scouting. Each program has the common denominator of teaching youth to be active members of the community by helping peers stay away from negative elements such as drugs and violence and using critical thinking skills to solve problems such as staying warm with no heat source or attending to someone who is choking on food. These seemingly elementary activities promote civic responsibility that many of us take for granted. At the same time, civic engagement can be a service-learning project in which university students embark on a journey to serve an organization’s mission and find ways to impact the organization using their learned academic and social skills. This can mean providing literature for the community to highlight various services provided by an organization or analyzing what they gained from their experience to start up their own organization that may serve a specific cause. This angle also promotes civic responsibility that some may also take for granted by find hard to become part of themselves (whether a recipient or donor of services).

The emotions and experiences received through self-seeking and selfless programs and/or actions that causes one to pursue any action that has a positive effect on a community is my ultimate definition of the true meaning of civic engagement.

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Quinn, Jane. “Where Need Meets Opportunity: Youth Development 
       Programs for Early Teens.”The Future of Children 9.2 (Fall 1999): 
       96-116. JSTOR. Web. 27 Dec 2010.

Franklin, Betty. “Reading and Writing the World; Charity, Civic Engagement, 
       and Social Action.” Reflections 1.2 (Fall 2000): 24-29