developmental democracy

BPenuel who-is-at aol.com
Mon, 4 Mar 1996 21:43:41 -0500

Phil Agre writes:

"I think that social networking skills are one important determinant of
people's chances in life, at least as important as math skills. I also think
that social networking skills are crucial to a democratic culture; it is
through social networking that the social capital arises to knit a society
together and provide the foundation for social organizing of any type,
whether in politics or business. How can children be assessed for these
skills? One problem is that we don't have much of a developmental model for
the skills of a democratic culture."

I agree--and many after-school programs have taken a strong role in promoting
such cultures. I've worked on two different projects in which this has been
a focus and have attempted to assess some of the "culture creation" and also
the accumulation of "social capital" that is recognizable for democratic
citizenship. Both provide opportunities for participation that moves toward
community/democratic participation and also suggest avenues for evaluation.

One is a state-wide youth conference planned collaboratively by youth and
adults over a several month period on the topic of cultural diversity. The
conference is an important developmental site for democratic culture, because
youth and adults practice in joint activity to learn to work together minus
the usual adult control and direction from above. It's not perfect, but
evaluation work has shown that youth feel they have a high degree of input to
decision-making, much greater than in school.

Another setting where democratic culture-building is written into the
curriculum is Girl Scouts. Girl Scout meetings often provide participant
frameworks for girls to learn to participate within democratic structures,
which include planning activities, decision-making, allocating funds for
activities, and so on. In this connection, Barbara Rogoff's suggestions for
evaluating learning as transformations in participation is a useful framework
for analyzing the creation of democratic culture. Questions such as how
girls transform their participation in Scouts to become more active in
planning and decision-making, to become more cooperative within the troop,
and more responsible for tasks within meetings are good tools for assessment.
Also, the question of how GS activities relate to other, culturally-valued
activities (i.e. those for which participation involves a high degree of
social capital), is one I've been attempting to answer for the local Council
here, which is dealing with critical issues of funding.

The funding question makes the issue of social/cultural capital a really
important one. Funders of youth programs want to know--how are programs
(school, after-school) preparing young people for participation in
culturally-valued activities later in life, many of which include teamwork,
active participation in networked (or less hierarchical) organizations,
involvement with diverse participants. While some of us, myself included,
may not share the social reproductionist bent of funders, access to
"practices of power" is important for all youth.

Bill Penuel
_________________________
PreventionInventions
PO Box 40692
Nashville TN 37204
(615) 297-5923