The common conception that the interest and effort of young adults were central to Barack Obama’s 2008 election coincided with a growing number of books focused on the politics of this generation (sometimes labeled “Generation O”). Studies of youth political engagement had been on the rise even before Obama’s victory, with scholars from a variety of fields producing significant research on successful youth mobilization efforts, analyses of civic education and service learning programs, and political socialization processes in general. The most recent addition to these studies is Jay P. Childers’ The Evolving Citizen, which provides an in-depth look at the ways in which changing conceptions of political engagement are reflected in the writings of American youth. While Childers’ conclusions will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the literature, his rhetorical approach to the topic adds color and texture to our understanding of the changing landscape of American political culture and youth political engagement over the past half century.
In contrast to much writing on the topic, Childers does not document current levels of participation among American youth, nor does he engage in an analysis of the key predictors associated with involvement. His goal, rather, is to describe how we arrived at the point where observers of political action are excited and energized when 48.5% of 18-24 year olds vote. Although there is much to praise and learn from Childers’ contribution, particularly his documentation of the ways in which young adults articulate issues of democratic life, I am unconvinced that he fully answers this question of how we got to where we are today.
Like the best of the work in the field of youth political engagement, Childers’ study is a comparative analysis among cohorts of youth over time, providing support for the notion of generational change in youth politics. Because he is a rhetorical scholar, Childers employs a methodology that allows him to delve into the self-styled language of youth. His data set is comprised of newspapers from seven different high schools in metropolitan communities around the nation across five decades. Although his population was limited to schools with a continuous record of newspapers from 1965 to 2005, his ultimate sample provides a representative mix in terms of region, race, ethnicity, income, and the ideology of the schools and their surrounding communities. By reviewing every single article published in every paper across this period, Childers reaches four key conclusions: First, the focus of politics among students has shifted from local issues to national and international events. Second, students now engage in public life by raising money (or making donations), or volunteering in loosely structured organizations, rather than pursuing traditional avenues of political participation. Third, popular culture has so infused students’ orientations toward politics that they have adopted a highly critical and largely unengaged attitude toward the subject. And finally, the youngest citizens’ rationales for joining school organizations are more selfish and self-serving than those in the past. All of these are interesting findings, although none are groundbreaking. Moreover, despite the great detail and captivating stories encapsulated in the newspaper excerpts, it is never clear that Childers’ work, as he argues, really “helps us understand how a young citizen today might come to imagine democracy and learn the norms of democratic engagement differently than her predecessors did” (p. 44).
Surprisingly, since this is a well-trod topic, Childers’ strongest chapter describes where and how young adults get involved in political life. Here, Childers argues that current students approach engagement as “removed volunteers” (rather than political actors), who opt for activities with little connection to a broader community, many of which can be accomplished in isolation. While this is not necessarily a new finding, Childers adds greatly to the discussion by including a longitudinal approach, and contextualizing his findings with a discussion of the impact of postmodern capitalism on a generation of citizens. He concludes that “regardless of what they are talking about—world hunger, cars, or Christmas—today’s young journalists seem to reflect an overwhelming concern with what things are worth and how one’s wealth should be displayed” (p. 93). Childers’ discovery that the generation’s focus on consumption does not translate into widespread consumer activism in the form of organized boycotts and buycotts, is particularly noteworthy.
There are gems in other chapters as well. For example, Childers’ description of today’s youth as “dislocated cosmopolitans” who have replaced their predecessors’ interest in local news and politics for a fixation on national and international stories does not seem groundbreaking on its face, but his data allow him to illustrate fascinating examples of this reality. Only through his careful combing of these newspapers do we learn that the 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns, arguably two of the most significantly youth-oriented elections, were scarcely noted by these high school journalists. Similarly, by charting the rise of therapeutically-oriented school groups, Childers provides some interesting detail to our understanding of current examples of school-based “activism” among today’s youth.
At other times, though, Childers seems to step beyond the data to make conclusions unwarranted by the material. He provides an extensive documentation indicating the transition of popular culture from the periphery to the center stage of high school newspapers. But he moves beyond this characterization to causation, arguing that popular culture has shaped young journalists’ engagement in the political world. Childers argues that the more students are “immersed” in popular culture, the more “archly critical” they become: “They still write of politics, but they far more often do so behind the protective shield of their critical attitudes” (p. 133). This may very well be the case, but it seems more reflective of the news media in general. So, is this youthful hyper-criticism due to their immersion in popular culture, or an emulation of “grown up” news? In answer to this question, Childers argues that since young people are not avid news consumers, they are unlikely to be shaped by the larger news media. Yet, earlier, Childers justified his focus on student journalists (who are not necessarily representative of all youth) as appropriate because these students are disproportionately attuned to politics and the news, and are future leaders destined to play significant roles in public life.
Indeed, Childers’s tendency to turn to explanations that are not explicitly linked to his data detracts from the many contributions of his work. This is unfortunate, since the rich textual descriptions from students over the past half century captured here alone are significant additions to our understanding of youth political action. The findings dovetail nicely with Russell J. Dalton’s more empirically-based work, The Good Citizen (2008), which documents how changing notions of citizenship and citizen participation have evolved over the same time period. Childers has deepened our understanding of Dalton’s work by providing a window into students’ evolving conversations with themselves, their peers, and their schools, thus shedding light on an uniquely youthful perspective of politics. His description of this evolution is thorough and compelling, even if his attempts to explain it fall short.
