Scholarship on the political development of emerging citizens is an increasingly rigorous and innovative area of inquiry (see Irene Bloemraad, Becoming a Citizen, 2006). In Coming of Political Age, Rebecca Callahan and Chandra Muller push forward this literature by examining the role that high school civic and social science education plays in developing active and participatory political behavior of young adults. The authors start from the presumption that “schools educate youth for citizenship and prepare them for political participation” (p. 1). In doing so, the authors flesh out a theory of high school political socialization that they argue directly links to political participation in early adulthood. They utilize multi-method approaches, examining quantitative data from two major studies of youth: the Add Health (Bearman et al. 1997) and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and its follow-ups (Ingels et al, 2004). They extend their findings to qualitative interviews with high school social science instructors and former high school students via the New Citizens in a New Century sample (Callahan 2008). The book presents a much-needed investigation into the role of high school civics education on the political socialization and formation of U.S. citizens, and focuses on the particular case of those who may benefit most—the children of immigrants.
The authors begin by providing clear evidence of the historical role and continued relevance of civic education in the development of democratic citizens in the United States, highlighting its increasing importance given the rise of immigrant populations in recent years. Immigrant populations have, by definition, limited experience with American institutions. This places schools at the center of the civic and political educations of the children of immigrants. The authors thus present a paradox: How do we build new citizens within educational environments increasingly tailored to academic, rather than civically-oriented outcomes? Standardized and testing-focused curricula that provide clear academic measures, they argue, have recently replaced curricula more focused on civic or political development, areas harder to measure in consistent and discrete ways. The result is an emerging population of children of immigrants that rely on schools for civic and political development, but who are limited by numerous factors: academic focused outcomes, limited language proficiency, and the availability of quality social science courses, among others. The authors’ focus on the children of immigrants extends previous work on adolescent socialization into an important and growing population (see David Easton and Jack Dennis, Children in the Political System, 1969). The authors outline three relevant aspects of the high school experience in the political socialization of these emerging citizens: the social, the academic, and the civic.
In the social function, high schools provide a community and social connections that have direct implications for adult civic and political engagement, in the vein of Sidney Verba et al.'s (1995) Voice and Equality. Here, the authors detail the role of language as both limiting and enhancing political socialization and sense of belonging. Though language limitations may reduce interactions, activities and available courses, they may also provide resources and communities through English-as-a-Second-Language programs. Extracurricular activities further build these links, and the authors find that academic and volunteer activities help increase children of immigrants’ political development on measures like registering to vote, voting and partisanship.
In the academic function, high school social science coursework provides political knowledge, while the math/science curricula aid in workforce training. The authors find that language proficiency affects accessibility to rigorous coursework, often to the detriment of children of immigrants. The finding, however, that children of immigrants took, on average, equal or more social science credits than their native born counterparts points to an important consideration: Children of immigrants rely on high school curricula to build up academic knowledge regarding U.S. history and politics. This likely helps fill the knowledge gap produced from having non-native parents. This dovetails explicitly into the civic function of high schools as spaces that build citizen skills and analytical thinking.
In the civic function, the authors argue, high school social science curricula help develop the civic skills necessary for citizen development like argumentation, critical thinking, and the ability to see multiple perspective. Here the authors present the political socialization process in a more normative light, as an expression of societal norms and values (see Richard Dawson and Kenneth Prewitt, Political Socialization: An Analytical Study, 1968). The authors introduce the qualitative interviews and present high school civics teachers as guides for students, providing templates and opportunities to “practice” citizenship in the classroom. However, the authors note that these high quality classrooms and instructors are not widely available in schools with large immigrant populations, and thus exposure to these “ideal” civic building environments is limited for children of immigrants.
The book conceives political socialization as inclusive of political knowledge, identity, norms, and behavior, but due to the limited available data, links it with voting and partisanship measures (p. 6, 119). The diversity of political and civic experiences present in high school political socialization is subsequently limited by the exclusive focus on predicting registering to vote, voting, and partisanship as the key outcomes. While important measures of political behavior, the authors admit that these outcomes are difficult achievements for even the native-born population and limited measures of political socialization (p. 109). This broad conceptualization, but limited empirical measurement, is a problematic, but common issue in this field (see Pamela Conover, Political Socialization: Where’s the Politics?, 1991). Thus, these findings are only a conservative evaluation of the effects of high school political socialization on the children of immigrants given its broad conceptualization and the data limitations.
Three aspects of the data further limit the work’s contribution. First, the “children of immigrants” category combined both 1.5 and 2nd generation children due to data limitations. This grouped both native and foreign-born high school students, and complicated the analysis of their key measures given that entry into the political realm via voting requires considerations of citizenship status. Their arguments for the robustness of the grouping via sensitivity analysis, or exclusion of first generation children from analysis did not fully resolve this constraint (p. 10). Second, the “children of immigrants” category combined all immigrant groups regardless of country of origin, and required that the authors repeatedly distinguish the effect of Latino versus Asian immigrants. This ambiguity was evident in some of the findings that applied only to the children of Asian immigrants and diminished the persuasiveness of the findings overall (p. 65–67,105, pp. 29–30). Finally, in their qualitative component, the authors relied on a sample of instructors and former students that looked more like the ideal case, rather than representative of the experiences of all children of immigrants, undercutting the potential insight that may have been gleaned from a more realistic sample.
Despite these limitations, however, Coming of Age presents a coherent and cogent step forward for understanding the role of political socialization of new citizens. The case for increased attention is clear as increasing immigrant populations shape the new citizenry of the United States. Schools are becoming increasingly central in the development of children without native-born parent perspectives and Coming of Age provides a concrete examination of how those effects will play out in coming years.
