[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 105 (Wednesday, July 25, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8214-S8216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. WELLSTONE (for himself and Mr. Dayton):
  S. 1238. A bill to promote the engagement of young Americans in the 
democratic process through civic education in classrooms, in service 
learning programs, and in student leadership activities, of America's 
public schools; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I hope that colleagues will support a 
bill I am introducing today: the Hubert H. Humphrey Civic Education 
Enhancement Act. Senator Dayton joins me as an original co-sponsor of 
this legislation. As a co-sponsor of Senator Dodd's electoral reform 
bill, I look forward to a debate later this year on a strong electoral 
reform measure that will ensure that all Americans who wish to vote be 
able to do so easily and without facing acts of intimidation and to do 
so using equipment that ensures all votes will be counted. However, as 
we think about reforming the methods through which our democracy is 
practiced on Election Day, we should focus attention on an issue that 
arguably presents a challenge to the vibrancy of that democracy that is 
even more fundamental: the decline of young Americans' engagement in 
public affairs. Turning the tide on political detachment by young 
persons through a new commitment to civic education in our public 
schools is the purpose of the Humphrey Act.
  Civic knowledge, civic intellectual skills, civic participation 
skills, and civic virtue on the part of the American citizenry are all 
crucial for the vitality of a healthy representative democracy. But, 
there is growing evidence that many of our younger citizens are lagging 
in all of the components necessary for their effective engagement in 
public life as they enter adulthood. Because all these skills and 
values are vital to effective citizenship, a multifaceted approach to 
enhancing civic education in our Nation's elementary and secondary 
schools, expressed in the Humphrey Act, is a true national priority.
  There are numerous pieces of evidence for a crisis in civic education 
that threatens the future vibrancy of our democracy. The most recent 
nationwide survey of incoming college freshmen conducted by the Higher 
Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los 
Angeles reports that only 28.1 percent of the students entering college 
in the fall of 2000 reported an interest in ``keeping up to date with 
political affairs.'' This was the lowest level in the 35 year history 
of the survey. In 1966, 60.3 percent of students reported an interest 
in political affairs. In addition, the 1998 National Assessment of 
Educational Progress, NAEP, Civics Assessment revealed startling 
results in terms of American students' competence in civics at grade 
levels 4, 8, and 12. At each grade level the percentage of students 
shown to be ``Below Basic'' outnumbered the percentage in the ``At or 
above Proficient'' and ``Advanced'' levels combined. Thirty-one percent 
of fourth-grade students, thirty percent of eighth-graders, and thirty-
five percent of high school seniors were ``Below Basic'' in their 
civics achievement. And, a 1999 study published by the Lyndon B. 
Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin 
showed that the introduction of mandated state assessments in other 
fields, but typically not in civics, has resulted in a reduction in the 
amount of class time spent on civics.
  Moreover, in the years after leaving high school, young Americans are 
becoming less engaged in the democratic process. While 50 percent of 
Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 voted in 1972, only 38 percent 
of that age group voted in 2000. And, according to a Harvard University 
survey published in 2000, 85 percent of young people now say that 
volunteer work is better than political engagement as a way to solve 
important issues. It is this evidence that links this effort directly 
to any serious electoral reform effort. Therefore, it is time for a 
serious national response to all of these troubling indicators on the 
civic health of those that we are relying upon to be thoughtful, active 
citizens in the years ahead. The vibrancy of American elections of the 
future depend upon our revitalizing civic education today.
  It is most appropriate that this legislation focused on enhancing 
civic education would also serve as a memorial to one of the great 
Minnesotans of the twentieth century, Hubert H. Humphrey. As a 
political scientist, Mayor of St. Paul, United States Senator and as 
Vice President of the United States, Hubert H. Humphrey exemplified 
thoroughly the application of civic knowledge, civic intellectual 
skills, civic participation skills, and civic virtue in our 
representative democracy. As a teacher of political science at 
Macalester College, Hubert Humphrey made the case to students that, to 
be effective citizens, they must be informed about the political 
process and be analytical about the issues of their time as they take 
stances on them. By becoming active in party politics and, eventually, 
by running for office, Humphrey was a role model of a participant in 
the democratic experience at the local, State, and national levels. His 
belief in promoting public service was also shown in his nonstop work, 
beginning in his first campaign for President in 1960, in envisioning 
and supporting the Peace Corps program. Finally, Hubert Humphrey stood 
firm in his principles on so many occasions, exemplifying the civic 
virtue that is a crucial ingredient of complete citizenship. His moving 
oratory supporting President Truman's civil rights proposals at the 
1948 Democratic National Convention helped to shift his political party 
and, eventually, the entire nation on one of the fundamental issues of 
his time. He showed fortitude in speech after speech and vote after 
vote on the floor of this Senate in expressing his heartfelt duty to 
support America's neediest citizens. As he put it: ``The moral test of 
government is how that

[[Page S8215]]

government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; 
those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are 
in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.'' 
There simply is no more worthy person to memorialize in a new 
significant national commitment to civic education than Hubert H. 
Humphrey.
  Recognizing that there is no single answer to revitalizing civic 
engagement in young Americans, the Humphrey Act includes five sections, 
each centered on bettering a different aspect of civic education in the 
elementary and secondary schools of America. Together, these five 
components of the Humphrey Act offer a thoughtful step forward in 
American civic education.
  First, in decades past, new and veteran teachers in the field of 
social studies had high-quality professional development opportunities 
made available to them through programs funded by the federal 
government as part of the National Defense Education Act, the Education 
Professional Development Act, the National Science Foundation, and 
other programs designed by the Department of Education. In recent 
years, most of these federally-funded opportunities, particularly 
helpful for new teachers, have disappeared. Social studies teachers, 
most of whom are now nearing retirement age, have told me how crucial 
these programs, generally in the format of summer institutes, were in 
aiding their ability to excite and inform their students about civics. 
We need to offer the same opportunities to younger civics teachers and 
the same benefits of good civics teachers to their students. Therefore, 
the Humphrey Act authorizes, at $25 million annually, summer Civics 
Institutes to promote creative curricula and pedagogy. The 
establishment of a new set of university and college campus-based 
summer institutes for teachers of all grades focused both on enlarging 
the teachers' knowledge of specific content as well as helping them to 
teach civics in exciting ways is a way that the Federal Government can 
play a role in quickly making a difference in enhancing the civics 
classroom for America's students.

  Next, when high in quality, service learning programs have been shown 
to increase student efficacy in public affairs and to enhance students' 
knowledge of how government works and how social change can be brought 
about. For instance, according to a 1997 study, high school students 
who participated in service learning programs have been shown to be 
more engaged in community organizations and to vote than their 
nonparticipant counterparts 15 years after their service learning 
experiences. I know that many of my colleagues have heard stories from 
students and educators engaged in service learning that add depth to 
this data. I will recount just one description of a recent school-based 
service learning program in Huntsville, Alabama, coordinated by the St. 
Paul-based National Youth Leadership Council, that exemplifies the 
power of service learning as a force in civic education. After the 8th 
grade students on a field trip to a historic cemetery discovered that 
it had been ``whites only,'' a second field trip discovered the burial 
site for the town's African-Americans in the 19th century. That 
cemetery was found to be in a deplorable state, with vandalized 
headstones, unmarked graves, and poorly kept records. The students key 
question: ``What are we going to do about it?'' This led to the 
creation of the African American History Project and any number of 
learning experiences emanating out of this service to accurately 
rehabilitate the cemetery: Math classes platted the unmapped cemetery; 
history students undertook oral histories; research on those buried in 
the cemetery took students to the court records and to the pages of a 
19th century black newspaper. One of the results of the endeavor was 
the development of a curriculum on the history of African-Americans in 
Huntsville for third-graders by the middle-school students with the 
assistance of their teachers. In this case, service and learning were 
almost entirely interwoven.
  It is crucial, however, to connect service learning experiences to 
classroom civics curriculum to long-term payoff in terms of promoting 
students' involvement in public affairs. The Humphrey Act would 
increase the authorization of funds for the school-based Learn and 
Serve Program and would authorize Service Learning Institutes dedicated 
to training/retraining service learning teachers. Raising the 
authorization level of the school-based Learn and Serve program to $65 
million would allow an expansion of a program for which the funding 
levels have been flat in recent fiscal years and would enhance states 
and local districts to more sharply link service learning programs to 
civic knowledge and engagement. Moreover, presently there is little 
money left for the professional development of new service learning 
instructors, including mid-career teachers who are interested in being 
retrained in service learning. Therefore, it is important to develop a 
summer campus-based Service Learning Institutes program, to parallel 
the Civics Institutes program. Great strides have been made in the 
field of service learning in recent years even with a limited federal 
investment; it is time for this national investment to increase in the 
interest of the future vitality of our democracy.
  Third, we should do more to encourage local schools' innovation in 
the development of community service programs that explicitly link 
volunteer activities to social change in their communities. Therefore, 
the Humphrey Act incorporates provisions of a bill introduced in the 
House of Representatives by Representative Lindsey Graham to make 
spending on community service programs an allowable use of funds for 
districts under the ``innovative programs'' section of the Elementary 
and Secondary Education Act. Specifically, it would allow local schools 
to use federal money to fund community service programs which ``train 
and mobilize young people to measurably strengthen their communities 
through nonviolence, responsibility, compassion, respect, and moral 
courage.'' I applaud the philosophy and work of Do Something, an 
national organization founded in 1993 guided by the principle that 
young people could change the world if they believed in themselves and 
had the tools to take action. Using a project-centered approach, Do 
Something recognizes young people as effective leaders and, in the 
projects that they have promoted in hundreds of communities linking 
students and caring educators together, they have helped young persons 
turn their ideas into action. This section of the Humphrey Act would 
promote the work of Do Something and other local community service 
endeavors in schools all over the country.
  Next, our Nation's public middle and high schools often miss 
opportunities to develop and support student governments that are 
viable voices for students in the operations of those schools. A 1996 
study by the National Association of Secondary School Principals showed 
that fewer than half of high school students believed that their 
student government ``affects decisions about co-curricular 
activities.'' Barely one-third expressed confidence in those 
governments' ability to ``affect decisions about school rules.'' We 
should also be concerned about the decline in participation in student 
leadership activities. Between 1972 and 1992, student government 
participation fell by 20 percent and work on student publications fell 
by 7 percent. Effective, innovative student government in which the 
representatives of the students are connected to the decision-making 
processes in the school do more than simply enhance the experiences of 
those who are in the elected student leadership positions. It also 
sends the message to those leaders' constituents that participation in 
politics and government can truly make a difference in one's daily 
life. Dynamic student leadership experiences can make a difference in 
promoting the civic education within America's middle-schools and high 
schools. Therefore, this bill develops a competitive grants program to 
provide funding for school districts to use in strengthening student 
government programs. In a similar manner, student engagement in local 
or state government activities or on school boards can be crucial in 
allowing young persons to experience first-hand early in their lives 
that participation does indeed matter. At present, in some communities, 
high school students are explicitly involved in the activities of city 
government and school boards; we should do all we can to make that more 
common. The grant programs in this

[[Page S8216]]

portion of the Humphrey Act, therefore, also may be used to develop 
innovative programs for student engagement in governmental activities.
  Finally, while a variety of civics education enhancement programs 
have been implemented through Federal Government efforts and at the 
state and local level, no comprehensive, national research exists on 
the short- and long-term efficacy of such programs in encouraging civic 
knowledge and other learning or in promoting civic engagement. This 
contrasts with the extensive research on the effectiveness of different 
approaches to the teaching of reading and mathematics that has driven 
decisions about curricula in those fields. Therefore, the final section 
of the legislation authorizes the Department of Education's Office of 
Educational Research and Improvement, OERI, to carry out an extensive 
five-year research project on the frequency and efficacy of different 
approaches employed in civic education, with attention given to their 
effectiveness with different subgroups of students. These include 
traditional classroom-based civics education, the federally-funded ``We 
the People . . . the Citizen and the Constitution'' curricular program, 
experiential learning programs such as the Close Up program, service 
learning, student government, as well as more innovative programs such 
as the ``public works'' approach to civic engagement, designed by the 
Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of 
Minnesota, that involve work on common projects of civic benefit with a 
focus on bringing together individuals with ideological, cultural, 
racial, income, and other differences in carrying out the project. So 
that we make wise curricular and funding decisions in the future we 
need to know which approaches, and combinations of approaches, to civic 
education are the most effective in achieving the outcomes we expect.
  We should celebrate the efforts of all who have been involved in the 
civic education of America's students. This bill does not denigrate 
their efforts. But, because the engagement in public affairs by our 
young people is so important for the long-term health of our democracy, 
it is time to take a step forward in establishing a comprehensive new 
federal commitment to civic education. The Humphrey Civic Education 
Enhancement Act combines new commitments to the professional 
development of civics teachers, an increase in funding for school-based 
service learning and the professional development of service learning 
teachers, local innovation in community service programs in schools, 
and an encouragement of a revitalized student involvement in student 
leadership programs and in local government. I am proud that a broad 
range of organizations recognize the need for this legislation and have 
endorsed this bill. These include the National Council of the Social 
Studies, the State Education Agency K-12 Service-Learning Network, the 
National Youth Leadership Council, Do Something, the National Community 
Service Coalition, Earth Force, Youth Service America, the American 
Youth Policy Forum, the National Association of Secondary School 
Principals, and the National Association of Student Councils.
  Hubert Humphrey said, ``It is not enough to merely defend democracy. 
To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. 
Democracy is not property; it is an idea.'' Let us extend democracy 
and, in so doing, create a new generation of civic engagement. I 
strongly urge my colleagues to memorialize Hubert H. Humphrey and his 
life of civic engagement with the passage of this legislation.
                                 ______