In Order to Form a More Perfect Union
the McConnell Center Expands into Civic Education
By Denise Fitzpatrick
With remarkable clarity,
U of L senior Susan Gaines can name the exact moment she realized how she wanted to
spend the rest of her life. "It was my freshman year at U of L," recalls the student in the
McConnell Center for Political Leadership. "I was sitting on the bed in my friend's dorm
room and we were studying the 'Federalist Papers.' We were picking out phrases and reading
them aloud to each other.
"I thought: 'I really love this stuff.'"
Some people might think politics is boring, Gaines says. For her "it's the most fascinating thing there is." But according to national statistics, her level of knowledge and enthusiasm for political science is becoming a rarity among young people, especially at the middle and high school levels. Civic education in America has been declining over the past generation and many of today's students lack even a rudimentary grasp of U.S. government and history.
A study by UCLA found that the involvement of young people in politics has dropped by 50 percent since 1966. Another study showed that 81 percent of seniors at the nation's most elite colleges could not identify aspects of U.S. history as basic as the Gettysburg address or key principles of the Constitution.
U of L's nonpartisan McConnell Center wants to reverse these trends. Created at U of L in 1991, the center has successfully prepared scores of bright Kentucky students for effective leadership in all walks of life. This year, it is extending its reach into high schools and elementary schools by launching a focused initiative in civic leadership and education.
Gaines, an Elizabethtown, Ky., native who will graduate in May, agrees that the lack of emphasis on civic education was a problem before she came to U of L. In her high school civics class, she was told to copy definitions from a book, and she did not learn about core concepts of government. "It seemed as if it wasn't one of the important classes," she says.
Kentucky's elementary and secondary students are required to take history for only three of their 12 years and can graduate from college without having had any history or political science classes.
"There's a growing detachment of young people from the political process," he says. "We want to encourage open discussion of perennial concerns in American history that relate to contemporary issues."
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U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the center's namesake, says the civic education initiative complements the center's overall mission of nurturing Kentucky's future leaders.
"Through its new efforts, the center begins to tackle the important national problem of civic illiteracy, a problem that has the potential of undermining free government itself."
The McConnell Center is well on the way to achieving its $4.8 million fundraising goal for the initiative. A $500,000 U.S. Department of Education grant will allow the center to offer civic education seminars for middle and high school teachers in Jefferson County Schools for the first time this summer. The goal is to reacquaint the teachers with topics such as the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and to provide strategies for using those topics in the classroom, Gregg says.
U of L's College of Education and Human Development, the Kentucky Historical Society, Filson Historical Society, Mount Vernon, Locust Grove and the Kentucky African American Heritage Foundation are all collaborating in the project.
Besides the grant, private donations to the effort have been significant. Last summer, Louisville philanthropist David A. Jones Sr. made a lead gift of $1 million. Since then, a succession of six-figure gifts or pledges have come from the James Graham Brown Foundation, Ford, Toyota, LG&E, YUM! and BellSouth.
Henry Clay Society
Another new activity will be the creation of the Henry Clay Society, Gregg says. Clay, who represented Kentucky in Congress and later served as secretary of state under President John Quincy Adams, is considered one of the state's greatest political leaders.
Students in the McConnell Center who join the society will use information they glean from Clay's papers to produce research and educational materials for schools and the public, Gregg says. Among the projects being considered are a website and high school essay contest focusing on Clay's life and legacy.
"I'm really excited about what the McConnell Center is doing," says Anthony Cash, a freshman McConnell Scholar from Breckinridge County, Ky. Cash, whose father always told him that as a U.S. citizen it was his duty to be informed about civic affairs, thinks far more attention should be given to American history and government in today's schools. "How are you going to understand your rights if you don't know what the Bill of Rights actually says?" he asks.
The McConnell Center's expansion into civic education also is drawing praise from Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Grayson is leading the Civic Literacy Initiative of Kentucky, an ongoing project to improve civic education and citizen participation across the state. A summit meeting on the issue in October in Erlanger, Ky., drew nearly 200 elected officials as well as students and teachers from high schools and colleges.
"The McConnell Center has taken the lead in our statewide effort to increase civic awareness, literacy and engagement among young people," Grayson says. "Dr. Gregg, his colleagues and the center will lay the groundwork for a stronger citizenship throughout the commonwealth."
Perhaps more citizens like Gaines, who has come a long way since that first freshman glimpse of the "Federalist Papers"--articles co-written by founding fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay in the late 1780s to urge public support for a U.S. constitution. After her graduation this May, she is looking ahead to pursuing a Ph.D. in American history or political theory.
"Honestly, I can't think of anything I could do that I would enjoy more."
