How Do We Train Our Young People to be Good Citizens?

By Fr. Jonathan Defelice, O.S.B.
President, Saint Anselm College
Commentary published in The Union Leader Sunday News

July 27, 2003

Doing more: Are we creating good citizens when we train students at colleges across the country?

Like most colleges across the country, Saint Anselm enters a quieter period of existence after graduation. The long, hot days of summer afford me the chance to spend more time talking and thinking with my faculty and staff about our challenges and opportunities for the college.
 
This summer I find myself thinking about the inspiring message of our commencement speaker, John Bridgeland. Mr. Bridgeland is the director of the USA Freedom Corps for President Bush and oversees all national service and volunteer programs.

In his remarks, Bridgeland commended Saint Anselm College for its commitment to service and citizenship. He also issued a challenge to all the nation's colleges and universities and asked that we "look systematically at how institutions are supporting service and civic engagement—through admissions, orientation, volunteer centers, institutes of politics, scholarships and fellowships, service recognition upon graduation, post-graduate incentives, and perhaps most importantly, presidents and faculty with a commitment to making service and citizenship key pillars of what it means to be educated in  America."

I spend a lot of time reflecting on this challenge and how we can meet it.

Saint Anselm College has a wonderful history of community service.

Throughout the school year, hundreds of students perform community service each week. I am proud of the education we provided our graduates and I have the utmost confidence that they will be successful. Our newly minted graduates will apply their four years of study to a variety of endeavors: graduate school, travel, service years, new jobs in business and nonprofit settings.

But, when I think about Mr. Bridgeland's challenge, I wonder if our graduates will be active community members and regular voters. Did we do enough to prepare them for a lifetime of citizenship?

Starting this fall, Saint Anselm College will be undertaking a year-long project designed to place student learning about democracy and citizenship at the heart of the academic mission of our college. We will conduct a series of study circles that will involve faculty, administration, students, alumni, and community members. Some of the questions we will wrestle with include:

• How do we leverage students' interest in one-on-one community service and engage them in larger issues of social importance?
• How can our work in the community be a true public partnership?
• What are the questions we can ask across disciplines that will imbue students with a lasting understanding of democracy and citizenship?
• How might faculty scholarship be made more publicly relevant?
• Institutionally, how might we reward and value education for democracy?

At the conclusion of this project, I will appoint a Civic Engagement Task Force to implement the project's recommendations.

During a time in our country when many young people are turned off by and disengaged from politics and current events, I can think of no more important goal of higher education than to turn students back on to politics—to explore issues that are important in their lives and prepare them to be engaged, contributing members to our society.

Saint Anselm College looks forward to strengthening relationships with the greater Manchester community, and we will look to our friends in the community to participate in this conversation.