Former Governor Graham focuses on civics schooling

Former Governor Graham focuses on civics schooling

by Deborah Nelson
November 30, 2007

In 2005, former Florida Governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham retired from a 40-year career in public office. Now, Graham is focusing on preparing future generations to be participating democratic citizens.

The Senator spoke at a November 27 League of Women Voters of the Pensacola Bay Area forum.

Graham, who also served in Florida’s House and Senate, says he fears today’s young people are being raised to be ‘spectators’ to their own government processes. Many, he observes, are illiterate about the basic principles of public responsibility.

“Democracy was never intended to be a spectator sport,” he notes. “It was intended to be a participatory activity.”

If young people don’t learn to oversee their own governance, the country could end up in hot water, Graham warns.

“I think we run the risk of losing our democracy,” he notes. “We’ve had thirteen generations since this country started, and we take for granted we’ll be able to continue infinitely into the future.”

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, America’s founders pointed out.

“Democracy is a little like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you run the risk of losing it,” Graham adds.

Indifference, he says, is a major concern.

“That’s the real enemy we are combating,” he notes.

In partnership with former U.S. Rep. Lou Frey, Graham is working on a program to make civics lessons relevant to tomorrow’s citizens. His Florida Center for Citizenship program is anticipating a half-million dollar grant to train middle-school teachers and provide instructional materials.

A 1974 stint teaching twelfth-grade civics, part of then-State Senator Graham’s ‘Workdays’ program, was a major inspiration.

“I became passionate about the idea of preparing young people for citizenship,” he notes.

Preparing children for citizenship was public education’s original goal, Graham points out. That changed in the 1960’s, with the era’s social upheavals.

“There was a kind of a collapse of our public confidence in institutions of government and that was reflected in our collapse in the teaching of civics,” he recalls.

Standard civics programs often focus on theory and Federal processes. That’s the reverse order of how governments impact people’s lives, says Graham. His program begins by focusing on how local governments work.

“That’s where government really touches people’s lives, and that’s the area of civics I think we almost totally ignore,” he notes.

Graham says he hopes that by making government processes relevant and interesting, students will take an avid interest. The program includes off-campus work designed to give young people a chance to make a difference in their communities.

“They may be successful, they may be unsuccessful, but they’ll come away with a better idea of what it means to be a citizen in a democracy,” he observes.

Remarking on the public’s general lack of interest in civics as a whole, former Escambia County Commissioner Muriel Wagner says she hopes people will get behind efforts to improve civics education.

“I think your program is going to need a lot of encouragement,” she noted to Graham. “That’s the one thing I see that’s going to be difficult.”

Graham says he hopes improving young people’s understanding of how government works, now, may solve some of those apathy problems later.

“I think one reason people don’t participate is that they don’t know how to participate,” he remarked.

“A major reason people don’t get involved in government is because they feel the only people with the power to change politicians’ minds are people with money,” Pensacola resident Ellen Roston pointed out at the forum.

In response, Graham emphasized lobbying is a constitutional right, but suggests better-educating young people would help produce more-informed counter-lobbyists.

“The key is to arm citizens with those skills, not to take away lobbyist rights,” he noted. “[We need to] train enough citizens so they can be an effective counterweight.”

It’s not just schools who are responsible for forming good citizens, Graham points out. He noted that media, especially radio and television, have fallen down on the job of covering important local issues.

“If people don’t know what’s going on in their communities, you can’t really expect them to be active participants,” he remarked.

And political parties, says Graham, aren’t helping matters.

“Today, the political parties are trying to drive people away,” he observes. “They want to [play to] their base.”

Retired Escambia County Social Studies teacher Bonnie Exner praised Graham’s efforts. The FCAT, she says, severely cuts into teachers’ ability to teach civics.

“These people don’t think government [classes are] important, and it truly, truly upsets me,” she remarked.

Graham praised the League of Women Voters’ public education efforts as exemplary.

“I don’t think there’s been any organization in Florida over the [time] I’ve been involved in politics that’s had such a transformational effect as the League of Women Voters,” he remarked.

It was a League humanities seminar at the Florida Legislature that first inspired Graham’s ‘Workday’ program, he recounts. The seminar, on Greek democracy, mentioned that Athenian parliament members sometimes took menial jobs to stay in touch with the people.

“One of the things the Greeks believed was there was no task too great or too small for an Athenian citizen to undertake,” he recounted.

After Carol City English teacher M. Sue Riley expressed concern that Florida’s Education Committee, on which Graham sat, had little teaching experience, Graham agreed to teach a twelfth-grade civics semester.

“The main thing I learned was the difference between learning something by talking about it as opposed to by doing it,” he noted. “That was the inspiration for what ended up being 408 jobs, so I thank the Florida League of Women Voters.”

On subsequent Workdays, Graham put in full, eight-hour days in jobs representing regular citizens. Those included police officer, busboy, railroad engineer, construction worker, garbage collector, factory worker and fisherman.

Graham says the program helped him stay in touch with his constituency.