“I Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, of the United States of America,” In school, we recite this every day; however, we don’t know who wrote it or for what purpose it was written. It’s one of these things we just simply do “for our country”. By stating this I am not meaning to sound unpatriotic, I am acknowledging the lack of knowledge we have about the everyday things we do “for our country”. There is a desperate need for participation in American politics. We’ve tried propagandizing campaigns and sugarcoating political speeches as if they were jalapeño flavored doughnuts to increase the amount of American voters. These methods just aren’t working.
According to the North Carolina graduation requirements, high school students are required to take one U.S. History course and one Civics course. If people aren’t educated about the voting system, they aren’t going to vote. No one wants to make a wrong decision. There are many incentives offered to encourage people to vote; however, only 32% of American adults are showing up at the polls according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Perhaps it’s time to take a new approach: require or at least offer more civics/U.S. history courses in high schools.
Although funding such a program may be an issue at first, there is no doubt it would be effective. Studies have shown that kids who go to college and kids who are more educated about the voting system are more likely to vote. During my tenure at high school, I’ve taken one civics class and one U.S. History class and I could never picture myself voting with my current knowledge and I got an average of 96! Since I plan on going to college, I’ll probably take some civics classes there; however, those minimal high school courses are the only classes some students will ever take on the subject of voting. How can we expect them to vote if they don’t understand how?
If you were to offer Civics I and Civics II, like you do with math and English classes, not only would the amount of votes increase, but so would the quality of them. Obviously if people are more educated about who they are voting for, they’re likely to make better decisions about them. How annoying is it when people say things like, “Oooh, I’m voting for Obama, he’s hot!”? We wouldn’t have to hear that anymore because people would be too concerned about who is leading our country to care. When people are knowledgeable about something, they usually feel an obligation utilize it. If this were the case with voting, people would be less likely to abuse their votes.
But how would we fund it? Of course not everyone would be keen on having their precious tax dollars support such a cause. There are plenty of non-profit, pro-vote organizations that might be willing to help out. I think with the right support and advertisement of this, people would have no problem paying for it. We just have to show that it’s a genuine and effective program. However, I don’t blame people for being skeptical with their taxes, I’m glad people are passionate about what they want to support and what they don’t. This is an example we need to follow. We need to be able to question where our money is going and not just hand it to the government and say, “It’s your job to figure out where it’s going”. Our constitution is built to cater to American citizens, but in order to take advantage of it we need to be able to understand it.
This issue is not a miniscule one- it affects not only our lives but the lives of every other person in our country. All Americans would benefit from reforming the high school social studies department because it would increase voter turnout at elections and the quality of the votes. We would have much less of a chance of electing a bad leader and a mass of confident, new voters. Since our generation will be leading America one day, it’s important that we’ll know how to do it.
