Susan Graseck
Senior Fellow, Watson Institute;
Director, Choices for the 21st Century Education Program
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Biography
Interview
Page 3
(OH)
Why did you decide to do the Online Ballot?
(SG)
It’s the first time we’ve done an online ballot
and said, "come one and come all." It’s about inclusiveness.
Most high school students can’t yet vote. But that doesn’t
mean they shouldn’t be paying attention to what’s going on
around them. And it certainly doesn’t mean they can’t think.
So we wanted to find a way to give them an opportunity to think about
the
issues and have a voice during the presidential election cycle.
The ballot is really an online activity designed to engage students in the overall
question of our role in the world. It’s set up to be used as a culminating
activity after any one of a number of our current issues topics have been used
in class. We’ll be developing a report to send to Congress and the White
House in January, so it’s an opportunity for students to have their voices
brought together and then communicated to our elected officials. It’s important
that students feel that somebody wants to know what they think. And they should
want to know what they think. Because these students may not be part of the electorate
this time, but they will be next time. And they are engaged and they are thinking
about these things.
We exist because we really believe that an American public that doesn’t
know about international issues, and doesn’t care, is a very real danger
to the world.
We’re
trying to make some contribution to a more informed
and more engaged public.
I have a friend who is 17 who was very upset this fall. She said, “We
have people out there who are voting who have no idea about what they are voting
on, and I do, and I’m not allowed to vote.” We need to bring young
people into the process—not exclude them. That was one reason we did this,
to give voice to student views.
(OH)
What do you find interesting about the results so far?
(SG)
We haven’t finished yet. But, the first broad brush I have from
looking at the ballot right now, I think I am going to find some places where
the kids are being consistent, in what they say in one part of the ballot and
what they say in another. But I think we’re going to find a lot of inconsistency
too, and inconsistency essentially means a public mind is not made up. I’m
guessing there’s a lot fluidity in the way kids are thinking, even after
they have really thought about the issues more than most of us do, which means
there’s room for dialogue here, there’s reason for having this deliberation,
so I think the next four years are primed for that.
(OH)
Could they be the undecided voter of the future?
(SG)
Sure—some of them. When you see a student (or anyone) who says,
for example, that we really need to address global issues cooperatively, that
in today’s world we can’t do these things independently, but also
says that we need to use our military—alone, if necessary—to stop
gross human rights violations, or that we should use military force to protect
access to oil and other key raw materials, you see the makings of an unsettled
issue, an undecided mind. But I think when we look at the data more closely we
are also going to find that there are a lot of students who really do know what
they think…not that they won’t grow and change, but they have some
fairly clear thinking in place already. And that’s not the undecided voter;
that’s a very responsible voter.
(OH)
How does a teacher teach current events, in Iraq, for instance, when
events develop so quickly?
(SG)
It’s hard. But it’s also important. To not be
able to talk about very current and difficult topics—like terrorism,
or the war in Iraq—is disempowering, alienating. We’ve tried
to help with our Teaching with the News online resources.
We know how to frame issues and to lay out a playing field that is inclusive,
that draws on the scholarship available here at Brown, and that makes room for
all perspectives, giving students the tools with which to talk to each other
when
they don’t necessarily agree. It takes us a LONG time to put together a
full curriculum unit, typically six months to a year from start to finish. But
several years ago—right after 9.11—we started applying the same approach
with much less detail to fast moving current issues. In addition to posting “options” online,
we also provide links to a few really good sources for background.
In addition to having the resources to develop the material quickly, we know
how to get it to teachers. We have an email list of almost 10,000 teachers
who use materials from us. So while we sell a published unit for the whopping
price of $15 per classroom, we also draw on our resources here to
do things very quickly, post them to the Web, and let teachers know they’re
there for the taking. That’s what we did for Iraq. We posted our first
material on Labor Day of ’02, as we were starting to hear of the possibility
of an invasion. We felt there was going to be a need to be able to talk about
this in classrooms that fall. We’ve updated and revised it several times
since, and it’s been very widely used across the country over the past
two
and a half years.
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