When Joe DeFeo, Stephanie Russell and Rev. Michael Garanzini, S.J. asked my colleague, Amber Wichowsky (formerly of Marquette University), and me to serve on the Citizenship and Democracy Commission for last summer’s AJCU Faith, Justice & Reconciliation Assembly, we had one question: “Is this going to be a group that is empowered to make a difference, or is it just going to be another white paper?” Fr. Garanzini responded: “Think of the work of this Assembly as revising the Ratio Studiorum!”
I’m not sure we quite reached that goal (perhaps Fr. Garanzini just understood how to appeal to the ambitions of two political scientists). But the question of whether our report makes a difference is now up to our colleagues at Jesuit colleges and universities. Hopefully, a brief account of the work we did will inspire action.
We brought together an excellent and diverse team of faculty and administrators from our fellow AJCU campuses to serve on this Commission. All of us had our hands in the work of engaging students in citizenship, which gave us a sense of urgency: We were all aware of the global challenge to democracy and the need to respond effectively.
We were also aware of the many great initiatives and programs around the world that are also doing this work. This gave us some pause—from so many institutions like Boston College, Georgetown University, Creighton University, Saint Louis University, Marquette University and Loyola Marymount University, we heard of faculty, staff, administrators and students who were seeking solutions to the problem. We were not pioneers in an untouched land, but visitors among a number of thriving settlements.
We also recognized that there are a number of great reports out there (just the kind of white papers that we hoped Fr. Garanzini would NOT ask us to write!) outlining well-designed approaches to citizenship education. There is a widely-agreed upon framework for citizenship education that emphasizes increasing students’ knowledge, but also skills in practicing democratic politics and healthy dispositions toward the polity. We could have pointed, for instance, to the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ 2012 report, A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy’s Future, as an approach.
But we were also called to think about the ways that a distinctive Jesuit approach to citizenship education might differ from this standard trio of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Three concerns emerged.
First, a Jesuit approach to citizenship must rise above nationalist approaches that rest simply on celebrating a particular democratic tradition. Instead, we should form students into global citizens.
Second, we acknowledged that religion plays a role in the current debate over democracy. Too often religion is co-opted by extreme voices, or dismissed because of that co-optation. Jesuit institutions have a distinct responsibility to help our students think through the ways that faith informs their citizenship.
Finally, we felt called to point out the fact that institutions that form students for democracy must themselves practice democracy. Too many of us had stories of the ways our institutions failed to live up to the highest standards of democracy—stories that multiplied as we went through the raucous Spring 2024 semester. Do all members of our campus communities have a say in decision-making? Is everyone’s right to speak and petition secure?
In the end, we realized that we did not have a template to expound. Instead, we had a sense that if we looked around our campuses, we would find areas of vitality (in which these premises are lived fully) and areas of stagnation (in which no institutional imperative generated action).
The Jesuit tradition of the Examen came to mind as a model for the kind of consideration of local practice that is needed in the case of citizenship education. Such a process could empower the good work being done already on our campuses. It could also convict us of the areas of weakness where we need to devote institutional resources.
So, no revision of the Ratio Studiorum. But imagine how your campus might look if you engaged in a Civic Examen (our report contains a handy guide to the questions you might ask). You might be surprised.
Part of our work was to survey AJCU institutions about their citizenship formation efforts. One thing we found was that no respondent was fully satisfied with the level of citizenship education happening on their campus. But we also found that even where there is good work being done, it is often done in isolation, so its impact is limited. For example, one AJCU institution sent eleven responses from different points on campus that were identified as being related to our mandate. This gave us a great sense of what was being done across that campus. But none of our respondents was fully aware of the work that the others were doing in civic literacy, and responded with widely-differing levels of confidence that their campus was a place where civic learning took place! A Civic Examen could thus be an impetus to collaboration.
As a political scientist, I am often asked whether there’s any effort to teach students the basics of how our government works. My answer is that we offer Introduction to American Politics every semester, but not every student will take it—and that even if they did, it would not be sufficient to preparing students for the kind of civic engagement that my interlocutors are looking for! But in that question, they are really asking, “What are colleges doing to prepare their students to be citizens?” We all know that this is somehow our collective job. It’s time we take a moment to assess whether we are doing it.
By Daniel Klinghard, Dean of Education and Academic Experience and Professor of Political Science, College of the Holy Cross