Most students know nothing about how to use, without an attorney, the local small claims courts to defend against landlord abuses and the many arbitrary overcharges, gouges and shoddiness of services and products. That is an important skill that introduces students to existing consumer protection rights in state and federal law, which would produce some preliminary confidence in the utilization of such laws that consumer advocates worked hard in the past to get enacted.
There are important efforts and pilot projects working to combine vocational and civic professionalism in higher education. Over the years, some advocates have called this process "civic learning through public work." Or as Ernest Boyer, executive director of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, rhetorically asked in 1990: "Is it possible for the work of the academy to relate more effectively to our most pressing social, economic and civic problems?" This tradition goes back to Benjamin Franklin, the great creator of civic institutions including volunteer fire departments, schools, libraries, and health and life insurance groups; and Thomas Jefferson, who saw education as preparing young people for a life of democratic citizenship.
The challenge is to push back on the excessive bureaucratization and commercialization or corporatization of educational institutions, their curricula and the narrow view of what horizons are to be placed before their faculty and students. Apart from such efforts, civic leaders can offer extracurricular seminars during and after school hours for interested young scholars.
To find out some of what is being deliberated and accomplished to further the "civic arts," and to prepare students for public life, read the periodical "Higher Education Exchange," published by the Kettering Foundation. I especially recommend the 2015 issue, which contains "case studies, analysis, news and ideas about efforts within higher education to develop more democratic societies."
Education by civic practice and experience changes the present and improves the prospects for the future by increasing the number of lifelong civic leaders and the much greater number of part-time public citizens in every community of our country.
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