(Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath)
In 2025, a group of Philadelphia high school students asked a question few adults consider: where are young people actually welcome to be? To talk and connect with each other? Looking beyond home and school, they felt the city’s “third places” like parks and libraries were scarce, poorly maintained, or uninviting. Their research revealed underfunding at the Parks and Recreation Department, and they decided to focus their efforts on influencing the City Council.
Some students approached the idea of advocacy shaped by prior experiences of being dismissed, or with skepticism or fear. This time was different. With a structured process and the guidance of their civics teacher, they moved from discussing their concerns to researching the issue and practicing civic skills, from analyzing budgets to communicating effectively. By the time they met with the chair and vice chair of the City Council’s Parks and Recreation Committee, they felt confident and respected as community members offering solutions.
At a City Council meeting, they delivered persuasive remarks that helped secure passage of a 2025 resolution formally integrating youth voice into departmental decision-making. City leaders followed through, earning the students’ trust. The students were not learning civics just for a grade; they were practicing democracy in real time.
The Problem
While exemplary, the experience of these young people in Philadelphia is not the norm nationwide. The core problem of the accelerating decay of American democracy is driven not only by actors and conditions in the halls of power but by the context in communities. The democracy crisis sits atop a crisis of hope, a crisis of belonging (marked by isolation and fractured community ties), and a pervasive crisis of trust in institutions. As shared in America’s Promise Alliance’s 2024 State of Young People Report, young people in the United States are increasingly disillusioned with democratic institutions: only 12 percent trust government leaders, with trust even lower among Black and Hispanic youth. Only 16 percent believe democracy is working for them. Yet the data also reveal an entry point for a future for democratic participation: 65 percent of young people trust their peers, pointing to the potential of classroom-based civic learning and local problem solving to rebuild civic confidence.
As noted in Kent McGuire and Matt Wilka’s article “A Democratic Vision for Public Schools,” given the challenges of the present, one wonders whether we have sufficient civic infrastructure to resist the lure of raw individualism: “After all, following decades of emphasizing schools’ individual economic returns, even talking about education as having a common purpose is akin to recalling a forgotten language. What, then, is the purpose of public schools to our changing and diverse democracy?”
Schools remain collective spaces—in fact the largest remaining collective space in America. The kindergarten mat is most young people’s first public square beyond family, where children practice values first learned at home and norms set by their teachers and each other. School routines often set the rhythm of kids’ lives, and offer on-ramps via classes and clubs for their interests and potential to unfold, alongside their friends. Youth learn they are not only passive recipients of school culture but, in the best scenarios, they shape it as their artwork or club flyers dot the walls, their voices fill auditoriums with speeches and art, and their athletics inspire the entire community to gather.
Instead of seeing these features of schools as a distraction from test scores, we have an opportunity to build from young people’s identity as members of their school community to their civic identity as residents of their town, city, and state. Schools can be designed for collective progress through project-based learning, group projects, and youth voice shaping decisions. This is an alternative to prioritizing individual success alone, focused only on how students stand out and above their peers. A healthy balance of teamwork and individual contribution prepares the rising generation for participation in community organizations, councils, and deliberative bodies to make decisions.
This pivotal moment demands that we intentionally support schools to rise to their true calling: to prepare the guardians of our inalienable rights and founders of America’s next century. It is our civic duty to equip students not merely to inherit this nation but to actively lead its democratic renaissance, armed with the critical thinking and moral courage to engage in civil dialogue across lines of difference and to discern truth in a world awash with disinformation.
Bright Spots for Democracy
The organization I lead, Generation Citizen (GC), partners with schools nationwide, like the Palumbo school in Philadelphia whose students successfully advocated for a City Council resolution. We share our community-based civics curriculum and then train and coach educators who integrate GC into their class. To date, since our founding in 2010, we have delivered experiential civics education to nearly 250,000 students across geographically and politically diverse communities.
A key pedagogical component of this education is project-based learning (PBL). This approach allows middle and high school students to engage in real-world projects that address local issues they identify, developing civic knowledge of how the government works and applying it to solve problems. Instead of just memorizing facts and dates, students conduct research, interview community members with different perspectives, meet with elected officials, and advocate for positive change.
This shift from spectator to active participant is especially crucial for civic education. It creates the conditions for students to communicate and collaborate with each other and adults, work across lines of difference, experience a sense of belonging and agency in their towns.
For example, in rural Meeker, Oklahoma, a high school student led a Generation Citizen project focused on her hometown's lack of community involvement. After discovering that residents often support businesses outside of Meeker and don’t participate in local events, she assembled a team to create a promotional video highlighting the town’s businesses, churches, and other assets.
San Francisco high school students stepped up as community problem solvers by tackling the housing crisis facing “Transitional Age Youth,” young adults aged 18 to 24 who are often moving out of the foster care or probation systems and who face steep barriers to independence and are at higher risk of homelessness. Through a community-based civics project, they engaged SF Supervisor Matt Dorsey, sharing data and personal stories to advocate for the funding and policy changes needed to secure stable housing for their peers.
Democratic practice remains most accessible and tangible at the community level, where young people can see the impact of their efforts and begin to feel a sense of civic agency and belonging, no matter the circumstances at the federal level.
Investing in Our Greatest Civic Asset
While recognizing the incredible power of a semester or year of hands-on civic learning in the critical adolescent period, there are important civic learning stepping stones both before and after those years that are essential to spur a renaissance in civic engagement. In articulating the different but complementary roles of families, community institutions, schools, and government we can honor their interdependence and invest in the strengths of each.
- Civic Values Begin in Early Childhood, at Home: Children’s socialization begins in infancy, as they observe how family members engage with them, each other, and the world around them. Research on early brain development indicates strong influences by babies’ regular interactions with caregivers, including that their brains start to form expectations for how they will be treated and how they should respond. This first stepping stone establishes core values like fairness, responsibility, and empathy, as trusted caregivers nurture a child's sense of belonging. Faith and cultural organizations play a role in communicating shared norms and hosting service and connection between families that are foundational for a child’s understanding of themselves as part of a community.
- Foundational Civic Knowledge Through Elementary School: According to a 2021 Fordham Institute report, “Most of the states with the strongest civics and US History standards take an ambitious approach to both subjects in the elementary years.” In many states, but not all, students in early grades begin to learn about the Constitution, three branches of government, and social movements that provide essential scaffolding for their identity formation as community members and more complex history and civics in later years. The elementary years also offer families an opportunity to volunteer together and have age-appropriate conversations about current events.
- Experiential Civic Learning in Middle and High School: This crucial stepping stone, exemplified by the work at Generation Citizen and other organizations outlined in a recent report by the Council on Civic Strength, builds on civic knowledge and adds civic skills like communication, teamwork, and critical thinking through project-based learning. Comprehensive, experiential civics education, delivered through trusting relationships with teachers and community leaders, can counter civic despair and polarization and prepare young people to collectively build a healthy, resilient democracy. Opportunities for youth voice and service with peers encourage further exploration of pathways to civic engagement and leadership.
- Service Opportunities for Young Adults: Institutionalizing a year of service through programs like AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, or state-level initiatives such as the Maryland Service Year Option and the One Utah Service Fellowship is a powerful public strategy to address real community needs. By applying civic skills to real-world systems, young people discover a clear sense of purpose while building durable career skills. Developmentally, this provides a "rite of passage," allowing young adults to transition into adulthood with a supportive cohort. Particularly in a moment with concerns about the impact of AI on early career opportunities, this shared experience can offer concrete entry-level experience.
- Continuous Civic Contribution for Adults: In adulthood, civic participation should reach its fullest expression, yet for many it quietly fades. Recent Social Connection in America data shows that social nonparticipation is now the norm, for instance: “Over the past year, the majority of US adults report never participating in clubs and organizations (67 percent), religious services (51 percent), getting together with neighbors to do something positive in their neighborhood (63 percent), or formal volunteering (58 percent).” This erosion of associational life weakens the informal leadership and shared responsibility that democracy depends on. Adults need accessible, flexible on-ramps into neighborhood groups, volunteer efforts, and civic associations that foster belonging while building leadership capacity. As the culmination of civic development, sustained adult participation strengthens well-being, counters isolation, and ensures democratic leadership is practiced daily, and then passed on to the next generation. Large employers and elected officials can encourage volunteerism and civic participation in their communities.
Based on the fractured and tense circumstances we find ourselves in, this civic journey, from early childhood through adulthood, cannot be sustained by individual or familial effort alone. It depends on a shared civic infrastructure that is intentional, well-resourced, and coordinated across sectors. Today, civic learning and engagement systems remain fragmented, underfunded, and increasingly politicized and weak.
On civic learning policy, state leaders have many strong examples to learn from as bipartisan pathways already exist for strengthening civic learning at the state level. Legislatures can look to Massachusetts and Illinois, where civics requirements signal that civic readiness is a core public responsibility. Regulators can draw lessons from New Hampshire’s performance-based assessments and Tennessee’s project-based civics model, which embed civic learning in real-world application rather than rote compliance. Standards setters can follow Oregon’s lead by aligning inquiry-driven learning, social and emotional development, and informed civic action with a clear commitment to equity and justice. These approaches point to a coherent agenda: make civic learning relevant, rigorous, measurable, and sustained over time. The question is no longer whether this can be done, but whether states will choose to invest in the democratic capacity of the next generation.
Local and state collective impact efforts offer a practical path forward. Models that have strengthened public health and education show what is possible when schools, nonprofits, businesses, and public agencies align around shared goals and measures. Applying this approach to civic development would encourage civic readiness to be cultivated consistently over time, and reinforce civil society’s potential to reduce polarization and encourage pluralism. With deliberate coordination, communities can invest together in the leadership, relationships, and problem-solving capacity a resilient democracy requires.
As John Dewey observed, “[Democracy] has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.” If we want a participatory and inclusive democracy, examples like the students in Philadelphia need to be the norm and not just a bright spot. To raise generations of community problem solvers with a greater sense of civic purpose than today’s adults, we must invest in them now. We need civic learning pathways that foster hope and agency while helping every student feel a sense of belonging and responsibility. By building their knowledge and skills as they grow, we can ensure the next generation is ready to participate in the project of self-governance. And they just may go on to start projects and movements that inspire their elders to join them.
Read more stories by Elizabeth Clay Roy.