Our world is becoming more complex and interdependent as more people, goods, services and interactions flow across national boundaries. This changing global reality has triggered xenophobic, sometimes violent reactions that have been validated and disseminated by political activists and opportunistic leaders. Diplomacy is rightly upheld as an important response to the mounting tensions within and between some countries, but diplomacy should not be left strictly to professionals. The internet and smart phones open exciting possibilities for citizens to be involved in diplomacy to help promote peace, prosperity and justice, but success and our global future depend in part on fresh approaches. This is the first in a series of posts intended to develop family diplomacy as a new form of citizen diplomacy for a more caring world.
Where Are All the Citizens?
Name your issue — climate change, war, terrorism, poverty, pollution, crime, violence against women, etc. — all of them share the same condition: in order to address them effectively, you need to mobilize people, often lots of people. Further, democracies by definition depend on people’s participation in power. Even in republics, where the people elect their representatives and the representatives make most of the government decisions, people still need to be informed and engaged enough to make wise election choices as well as to participate in the plethora of other republican institutions that require citizen engagement — including political parties, court juries, government advisory committees, and voluntary associations of all kinds — to address pressing public needs and problems.
Hence, in democratic (including republican) societies, arguably one of the most important questions to ask is: how do we get people to pay attention and act as citizens, that is, as people who care about public affairs? Mind you, this is not quite the same as asking “how do we get people to pay attention and act as partisans or consumers?” Businesses, political parties, interest groups, advertising agencies and public relations firms can be quite skilled at getting people to pay attention, absorb partial information, and act as angry partisans or avid consumers. Indeed, there is too much socialization and mobilization of consumers and partisans in modern societies. What is, in contrast, far less common and institutionalized is the socialization and mobilization of citizens.
Families as Sites for (Non-)Citizenship
If there is one institution Americans think of most often as the proper training ground for citizenship it is the school. In contrast, families are widely supposed to provide something more basic than schooling: what sociologists call “primary socialization” or the fundamental knowledge, beliefs and behaviors that allow a person to function generally in their society. This is distinguished from “secondary socialization” whereby a person learns, through schools, businesses, civic associations and other organizations, the knowledge, beliefs and behaviors that allow them to function in specific groups or organizations. That secondary socialization includes citizenship education, and the most appropriate place for that education is the school. And so the usual story goes.
However, the family is not only a core site for primary socialization, it is the site for the reproduction of societies numerically and socially. Kids are usually made in families, and kids typically go on to become the parents, workers and citizens societies require. As ample research on political socialization shows, the children of active citizens (people who read news, discuss public issues, vote, donate to and volunteer for public causes, etc.) are themselves more likely to become active citizens. In fact, families can have more influence on the shaping of citizens than do schools and other institutions (Burns, Schlozman & Verba 2001, Verba, Schlozman & Burns 2005, Flanagan & Levine 2010, Schlozman, Verba & Brady 2012, Brady, Schlozman & Verba 2015, Kim & Lim 2019, Lahtinen, Erola & Wass 2019). Through parents, relatives and their friends, children learn the beliefs and behaviors of active or passive citizenship, and gather little to much knowledge about public affairs. Much of this family-based learning about citizenship, or lack thereof, is not conscious or planned as it is in a school civics course, but it often lasts far longer, over years rather than a fleeting quarter or semester. Such citizenship learning can also be more impactful because it takes the form not of conscious instruction but taken-for-granted habits and identities of parents, relatives and friends with whom children tend to have closer and hence more influential relationships. This makes families less recognized yet arguably more important sites for the socialization of active or passive citizens.
The Private Family in Modern Times
Families are not just vital agents for citizenship education, but a major focus of public action. Whether to marry, divorce, work (and at what kind of work), have children, have one or more children, and how to raise them are just some of the important questions couples grapple with privately in modern societies, but all kinds of institutions — governments, businesses, schools, and a host of nonprofits — have strong stakes in those decisions. History at least in modern times is replete with small and large, sporadic and systematic interventions to coerce or coax the family in one direction or another on these questions. Think of all the heated debates, mob actions and government policies, past and present, concerning adultery, out-of-wedlock births, abortion, miscegenation, divorce, homosexual marriages, paid family leave, child abuse, and child support, to name a few.
Given the family’s large role in citizen education, it seems peculiar that public affairs have long intervened in the family, but collectively families have historically intervened little in public affairs. Of course, a minuscule minority of powerful families have long ruled or influenced tribes, governments and businesses (e.g., the House of Plantagenet in England, the Ming Dynasty in China, the Medicis in Florence, the Kennedys in the USA, the Rothschilds in many countries), but the vast majority of families in human history have had little to no voice in public affairs.
Industrialization in the 1700s onward shifted work more and more from the family shop or farm to larger factories. This shift coincided with the growth of modern governments and business corporations, the former levying taxes, drafting soldiers and imposing rules on families like never before, the latter pushing more work and peddling more consumerism on families than ever before. In the process, the family lost much of its public role as a site of community production, and increasingly became what it is now, a site for private and increasingly manipulated, avid yet disconnected consumption (Lasch 1977, Barrett & McIntosh 1982, Zaretsky 1986, Linn 2004, Schor 2004). Accordingly, there is far less sense of family agency in the world, and more of a sense of family vulnerability to powerful and seemingly uncontrollable outside forces.
Families at the Decision-Making Table
One might understandably imagine that modern advancements in family income, education and communication, plus expanding interventions in and supports for families (e.g., paid family leave, maternal nutrition programs, public education, child care programs, tax credits for families and children), would mobilize families to engage in public affairs, spur the growth of large family associations, and seats for these associations at the decision-making tables of local, state, national and international governmental bodies. Families in developed democracies often have some voice in local school matters in such forums as parent-teacher associations. There are also nonprofit think tanks, policy groups and political associations that advocate for families at local to international levels. However, I do not know of any large, cross-class membership associations composed of diverse parents and legal guardians and/or children that not only speak out for families, but participate in government decision-making.
If businesses and labor organizations get a seat at the government decision-making table, why don’t families as one of the most important institutions in society? Government decisions directly impact not only business and labor, but families too. Governments impact families directly through policies on divorce, homosexual marriage, paid family leave, child support, etc., and indirectly through policies on employment, wages, taxes, safety, the environment, foreign affairs, and more. As in other domains, experts and professionals are happy to occupy those seats at the decision-making table, but for anyone who believes in democracy (whether republican or more direct), there should be a case for rotating diverse parents, grandparents, guardians and children in those seats and incorporating the collective deliberations of parents, children and families .
Of course, families do not all think or behave the same way, nor do their members always or even sometimes agree, but they do tend to share certain needs and interests (safety, shelter, food and water, health care, education, employment, etc.) as families wherever they are in the world. Furthermore, as sociologists know well, context is crucial because people often act differently in different social contexts. The family context can encourage caring behaviors perhaps more than most social contexts. For example, a man among men may be less caring than a man among family. Clearly and sadly, some families are sites far less for caring than exploitation and abuse, especially of women and children, but this should spur people to uphold caring family models rather than reject families altogether.
Most families would have much to learn about the complexities of policy and government, but so does any neophyte citizen or politician, and there is arguably no more powerful way to affirm and nurture families as schools for citizenship than through their engagement in government decision-making. Just as ordinary workers participate in business problem-solving in many companies, and ordinary citizens help decide cases as jurors in many courts, so can ordinary families inform government policies.
Governments would, in turn, gain much from including family voices, rich to poor, in their deliberations, not just as advisors but as decision-makers who are directly impacted by policies. Moreover, including families in decision-making could help soften the hard edges of government — inviting smiles, warming hearts and occasioning more conversations between adversaries who can find common ground in their devotion to family — breathe life and meaning into policy deliberations, and nurture a politics of care that prioritizes the wellbeing of families and the most vulnerable. The family thus need not be a haven in a heartless world; it can be a new voice for a more caring world.
Barrett, M., and M. McIntosh. 1982. The Anti-Social Family. London: Verso.
Brady, H. E., Schlozman, K. L., and Verba, S. 2015. “Political mobility and political reproduction from generation to generation.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 657:1:149–173. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716214550587
Burns, N., K. Schlozman, and S. Verba. 2001. The Private Roots of Public Action: Gender, Equality, and Political Participation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Flanagan, C., and Levine, P.2010. “Civic engagement and the transition to adulthood.” The Future of Children, 20:1:159–179. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ883084.pdf
Lasch, C. 1977. Haven in a heartless world: The family besieged. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Lahtinen, H., J. Erola, and H. Wass. 2019. “Sibling Similarities and the Importance of Parental Socioeconomic Position in Electoral Participation.” Social Forces soz010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soz010
Kim, H., and E. Lim.2019. “A cross-national study of the influence of parental education on intention to vote in early adolescence: the roles of adolescents’ educational expectations and political socialization at home.” International Journal of Adolescence and Youth 24:1:85-101. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2018.1470993
Linn, Susan. 2004. Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood. New York: The New Press.
Schlozman, K. L., Verba, S., & Brady, H. E.(2012). The unheavely chorus: Unequal political voice and the broken promise of American democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Schor, J.B. 2004. Born to buy: The commercialized child and the new consumer culture. New York: Scribner.
Verba, S., Schlozman ,K. L., & Burns, N. 2005. “Family ties: Understanding the intergenerational transmission of participation” in A. S. Zuckerman (ed.) Social logic of politics: Personal networks as contexts, pp. 95–116. Philadelphia,PA: Temple University Press.
Zaretsky, Eli. 1986 [1976]. Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life. New York: Harper & Row.
Spotlight: The Winslow-Curtis Family
Learning Life is pleased to present this inaugural spotlight on families involved in our Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI). The Winslow-Curtis Family, featured in the adjoining photograph, has been engaged with CDI since its inception in August 2016. Below, each participating Family member — the father, Adrian, older daughter, Samya, and younger daughter, Kaliah — tell us more about themselves and what they like about Learning Life.
Adrian:
Where were you born and raised?
I was born and raised in Washington DC.
What is your current and/or past line of work?
I have taught and performed dance and theater. I also have been a drug counselor, custodian, and restaurant worker.
Is there a life experience you have had that has particularly shaped you thus far?
Being a parent because you have to really put your children first and yourself first at the same time. It’s a roller coaster ride! You will never have anything to yourself, but it’s rewarding because you want them to have the most. It also sets a standard that pushes me to do better, do more, try again for them, even if I fail.
What do you like most about Learning Life?
The information I get about other cultures, eating right, things that help me with life.
What’s one experience you’ve had with Learning Life that has been particularly meaningful to you?
When we [CDI families in DC and Learning Life staff] went to the Senegalese restaurant [Chez Dior in Hyattsville, MD in February 2017]. Let’s start with the drinks. It was interesting to learn about the red drink [Senegalese bissap juice, made with hibiscus] that helped the community with certain ailments. The food followed certain traditions. It was good to see my kids eat things that they otherwise do not eat, like Senegalese fish, which had a different flavor they weren’t used.
Samya:
Where were you born, and how old are you now?
I was born in northwest Washington DC. I am seventeen years old.
What grade are you in, and what’s your favorite class in school?
I’m in 11th grade, and my favorite subjects are forensic science, trigonometry and AP English.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to cheer on my high school cheerleading team, I like to draw, watch TV, make slime, and cook with my little sister.
What would you like to be when you grow up?
I’m not sure, but I am interested in the Air Force, being a doctor (neurosurgeon or plastic surgeon), a forensic scientist, or a lawyer.
What do you like most about Learning Life?
I like that I get to explore the wider world and meet new people.
Kaliah:
Where were you born, and how old are you now?
I was born in 2009 in Washington DC. I am nine years old now.
What grade are you in, and what’s your favorite class in school?
I am in 3rd grade. My favorite classes in school are science and reading, but I like all my classes really.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to color on coloring sheets. I like watching “The Magic School Bus” and “Brain Child” on Netflix because they teach you about plants, animals, the Earth, the body, and how you digest food, bad germs and so on. I like to read adventure books too.
What would you like to be when you grow up?
I am not sure yet, but I think I would like to be a teacher, or a fitness trainer.
What do you like most about Learning Life?
It teaches you about different people, cities, and how people are different in their lives, places, their food, but they’re still the same as us because they are humans, not like other animals or plants.
What Happened in 2018 & What’s Coming in 2019
Learning Life was busy in 2018, and has ambitious plans for 2019! In brief, we launched an international mentoring program, tested a global storytelling challenge as well as “cook, eat and learn sessions” or CELS, and engaged families in four countries in an ongoing food culture project. This post reports on each of these initiatives, reveals our plans for 2019, and explains three simple ways you can help.
Food Culture Project: Following on our successful 2017 community photo project, we moved our flagship program, the Citizen Diplomacy Initiative (CDI), forward with a new project intended to develop ten participating families’ understanding of nutrition and food culture through conversations and meals. This project marked the first time that Learning Life staff met face-to-face with some of our families and an organizational partner abroad. In March, my wife and I visited the Collectif pour la Promotion des Groupes Vulnérables, a partner association of men in Dakar, Senegal who provide free educational programming for families and youth in their lower-income neighborhood. We conducted research to compare the food culture of three of the Collective’s families with that of three of our lower-income families in DC to gain a better sense of the relative healthfulness of their food practices and beliefs (click here for the research results). This project was the concrete start of a long-term collaboration between Learning Life and Georgetown University Medical Center’s (GUMC) Community Health Division to improve the health of our families in DC and abroad. That collaboration led to further research and four conference poster presentations in 2018. We plan to complete the food culture project in spring 2019.
Cook, Eat & Learn Sessions (CELS): Launched in fall 2018, CELS are an outgrowth of Learning Life’s partnership with GUMC’s Community Health Division. In September, six GUMC medical students, working in pairs, began meeting with several of our families in DC at their homes to cook and eat a meal together while learning about nutrition, cooking and foreign food culture. Each pair of medical students was charged with coming up with a meal that is foreign, tasty, inexpensive, easy to make and accessible (i.e., the families can buy the ingredients from their closest supermarket). The CELS are intended to deepen our families knowledge about nutrition and cooking with an eye to improving their health in the long-term. In 2019, we will continue the CELS with our families in DC, and possibly, depending on interest, develop virtual CELS between DC area students of health and medicine, and our foreign families.
Global Storytelling Challenge: Likewise launched in fall 2018, the pilot Challenge engaged five middle school students at the Saint Thomas More Catholic Academy in DC’s Ward 8 in learning about international issues (e.g., climate change, war, poverty, gang violence, gender inequality) then creating and performing stories about issues the students chose. In December, the students, led by two George Washington University International Education Program graduate students, Nichole Hutchins and Rujjares Hans, performed their stories before their schoolmates and teachers in two competing teams of three and two students. Research on storytelling suggests that this art form can improve student engagement, visual memory, information recall and language skills as well as create a more welcoming and tolerant learning environment (more on this research in an upcoming Learning Life post). Hence, in 2019, following the food culture project, we aim to complete a second Global Storytelling Challenge involving more children in DC as well as abroad.
Mentoring: Informal mentoring Learning Life volunteers did with some of our youth in Washington DC in 2017 showed that those children exhibited more self-confidence, knowledge, and motivation to participate in our programming. Mentoring also helped forge more trusting, participatory relationships with participating families. Accordingly, in 2018, we launched a mentoring program to support CDI. Our mentoring connects DC area college and graduate students as well as professionals in mentoring our youth not only in DC but where we work abroad: in San Salvador, El Salvador, Dakar, Senegal, and Jerash, Jordan. Our mentors and mentees in DC meet at least once per month to visit foreign embassies, museums, cultural festivals, restaurants and more. Our mentors mentoring children abroad meet with their mentees live via Facebook or Skype at least twice per month to read articles, watch videos, and discuss their thoughts and experiences as well as the mentees’ ambitions and plans. For both the mentees in DC and abroad, the mentoring is intended to deepen their understanding of the world, and connect them to ideas, resources and educational opportunities that can improve their lives. Currently, we have 15 mentors mentoring 11 children in DC and 5 children and adults in El Salvador, Senegal and Jordan, with plans to up to double the number of mentor-mentee pairs in 2019.
As we move into 2019, here are three ways you can help:
1)Donate to support our work. Learning Life does a lot with little funding. The money you donate pays for food, printing, youth awards, and other items that help recruit and motivate our families and carry out our programs. When you donate, please consider becoming a Learning Life sustainer by giving $5, $10, $20 or whatever amount you are comfortable with per week or month through your credit card.
2) Volunteer with Learning Life: Volunteers do the bulk of Learning Life’s work. You can help with mentoring, international learning activities, language interpreting, document translation, planning, fundraising, recruitment, research, writing, graphic design, video marketing, and other tasks. To learn more, contact us at email@learninglife.info.
3) Shop through iGive.com, and help fund Learning Life free. Shop more than 1,400 stores (Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, The Gap, KMart, Nordstrom, Sephora, Staples, Starbucks, Target, T-Mobile, Walgreens, and many more) through iGive, and if you make Learning Life your preferred charity, a percentage of your purchase will be donated to Learning Life at no cost to you.
On Monday this week, laughter and screams erupted from a school cafeteria in Washington DC as two student teams competed in telling stories about pressing international issues.
The students, 7th and 8th graders at Saint Thomas More Catholic Academy (STM) in southeast DC’s Ward 8, were participating in Learning Life’s pilot Global Storytelling Challenge in partnership with STM. “We live in one world, we all like stories, and stories can change the world,” Learning Life Director Paul Lachelier told the students assembled to view the students’ stories. Research on storytelling suggests that this art form can improve student engagement, visual memory, information recall and language skills as well as create a more welcoming and tolerant learning environment. This Challenge was a first experiment in storytelling for Learning Life and STM intended to encourage youth interest and learning about international affairs.
The students participating in the Challenge met for six weekly sessions in October-December at STM with two Learning Life teachers, Rujjares Hans and Nichole Hutchins, both Master’s students in the International Education Program at George Washington University. During the sessions, Ms. Hutchins and Ms. Hans first guided the students through videos and discussions to learn about various international issues that impact health, including climate change, poverty, violence against women, child labor, and human trafficking. They then formed two teams, and each team chose an issue that interested them most and crafted a story to help inform their fellow STM students about that issue.
One team presented a story about a young Cambodian girl compelled to work in a village brick factory rather than go to school to help support her family. The other team told a story of a young Sudanese girl whose mother is tricked into delivering her daughter into slavery as a domestic laborer in Brazil. Their stories were evaluated by three judges with substantial experience in storytelling: “The Moth” storyteller Nick Baskerville, Vera Oyé Yaa-Anna, founder of Oyé Palaver Hut, and John Johnson, founder and artistic director of Verbal Gymnastics Theater Company. The audience, composed of STM teachers, staff, and students in Grades 2-8, then had the opportunity to make some noise in support of the team they thought performed better. The story about the Sudanese girl won the judges’ critical acclaim and the audiences’ enthusiastic screams, but both teams were awarded certificates and small cash rewards for completing the pilot Challenge.
The student storytellers and STM staff enjoyed the Challenge. “The best part is that I had fun acting with my friends and learning new facts about the world,” said one of the student storytellers in a post-Challenge survey. “STM is thrilled to have participated in this first Global Storytelling Challenge, and we look forward to working with Learning Life on the next Challenge in 2019,” said STM Principal Gerald Smith.
In coming years, pending funding, Learning Life may expand the Challenge to involve more youth in Ward 8 and possibly other communities in the world with which we work in a more competitive international storytelling contest with bigger prizes. Stay tuned!
If there is one institution Americans think of most often as the proper training ground for citizenship it is the school. In contrast, families are widely supposed to provide something more basic than schooling: what sociologists call “primary socialization” or the fundamental knowledge, beliefs and behaviors that allow a person to function generally in their society. This is distinguished from “secondary socialization” whereby a person learns, through schools, businesses, civic associations and other organizations, the knowledge, beliefs and behaviors that allow them to function in specific groups or organizations. That secondary socialization includes citizenship education, and the most appropriate place for that education is the school. And so the usual story goes.
interventions in and supports for families (e.g., paid family leave, maternal nutrition programs, public education, child care programs, tax credits for families and children), would mobilize families to engage in public affairs, spur the growth of large family associations, and seats for these associations at the decision-making tables of local, state, national and international governmental bodies. Families in developed democracies often have some voice in local school matters in such forums as parent-teacher associations. There are also nonprofit think tanks, policy groups and political associations that advocate for families at local to international levels. However, I do not know of any large, cross-class membership associations composed of diverse parents and legal guardians and/or children that not only speak out for families, but participate in government decision-making.
