Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle: You're listening to Talking to Teens, where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers. I'm your host, Andy Earle.

We're talking today about how to raise teens who are politically informed, empowered, and engaged. In today's world it almost seems like talking about politics has become taboo.

That's one of those subjects we don't want to touch. It could lead to disagreement. It could cause fights. Better to just avoid it.

But if we want to raise teenagers who have opinions about political issues, understand how our government works, and feel empowered to request change, we need to get over that fear.

We need to talk about politics, but we need to do it in the right way.

Our guest today is Lindsey Cormack.

She is a professor of political science. She's conducted research on how civics is taught in all 50 states.

And she's the author of the new book, How to Raise a Citizen and Why It's Up to You to Do It.

Lindsey, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Lindsey Cormack: Thanks. excited to talk with you

Andy Earle: You have just written this book about How to Raise a Citizen. Really interested to chat with you about that.

What inspired you to write this? What made you think this was such a critical issue? that there needs to be a book about this?

Lindsey Cormack: I've been a college professor for 10 years and I work at a school where I have very bright students who come in with like good test scores that know how to do school and then they go on to awesome careers.

But I teach political science and government there and it's a tech school. So they're mostly there for different STEM disciplines. And I was increasingly shocked at how little they knew about our system.

They come from private and public schools, but most of them didn't know the basics of how to interact with government, what the different levels were and how to wield their own power. So I set out with 6 research assistants to go look at school curricula across the United States to look at test scores on things like AP US government and the nation's report card to do research on how much instructional.

And we give to things like civics and government in schools. we found it's been decreasing over time and that there's a lot of really big constraints about doing this work in school right now. So this became a parenting book because I don't know any parent who doesn't want their kids to be as powerful as possible.

we have to do this work if we want them to participate in government.

Andy Earle: It's really powerful when you go through the research that you did and look at what is actually being taught in schools. And then also you go back in history and show how we've gotten to this point where civics has been removed or downplayed. What does education look like around civics and what are kids learning in schools?

Lindsey Cormack: Yeah. it's a hard question because we don't have one like standardized curriculum that is here's how you learn civics. Back when the second Bush was president we had sort of these standards around what we're going to teach for math and what we're going to teach for reading, but we really don't have anything like that. Instead, we have 50 different state systems and they all get to decide what they're going to teach and when they get to decide if there's going to be like a civics test at the end or not.

the modal level of instruction is in your second semester of your senior year of high school, you'll have a class that's called government. That's not in every state, but that's the average delivery style. I don't know if you remember your second semester of high school in your senior year, but it's not let me go learn a bunch of new things.

The inputs is just not what's happening. You're head somewhere else. And unlike every other subject, which we layer from K through 12 government, we say like, why don't we wait until right now and then just give it all to you. And so that, that doesn't work. And we know because 18 year olds are the least likely to be registered to vote, the least likely to turn out.

part of it's they don't understand these systems. We don't build them with civic know how. another challenge that we have in the way that we do this content instruction is states are increasingly restricting what teachers can talk about. And that's a whole nother debate about confronting history and stuff like this, but it leads to a way that we teach civics where we teach people like, there were these founding fathers and it was like 250 years ago.

But the kids think about it as A spectator. They're like, oh, there's this thing that happened a long time ago. And now here's where we're at. Instead of seeing themselves as participants and the people who study, like, how do you actually get these messages across? Like education experts would tell you, action civics is the way to do it.

Give them projects, let them find something in their community that they want to fix and figure out how to fix it, who to call, what you do. And even if it doesn't get fixed, because on average it doesn't, they learn the process experientially. Instead of thinking about it theoretically. they're wielding power it's taught in different ways, usually too late, too little, and in ways that are not as effective as how we know it could be if we had a different approach here.

Andy Earle: You write about teaching to the test pressures. if civics knowledge is not going to be something that students are getting tested on or evaluated for having mastery of, then that's going to be one of the first things we get rid of to make room for the things that are going to really increase their test scores and It's this cycle.

It seems like where there's all these different pressures that are causing civics to get squeezed out.

Lindsey Cormack: I think about it as like constraints. And part of the research of this book was interviewing teachers in a lot of states, and this isn't an anti teacher book. It's not an anti school book.

Like these people want to be doing that work. But when you only have so many hours in a day and you know that the final metric of success is test scores for students, that's the marker for their own success on what colleges they get into and the aggregate marker of a school success. They say like on average, our kids got this score on the ACT or SAT.

And neither one of those exams has any component of civics or social studies at all. It's not surprising that sort of stuff gets cut from squeezed time. And that's been the case since the eighties. The ACT did have a social studies component when it first came on as a test. And then in order to make it closer to the SAT, it got rid of that.

And so there's just not a rationale that makes sense. Because it doesn't matter in terms of the things that we measure for students or schools, when we're done with what a school process looks like,

Andy Earle: there can be backlash for teachers that talk about politics in their classes.

And you talk about this teacher who mentioned something in her class about honking for a honk for peace sign. And ends up. Getting fired because parents complain that she's talking about politically charged things and stuff like that. And it becomes this minefield almost for teachers to navigate where it feels safer not to talk about anything political at all, because that could get me in trouble.

It's not on the test, so it doesn't really even matter. And it's not even a huge part of the curriculum. So maybe I'll just avoid that.

Lindsey Cormack: Yeah, that's something that came out in our interviews too, Actually, all of these interviews happened after or during the coven 19 pandemic.

And that was a window in which teachers had a lot of oversight from parents because their classrooms were zoomed into their homes. parents were around hearing these sorts of things. It also coincided with kind of a polarize time in the United States generally and things.

Okay in the course of doing this, we interviewed teachers in a lot of different states, and it also coincided with the 19 pandemic. Teachers were doing zoom school, which brought their classrooms into the home. The families that they were working with. And so they had this heightened oversight environment.

something they mentioned consistently is they're afraid to talk about, you could teach a simple thing the three branches of government and Congress is the first branch because the first and article one, and maybe it's supposed to be the most important cause it's not a dictator.

someone can come home and say to their parents, my teacher likes Congress. You must dislike the president. then they inflame a Facebook group or they are emailing their principal or they are emailing and harassing the teachers directly. And so despite the fact that they want kids to understand these systems, It's hard if you're afraid that if I talk about it and say the wrong thing or slip up in the wrong way, or a student hears the wrong thing, then I'm going to have a lot of blowback.

And so it's just easier to not focus on this if that's the sort of environment that you're in.

Andy Earle: Yeah. It's sad. feels really scary or punitive

Lindsey Cormack: It's a hard environment teachers generally have more oversight than many professions. it feels unfair because you have every one of your students, now like customers and their parents saying here's what you should be doing we don't do that in any other field.

Andy Earle: the other side of all this is, as you point out that colleges and universities, when they're looking at what candidates to accept, they're actually really interested in students getting politically active or are doing things on a community level to engage with politics or to organize people or to protest around things or anything like that.

And Almost seems like this mismatch between what we're focusing on in schools to prepare kids for the world. And then what is actually helping them or gonna get them to the next level.

Lindsey Cormack: Yeah, so colleges like to see kids who are community interested and people who have done that sort of work. they don't care if you've worked for a Democrat or worked for a Republican. It's the fact that you're showing that there's a bigger community than yourself and you want to be part of it and make it better. That's like a good marker of a successful student. It also means that you're likely when you're done with college to do that same sort of work, which respects well on the university.

there's all different pieces of this that say this is someone who has initiative. This is someone who knows how to navigate systems. They're willing to work beyond just themselves. And so it's a good marker to be involved but we make it hard if we don't teach our kids how to do that

Andy Earle: so you recommend having conversations with your kids around these topics and kind of the ideas you want to discuss with them and how to do that, but also getting involved and helping them to get involved and come face to face with some government representatives in your area and Advocate for something.

And I found that really powerful. Is that realistic?

Lindsey Cormack: I think it's realistic. I'm on my local community board which is the smallest form of government. It's a non paid appointed position. And we deal with things like liquor licenses or zoning or little parks regulations, or sometimes things that happen in schools.

And there's people who are in high school. We have young people who get appointed to this as well. We have young college students who are appointed to it as well. But what we don't have is a lot of people raising their hand and saying yes, let me please do this. And so those students, the people who do that, they're incredible.

They're, the people who do extra credits, the yearbook committee, in addition to being a benefit to getting someone into college, it does this really nice mental health piece of let me have a repeated routine interaction with other people who care.

That's something if we think people are like, Oh, I'm very lonely or I don't really have a purpose and I can't figure out what I'm doing outside of my screen. Go do something in your local community. There's like parks, cleanup, or there's stuff where you say I don't want illegal marijuana shops in my community.

There's places where young people have an interest, but it's hard to channel that if we don't show them the ways to get into it. is it realistic? Yes. I see it in my space. Is it widespread? No, I don't see it in a lot of places. But there's not a reason for it not to be because politicians like listening to young people.

They like that energy and understanding where things are going instead of relying on their sense of the world, which is usually decades out.

Andy Earle: I love that. It feels so much more empowering than just sitting around and complaining about the way things are talking about how much it sucks that we don't have this, or this is broken, Can do something about that.

Lindsey Cormack: I have a friend of mine, he has young kids and they walk to school every day and they complain that there's this little screw that's sticking out of the ground from an old fixture that was something that the city had that's not there anymore.

And he was complaining for seven months. I didn't know about this, but then he came to me at a dinner and he was like, Lindsey, there's this screw and someone when it snows is going to trip on it. It's going to be horrible. And I was like, just go. Call Julie, our city council woman, like they'll take care of it.

And he was like, what? And I was like, let her know. I bet she doesn't know it's out there. in 36 hours it was gone. And he's that's amazing. I was like, yeah. And he was like, I've been mad about that for months. And I was like, yeah, you just gotta figure out who to connect to. sometimes we have this overwhelming negative narrative about government it's getting us down. It doesn't listen. It's not responsive. But If you don't let them know what's happening, especially on the local level, they can't be responsive. But at least what I found in my area if it's fixable and you tell them it gets fixed.

If it costs a lot that's different. But if it's can we level this so no one trips? Yeah, we can do that.

Andy Earle: Yeah. Especially something easy like that where people might get hurt and it's not going to cost much to fix How should we think about this as parents?

if we start to notice things like that with our kids, things that they're noticing or they're concerned about or something they would want to speak up about how do we facilitate that?

How much can we let them do versus how much do we need to do ourselves as a parent?

Lindsey Cormack: The first thing that I hope parents can take from this is that they need to recognize their role. Our kids look up to us just as much for the things that we do and for the things that we don't do.

So if our kids never see us caring about our local politics or never see us trying to figure out more, if something's going wrong, they get the message that's either a stupid thing to do or a waste of time. And that's On average, not true. So if we see something where we're frustrated, instead of just letting them see that frustration, let's let them see a process of learning more, of trying to make it better.

Even if it's not successful, there's so much to learn in that process. So recognizing your role, I think is like the first big thing. And it's not as if our kids don't get any message around politics. Even if we say nothing, the things that they are mostly exposed to are negative. We know this from like news is generally negative, but even things like children's literature and children's media, they will have like a mayor position, like in Paw Patrol or Simpsons or SpongeBob.

And at best that government official is like a bumbling doofus. And at worst they're out to do harm to their city. So they're like getting these messages in some way. So we need to recognize. our role in saying eh, it's not all bad because truly it's not state and local politics has a lot of things that have done to change our lives for the better.

You just got to look for them. So that's like the big thing. One is recognize your role. And the second thing that I thought was going to be a hard sell, but it's really not what I'm talking to parents now is. Go learn who at least one of your local elected officials are. Just go figure it out together.

And I talk about this all the time. And I have a seven year old niece and she said to me, we were away last month. She was like, yeah, Lindsey, I don't know who my mayor is. And I was like I don't know who your mayor is either. Cause I don't even live in her state. And I was like, let's go find out. we got online, we found out who he was.

We sent him an email together. And I said, Hey, I'm going to come visit my niece in the fall. Do you think it'd be possible for us to set up a meeting so she could get to know you? And in a week's time, he was like, yes, Come to the community center at this time. We'll do it. I was like, that's great. And those sorts of things, they really stick with kids.

They humanize this instead of being like, Oh, there's this like big government out there doing something. No, it's your neighbors, especially at the state and local level. And once they can see themselves in that, I think there's a pride in the system. I think there's an aspiration in the system where most of the message they get is Ooh, I got to stay away from that.

Sounds bad. Everyone says they're liars. Everyone says it's corrupt versus actually sometimes it's people who are just trying their best because for most state and local stuff, that's truly what's happening.

Andy Earle: Yeah. It just also makes it real instead of being something that feels so abstract or not accessible.

Lindsey Cormack: Totally.

Andy Earle: You talk a lot about that in the book as well, about how maybe people in federal government can be a lot more difficult to get in touch with, but people in your local area are generally pretty responsive and want to hear from people in their zone.

You also talk about getting in touch with their interns or people who handle communications for them

Lindsey Cormack: A lot of people get discouraged. they call and they'll say I want to talk to the mayor and the mayor's no, you're not going to talk to the mayor right now because they're doing a lot of different things, but persistence does pay off here and even federal.

So I'm in New York City. our federal politicians, they're well insulated because they mostly win when they run anyhow. They don't really have to talk to us. My daughter's met every one of her senators and representatives because if you just try a little bit harder, they'll do it.

They also tend to do tons of community affairs that people just don't think to go out to. And I think it's not only good for our kids. It's good for the politicians to see these people because they're mostly hanging out with Other, older people doing other things that they think is important and good, but they need to know there are other small little bodies who are in this game with them.

And so I think it does something good for the system all the way around.

Andy Earle: Yeah that's what government is supposed to be. As a representative, you want to have your finger on the pulse of what's important to all the people you're actually helping.

You have a kind of a formula in your book about how to have discussions about political topics and you lay out these four questions to ask.

How does that work and why are those the right questions to ask?

Lindsey Cormack: I don't know if they're necessarily the right ones. They are the ones that work very well for me. The first one is especially important and I don't get through all four of them on every topic.

But the first thing that I ask my students when we're talking about a new or controversial topic is what have you heard about that? And the reason that I like this question is it releases them from having the responsibility Justifying an opinion or really describing why they think this thing is just, what have you heard?

And sometimes that can be on tick tock. I saw this. My uncle said that my mom said this or whatever. It's just, let's set the table with what you have heard. You don't have to own those issue positions. It's not up to you to defend or justify it. Just tell me what you've heard. And the reason that I like this as the starter question is it gives cover for you to say some of the weirdest, strangest, outlandish things that might make you uncomfortable, that you're uncertain about because you didn't say them, you just heard them.

And I really liked that. And like students from all different political backgrounds can feel comfortable saying I heard this and I heard that. That's a great place to start. And I think that's true interpersonally as well, because I do have a good deal of conversations. I've been on sabbatical for a year now, and I walk around New York city in a shirt that says, let's talk politics.

And so I'm getting a lot of strange conversations, but what have you heard is a good place to start, no matter what the second question that I go to then is like okay, what do you think about that? And that is where you get to turn on a different muscle in your brain where it's beyond what I have heard.

I have to synthesize something. I have to use my own values to come up with how I orient my thoughts on that and what I say after we go through what we think on that kind of say, okay. And then we go to, what do you know about that? And that can sometimes feel defensive for students because they have to see the gap between what they think and what they know.

And we all have gaps. I have gaps. You have gaps. Everyone has gaps. But in interrogating the I think this the I know is okay, I know. There's some stuff that I don't know, which is how I get to this fourth question, which is like, what more would you need to know to refine your thoughts on this?

And that can be like if you had this discussion on the economy or does the economy do better under Democrats or Republicans? I think it does better under Republicans. Okay. What do I know? Okay. Maybe I don't know a lot. What would I need to know? Maybe I need to know some like GDP metrics.

Maybe I need to understand some inflation metrics or something. And then you don't necessarily come back and figure that all out right now, but you've certainly started a process where you say, I want to think about things accurately. We all do. And I want to think about things in ways that feel good.

Also true. But when there's a difference between what I think and I feel, there's something more to figure out there. And I think that's helpful, even if you don't go figure it out right then, it doesn't have to be confrontational. It has to be something that kicks off an internal process to go do a little bit more work.

Andy Earle: Great questions. And it feels like a very logical sequence. Something you also point out is not asking them to justify their views on the topic. What do you mean?

Lindsey Cormack: Yeah, that's what it depends. I level with students. I have some students who love to spar, like they want to do some intellectual debate and that's okay, then we're going for it.

And I have some students who that feels deeply uncomfortable. And though I think debate is very worthwhile, and I think it's actually a really good way to get both a sense of what your positions are, other positions. I do think there's value in discussion where you're not trying to convince someone else.

And so we figure out what we're going to do up front. If you don't want to justify things, then you're probably not going to want to spar. You're not going to want to debate. If you do want to do that, then let's go for it. And I think there's value in either route

It's no, I think you only get to those places if you give people different paths to get there. And so it really depends on what sort of discussion or debate style they want to get into. And I'm game for both because I think there's value in both.

Andy Earle: Lindsey, thank you so much for coming on the show today and speaking with us about your research and your ideas. I found it very interesting and insightful and I hope that people will find the same. I really hope people will check out a copy of the book.

How to Raise a Citizen and Why It's Up to You to Do It. Can you talk at all about where people can go to find out more about you, about what you're doing, maybe follow updates from you or anything that.

Lindsey Cormack: Sure. If people are on Instagram, I'm @howtoraiseacitizen on Instagram. There's also two places online.

That's easy to find me howtoraiseacitizen. com and lindseycormack. com. That's for everything else Academic

Andy Earle: sounds easy.

Lindsey Cormack: And I'm always accessible. I answer emails.

Andy Earle: Just like our local representatives. Excellent.

We're here today with Lindsey Cormack talking about how to raise politically informed teenagers and we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Lindsey Cormack: If we can have a culture that says it's okay to talk about these things. And instead of trying to convince the other person that you're right and they're wrong, you're really just trying to perspective build and say, here's how I see this. I'm interested in figuring out how you see this.

We don't want to be yelling at each other, but we need to practice doing this calmly with each other. And we have to start that younger. We can't wait until people are 35 and then learning how to vote and. Yelling at each other. It doesn't work. I don't like it. I don't know anyone else who likes it either.

Andy Earle: It's almost based in this assumption that if someone doesn't believe the same things as me, then they're an idiot and they're uninformed.

Lindsey Cormack: yeah, you're on it. That's right. Survey data is increasingly that we're like, if someone is a different party than me, they're either evil or they're a dummy. And that's certainly not true. I see a citizen as someone who has agency within a political system, someone who like understands how to activate and use their own power.

And that's why I think it's important that we as parents take on the task of raising little citizens.

Andy Earle: Want to hear the full interview? Sign up for a subscription today. It's completely affordable and your membership supports the work we do here at Talking to Teens. You can now sign up directly through Apple podcasts.

Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.