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Also this issue: Ridge To City: Drop Dead (For Now) Inky Stinky Over Mag Bag In the spirit of blowing one’s own horn... No Way Street The Bell Curve |
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April 17-23, 2003
city beat
 Healthy skepticism: Students at Olney High School asked tough questions of City Council at-large candidate Juan Ramos. Photo By: Michael T. Regan |
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Philly students grill candidates.
As a candidate for City Council at-large, Juan Ramos has a lot of questions to answer. Ramos, and every other candidate for office, has to constantly explain himself to community leaders, fellow politicians and quote-hungry reporters who hammer him on the issues. Last Friday, Ramos’ grilling came from an unusual source: Olney High School students.
The students are part of a program called Student Voices, a national civic education project sponsored by The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Started in Philadelphia a little more than three years ago, Student Voices has spread to high schools in Los Angeles, San Antonio, Detroit, Seattle, Tulsa, Newark and New York. Its purpose, according to National Director Phyllis Kaniss, is to help students learn about government and politics through the study of local campaigns. Students get the opportunity to meet public officials and ask questions, and participating classes are provided with a new computer and Internet access so that students can log on to the project's website,
www.student-voices.org, to learn about local policy issues and political campaigns.
"What’s most valuable in the program is that the candidates get a chance to hear young people’s concerns," says Kaniss. "As a society, we too often ignore the political ideas of the very young, since they’re not yet a significant voting bloc. Student Voices gives candidates a chance to hear from these young people, and just as importantly, lets the students know that the candidates are real people, and they want to listen."
Which is how Ramos found himself on the hot seat in front of Steven Innamorato’s senior American history class at Olney High School last Friday afternoon. The students were smart, politically savvy and had done their homework. Karisma Wright demanded to know Ramos’ top three priorities if he’s elected. Ken Harper questioned the candidate on student work permits, child labor law and the absence of public trash cans on city streets. Connie Zayas had harsh words for young people who don’t exercise their civic duty by casting their ballots, and wanted to know what Ramos was personally doing to inspire her politically apathetic generation. A particularly insightful senior named Debbie Ramos (no relation) asked repeated questions about the inequity in state school funding, coupling school district budgets to property taxes and uneven revenue distribution. In addition to participating in the Student Voices program, Innamorato’s class is working on an instructional video titled "Why Vote?" that highlights the problems in the students’ neighborhood, and how the solutions to those problems are found in the power of the vote.
"When we first started working on the video project and working with Student Voices, politicians who participated were blown away," Innamorato says. "The issues that are pertinent to these students are core issues that affect the quality of life for everyone: funding cuts for school tokens, the outrageous cost of auto insurance and neighborhood blight, for example. That’s the beauty of this project, the idea that the students can take real issues to a real politician, get real answers and track the real results of those answers."
Innamorato says that the students are totally in charge of the video project, with little help from him. They’re doing the writing, the storyboarding, the videography and the editing. And when it’s done, hopefully later this spring, they’ll try to get it aired on the school district’s cable channel.
Kaniss says that Student Voices is currently active in 26 Philadelphia high schools, as well as 75 schools in other cities. Every candidate for Council at-large, incumbent and challenger, has agreed to participate, and they are fanning out across the city over the next few weeks to talk to students who will probably be voting for the first time this election.
"We’re trying to institutionalize Student Voices as part of the regular curriculum for high-school seniors," Kaniss says. "So far, we’ve gotten a very enthusiastic response from teachers and administrators around the country, as well as the students themselves. The saying is that all politics is local, so the way to get young voters involved is to let them see how politics affect their local issues. The program makes the candidates real, and really gets them excited about the process."
The program also serves as a wake-up call for some politicians, who may have tended to ignore the problems of young people in favor of winning over larger blocs of voters. It’s a political miscalculation that you can bet Juan Ramos won’t be making after being raked over the coals by the Olney students.
"I really learned a lot," Ramos says later. "These are not some spaced-out kids who don’t know what’s going on in government, and don’t care. They’ve got quick minds and fresh ideas, and any politician with an ounce of common sense would do well to listen to them. They’re a marvelous generation to talk to."
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