Education Through Democracy ꟷ Civic Activation of the Youth

One of the burning problems of contemporary democracies  is  decreasing turnout related to unequal levels of participation in various strata of social structure. According to the literature the most passive citizens are poor, less educated and young. The latter group seems to be the biggest hope and challenge at the same time. Young voters are not interested in politics - the field they consider nasty, dishonest and not worth the trouble. Despite the fact there are various explanation which justify  lower levels of attention and turnout among younger voters (e.g. lifecycle effect or cohort effect), the poor political engagement of young people has serious consequences for their future performance. Passive citizens who abstain from the very beginning do not gain political knowledge, party identification and participatory experience, they do not increase the sense of political efficacy and they do not acquire the habit of voting. All these make the young abstainers  less prone  to vote in future. Early civic education and inclusion into political life seems the only possible solutions for this problem. The main objective of the present paper is to present the effects of the project „Social and civic activation of young people” addressed to Polish students aged 14-19. The project assumes the development and implementation of a comprehensive education program in the field of civic engagement of young people, based on three practical pillars: conscious electoral participation (Pillar 1), involvement in civic activities at school and local community level (Pillar 2) and the ability to discuss and express opinions (Pillar 3). Each of the pillars includes a number of standard and non-standard teaching activities, courses and online platforms, instructional materials, stationary trainings preparing students to consciously participate in the political life of the community and to conduct real social and civic activities in their local communities. The main advantage of the project is use of service learning method, which allows to use knowledge and skills acquired in a traditional way to face the authentic problems of their local community. The practical experience gained through engagement in social activities creates unique conditions for learning and personal development. The key objective of the project is to strengthen civic attitudes among young people, to increase their awareness of civic rights and duties and to encourage them to be more active citizens. We also expect participation in the project will let young people acquire knowledge and skills which will translate into their competitiveness and better functioning at the labour market. The present paper presents the effects of the first edition of the project. In order to capture the change of civic competence and transversal skills we used quantitative (two wave survey) and qualitative methods. The former enabled us robust measurement of the progress, while the latter (FGI) gave us better insight into students’ perception of the project.