Vox populi

Tami Taylor, played by Connie Britton

I recently started watching Friday Night Lights, and in an episode in the first season, Tami Taylor the guidance counselor says to one of her students, "It's part of my job to make sure that you don't grow up stupid. It's bad for the world." Indeed.

One way to ensure that young people do not "grow up stupid" is to cultivate healthy informed communities. A couple of weeks ago, the Knight Commission released a policy paper entitled Civic Engagement and Community Information: Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication.

The first strategy -- Create a Civic Information Corps using the nation's "service" infrastructure to generate knowledge -- is an exemplar of why service should be a core strategy in our quest to address the world's most challenging public problems. The proposed Corps would invite young people to responsibly use digital media to create and publicize local information to connect people within communities.

I remember being skeptical of Patch when I first heard about it when my first Northwestern roommate started working there, primarily because the community-specific news platform seemed to exist only in upper-middle class white suburban neighborhoods like Winnetka and Kenilworth, IL. When Patch fully embraces its civic mission -- taking lessons from the now sadly defunct Residents' Journal, a magazine written for and by public housing tenants in Chicago, as just one example -- local communities of all ranges of connectedness might build the civic infrastructure that is imagined and advocated by the Knight Commission.

Creative voice has been an important part of my journey into public service. Whether singing in a community choir, performing in musicals and plays, listening to oral histories of residents at retirement homes, or writing and orating persuasive speeches through forensics, voice and performance were building blocks for my thinking about the world at large. One of my first career aspirations was to be a journalist because I viewed it as a way to enact change by showcasing the voice of the people.

Sally Prouty reminded us recently of why public service in general and national service in particular is such an important opportunity to do good work for communities while passing along skills, leadership, training, and empowerment opportunities to transitioning people of all ages:

There is no need more deserving of our attention. No greater cause than providing America's youth with life skills, education and good jobs. No greater importance for our nation than to develop our future problem solvers, innovators and leaders.