Like Lileks, I have a crushing cold.  And like Lileks, I  feel the need to write every day, even though my head is full of green and brown nastiness.  I blog, therefore I am.  So, let me tell you about the writing assignment I just gave my Intro students.

I teach two sections of Introduction to Political Science.  It fulfills a requirements for all students at the school, so I get a wide range of students in there.  The point of the class is to prepare the students who want to take more advanced class for the terminology and the subdivisions of the discipline.  The class also has to reach those communication and nursing majors, who have no plans to ever take another political science class. I want those kids to come out of the class with a basic understanding for how our system works, so they’ll be able to enter that very small rank of people in this country who have a basic clue. 

I assigned a  short paper assignment last week.  They had to figure out who their representative was.  They had to write down three political issues that were important to them.  Then they had to formulate those interests into three questions, call the local office of their representative, and find out what his or her position was on the topic. 

I’ve done this assignment many times in the past.  It serves many different functions, but the most important function is that it empowers students.  It transforms them from politically passive to politically active.

The students handed in their papers today, and we talked about their experiences in the beginning of class.  A few of them had very positive experiences.  They found a knowledgeable staffer who explained the Representative’s position on the War in Iraq, abortion, or gun control.  However, most of them had terrible experiences.  The staffer refused to answer the question and transferred them to the Washington office.  Then the Washington office gave them the run around, sent them back to the home office, where they were shuttled off to a website.

Outrageous. 

How can I get young people interested in politics, when they come face to face with incompetence and roadblocks?  How can anyone get excited about government when Congressmen refuse to let people know their positions on key issues?  Extreme disgust.

I’ve done this assignment many times over the years, but I have never had this many students receive the run around. I wonder if the Internet has made things worse.  Congressman can put up vagary up on their websites and says that it substitutes for knowledgeable staffers.  I’m going to write an essay about this for the Bergen Record with the names of the worst offenders.