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As the director of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the University of
Minnesota, Boyte has participated in efforts to construct these types of civic education
efforts. Yet these programs, while offering the potential for dramatic impact on
participants political attitudes and behavior, require ample financial resources and time
commitments. One project titled Public Achievement, for example, organizes elementary
and high school students into teams in order to work on a chosen public issue over the
course of an entire year. Along the way, they are mentored by adults such as teachers,
college students and community members, who help them work toward their goals and
learn political skills (Boyte 2003, p. 94). If similar types of lessons could be learned by
developing a more traditional civic education curriculum for the college and/or high
school classroom, far more members of the apolitical, younger generations could be
exposed to an intervention. This research represents a preliminary attempt to develop a
curriculum that could be widely adopted in formal education settings as a supplement to
civic education courses in high schools or as a liberal arts requirement in colleges.
The College Classroom as an Intervention
The opportunity to develop and test this curriculum emerged after the State
University of New York adopted a one-credit oral discourse requirement for
undergraduate students. As a result, the Communication Department was asked to
develop and offer a 1-credit course to help students fulfill the oral discourse requirement
in time for graduation. An internal teaching grant provided adequate funds to hire an
Convention