Jumping into Civic Life

Description

When it comes to the task of making democracy work as it should in everyday ways and places, professionals who are employed by institutions of many kinds can be a problem. All too often, they use their technical knowledge and expertise in ways that dominate, disable, and sideline neighborhood and community members who aren't employed as credentialed experts. Or they stay out of public work in the messy, contentious realm of civic life altogether because they see it as an inappropriate activity for professionals to engage in, they don't know what to do, they aren't welcome, or they are afraid of losing their jobs. Through eight richly detailed oral histories, this book helps to open our imagination to the possibilities for professionals to make constructive contributions to the task of making democracy work as it should. The firsthand stories of public work in these oral histories are told by professionals from six different states who either chose or were invited to jump into civic life as active participants. They help us see what it means and takes to be a "citizen professional" who respects and supports the capacities, intelligence, expertise, and agency of others. The book's editors are Scott J. Peters, professor in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University; Theodore R. Alter, professor of agricultural, environmental, and regional economics and codirector of the Center for Economic and Community Development at Penn State; and Timothy J. Shaffer, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies and the assistant director of the Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy at Kansas State University.

Informations

• Publié par: Kettering Foundation Press
• Date de parution: 24 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781945577390
• Langue: English

Extrait

JUMPING INTO CIVIC LIFE

Edited by Scott J. Peters, Theodore R. Alter, and Timothy J. Shaffer
© 2018 by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jumping into Civic Life: Stories of Public Work from Extension Professionals is published by the Kettering Foundation Press. The interpretations and conclusions contained in the book represent the views of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, its directors, or its officers.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to:
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Kettering Foundation Press
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Dayton, Ohio 45459
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
First edition, 2018
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN: (print) 978-1-945577-37-6
ISBN: (ePDF) 978-1-945577-38-3
ISBN: (ePUB) 978-1-945577-39-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933682
Cover design by Alyssa M. Gurklis
Artwork on page 106:
Norman Rockwell Visits a County Agent by Norman Rockwell
Printed by permission of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency
Copyright ©1948 the Norman Rockwell Family Entities
While I am sure that in the present appreciation of “facts” we have the most hopeful promise for our confessedly fumbling world, the most needed corrective for certain attitudes of mind into which we have fallen, while I know from experience that we often waste time in conference arguing about things that are ascertainable, still there are several points which must be remembered: it is of equal importance with the discovery of facts to know what to do with them; our job is to apportion, not usurp, function (the “people” have a place, what is it?); and also we must warn ourselves that a little of the ready reliance on the expert comes from the desire to waive responsibility, comes from the endless evasion of life instead of an honest facing of it. The expert is to many what the priest is, someone who knows absolutely and can tell us what to do. The king, the priest, the expert, have one after the other had our allegiance, but so far as we put any of them in the place of ourselves, we have not a sound society and neither individual nor general progress.
Mary Parker Follett Creative Experience , 1924
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Alice Diebel
Introduction: Making Democracy Work as It Should by Scott J. Peters, Theodore R. Alter, and Timothy J. Shaffer
How About We Get Together? A Profile of Carmen DeRusha
The Highest Form of Education: A Profile of Janet Ayres
Not an Expert but a Catalyst: A Profile of Joe Sumners
Devotion to the Cause: A Profile of Katrina Easley
Elevating the Conversation: A Profile of Bill McGowan
Showing Up and Being There: A Profile of Daryl Buchholz
A Thread Throughout Extension: A Profile of Sue Williams
Guides by the Side: A Profile of Jan Hartough
A Historical Note: Farmer Discussion Groups, Citizen-Centered Politics, and Cooperative Extension by Timothy J. Shaffer
Acknowledgments
Civic life is difficult. It can also be frustrating, painful, and risky. Given these realities, why do people jump into it?
One answer is that they are compelled to do so, by anger or love. Or more likely, by both. While people may jump into civic life out of anger, their anger usually emerges from a sense that someone or something they love is being harmed or disrespected.
That’s certainly the case with us. As academic professionals, we have jumped into civic life—both on and off our campuses—out of anger over the ways that people, places, and processes we love are being harmed or disrespected. This book is one product of our work as publicly engaged scholars. Since such work is inherently collaborative, we owe many people acknowledgments of gratitude for their contributions, support, and inspiration.
First, we want to express our gratitude for the stories, insights, and wisdom we were fortunate to hear and receive from dozens of our Extension and land-grant colleagues who participated with us in the Kettering Foundation research exchanges that led to the publication of this book. The time we spent together included a good deal of truth-telling, much of which was troubling and challenging. Thankfully, we managed to keep our main focus on promising possibilities, revealed through first-person stories of their (and our) lives and work. Together we generated more than a thousand pages of transcripts of such stories that we will continue to draw on and learn from for years to come. We are especially grateful that eight of our Extension colleagues were willing to have their stories published. We thank Carmen DeRusha, Janet Ayres, Joe Sumners, Katrina Easley, Bill McGowan, Daryl Buchholz, Sue Williams, and Jan Hartough for their generosity and boldness. Their voices and stories will remain with us always, as sources of inspiration and hope.
Second, we are deeply grateful for the support and encouragement we received from the Kettering Foundation, especially senior associate Alice Diebel. We owe Alice more than we probably know, not only for believing in our project—which is much larger than this book, and will include many more products—but also for contributing to it in many substantive ways, and for putting up with it and us as our timeframe for completion stretched out much longer than we originally anticipated. We deeply value the time we spent with her. With respect to the Kettering Foundation itself, we feel compelled to speak a truth: it is the only organization in the entire country that offers sustained opportunities for Extension and land-grant professionals to explore the civic dimensions of their work. It would be impossible for us to overemphasize how important that has been, and still is.
Finally, we owe an unpayable debt of gratitude to a set of Extension and land-grant leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries whose bold democratic vision continues to inspire and agitate us every day. Liberty Hyde Bailey, Minnie Price, Ruby Green Smith, M. L. Wilson, and countless others from those centuries were the original citizen professionals in the Extension and land-grant system. Like us, their lives and work weren’t perfect. But they managed to establish a democratic tradition in our institutions, and gave us standards we strive to honor. Their civic commitments and aspirations live on, as the stories you will read in this book reveal. May they always.
Foreword
This book is a remarkable testament to the confidence its storytellers have in the people who live in the communities they serve. These stories are of Cooperative Extension agents—or educators, as they are now often referred to—and leaders who recognize that people have the inherent capacity to make significant differences in their collective lives. The authors of these narratives are pushing against the norm in Cooperative Extension, an institution that typically recognizes its role in the research university as that of transferring technical information to citizens, or of applying proven programs to communities. Unlike much of Cooperative Extension and other university systems, these authors recognize that difficult and persistent community problems are not easily addressed without citizens, and that applying a technical “fix” to people limits creative alternatives and further pushes citizens out of public life. What role is there for citizens if an expert has the answers? These democratically spirited agents have learned that they do not have all the answers and see their role as facilitating the public engagement of issues using a myriad of approaches to deal with the many problems of living in community.
The challenge, as the Kettering Foundation sees it, is that too often university outreach efforts come from an expert position bringing service learning to needy publics or research to communities that may be tired of being studied. What the extraordinary people in this collection of narratives do is value communities and the residents within them and see them as actors who should have a role in shaping their collective futures. They have used an educational approach that involves shared learning rather than a one-way transfer of scientific knowledge. The citizens these agents see have knowledge of what they value and want for their futures, capacities for deciding among alternatives, and assets to put to work. These Extension representatives understand that the university needs to align itself with what citizens see as their concerns rather than telling citizens what their concerns should be. They are learning as much as the people they are working with. The agent’s educational role is around learning with diverse groups of citizens, in spaces filled with history and context, to understand and cocreate democratic approaches to community politics.
As a research organization, Kettering offers a lens for people who are trying to encourage more democratic approaches to politics. Kettering’s approach to its work looks a lot like the shared learning model the Extension agents use in these narratives. Kettering does not have answers or fact sheets, but rather, poses questions that encourage groups to think about the nature of the politics they experience, work through what democracy could be in a variety of contexts, and listen carefully to what practitioners are learning. The foundation encourages democratic innovations in shared problem solving.
For these innovations to affect the politics of a community and shape a more democratic public life, institutions like universities need to see citizens as more than voters or as barriers to progress. By seeing them as the experts of their own lives and finding ways for people to hear diverse perspectives, Kettering asserts that decisions will be better informed, more cognizant of the valuable things one might lose in order to make progress, and more open to working across divisions. These innovations build the capacity of people to have