Americans are a little less likely to ask what they can do for their country these days.
An Associated Press-GfK poll found that the sense of duty has slipped since a similar survey three decades earlier. Civic virtues such as staying informed or serving on a jury don’t seem as important as they once did ? especially among the younger generation.
The findings fit with research that’s been worrying many experts who study civic engagement or advocate for teaching more about civics in school.
“I don’t see any recovery,” said Rutgers University Professor Cliff Zukin. “The people who were 40 two decades ago aren’t as engaged as the people who were 60 two decades ago. This generational slippage tends to continue.”
Jason Richwine wrote for the American Heritage Foundation Aug. 12, 2009:
Science is telling us that ethnic diversity causes significant problems by diminishing valuable social capital. What then should we do about it?
It was not the kind of message a Harvard seminar expects to hear. Ethnic diversity causes a lot of problems, our guest speaker told us. It reduces interpersonal trust, civic engagement, and charitable giving. It causes us to disengage from society, like turtles shrinking into their shells, reducing our overall quality of life. The more diversity we experience in our lives, the less happy we are.
