Civic Education and Why it’s Important

In addition to moonlighting as a public administration student at night, I am also what could be considered a front line state employee. I often find myself seeing several sides of an issue whenever something procedural is changed; and given the current economic climate for the states, something changes at least every week.

In between commiserating with coworkers when a process is adjusted for the 4th time in as many weeks, part of that also involves involuntarily reverting to a student and understanding why certain decisions are made, particularly as a government employee and as a student who has studied state and local government throughout the duration of an MPA program.  I’m sure everyone remembers junior high school where teachers explained the three branches of government, the difference between the Senate and the House of Representatives and other basic parts of the American system. But that seems to be where most education ends for those of us not studying government or politics.

In my line of work, clients file employment discrimination charges against current or former employers. Part of the filing process is explaining to clients that, 98% of the time, they are dual-filing with the state and with the “Federal” EEOC . If there is any confusion, I explain that they are filing with the state agency and the federal agency at the same time, in one location. I explain this process only so the following example makes more sense. One client in particular was adamant that the “national” level was above the “federal” level. Practitioners and students can almost always assume that in the United States, the terms federal government and national government are synonymous.

This lack of education about more than the basic parts of government could also explain the general, and some could argue much deserved, antipathy towards Congress. I often look across the border at Canada or to the U.K. or other European nations pass legislation much more quickly than in the U.S. But is inherently different in the American federal system where, even if one party controls both Houses of Congress and the White House, a minority party can still have the power to put the brakes on legislation. It’s this frustration that many Americans feel about why health care reform still has not come to fruition and why many practitioners struggle with patience when explaining the basic layers of government.

As practitioners, we must keep being reminded that the people we serve are not experts in the purpose, functions, or limits of government as we are.

A Brief Look at Study Abroad for Public Administration Graduate Students: A Student Perspective

I recently returned from a two week research based trip to Romania with six other American graduate students. The purpose of the trip was to research topics with Romanian graduate student partners. As much as the entire group was prepared for the exchange, such as what to expect culturally, what to bring, and so on; no description could come close enough to the actual experience.

Aside from the cultural differences which, surprisingly, were fairly easy to adjust to, the first major stumbling block in preparing the research was actually finding any research in the first place. I recalled a conversation I had recently with my mother where I said “It’s 2009; if it’s not on the internet then it doesn’t exist.” I said this in jest, but quickly found it was oddly appropriate. My university’s library subscribes to hundreds of journals on topics ranging anywhere from public administration to psychopharmacology to literary criticism. Naturally, my preliminary research on my topic, freedom of information and government transparency, started here. It was also the point in the process where I realized things were not going to go as smoothly as I had thought. For one, academic papers on Romania in any subject were severely lacking. Those few that I could find focused more on Eastern Europe in general or states like Poland or Hungary.

After overcoming that roadblock, thanks in no small part to my Romanian colleagues, we were able to develop interview questions to ask as part of the research. The interviews, at least for my project, ranged from city staff to prefect staff to NGOs and university faculty. The development of questions and actually doing the interview was the easiest part of the whole experience. I have a feeling that may be because I do interviews at my full-time job on at least a weekly basis, if not more.

Upon our return to the U.S., I was struck by several things that I had failed to notice before. Not just the military personnel walking around the airport with submachine guns in Bucharest. We had been advised to take travelers checks along since we would most likely not be able to use our bank cards. This turned out to be true; out of the 7 students and 2 professors who went along; mine was the only bankcard that worked. Along this same line, the Romanian bureaucracy (at least in the banking sector) required 45 minutes to exchange 10 traveler’s checks. I decided after that ordeal to not cash in the rest of mine and rely on ATMs for the rest of the trip. Exchanging the checks in the U.S. took all of 5 minutes, 4 of which were spent signing them all.

Perhaps more importantly from an academic point of view, I was introduced to the difference between publishing for a narrow audience and publishing for a wide audience. In the United States, we take it for granted that everything that’s published is in English. In Romania, publishing a paper can take two routes; Romanian or English. A paper published in Romanian will be accessible largely only to those in Romania, Moldova, or to anyone who can read Romanian. Publishing in English results in the possibility of a paper being read anywhere in the world.

I must also point out that the Romanian colleagues with whom we worked, and the Romanian people generally, were possibly the kindest and most generous people any of us had ever met. In comparison to my other study abroad experience to France in 2004 as an undergraduate, this experience, despite being only two weeks long, taught me more about a different culture and more about the topic at hand. I’ve been told that public administration study abroad programs are far and few between. I feel that this is a disadvantage in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized to the point where questions about the Greek economy affect financial markets around the world. It’s one thing to study differences in administration and policies between Los Angeles and Chicago or California and New Jersey; it’s quite another to look at the differences between the U.S. and Romania.