University students tutor young students in politics

The University has introduced a new program to get high school students informed and interested about voting. The “Political Literacy Project” works with materials developed by Vote 18, which encourages political knowledge and is funded through Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity program at the University, in which the grant was received.

The plan is to incorporate blogging into learning about politics and the course should last until the end of the school year. Fortunately, it also involves tutoring opportunities for Pace University students.

There is a sector of the “Political Literacy Project” occurring at Pace High School, which is located on Hester Street. The high school opened in 2004 and is affiliated with the University.

Another sector of the program is Upward Bound Program. The Upward Bound Program is designed for students whose parents haven’t received a college education or degree or are from low income families. It is a federal funded and supported program. Upward Bound succeeds in bringing kids from these backgrounds and helping them achieve higher educational goals.

These students receive a lot of personal help from these programs such as transitional skills that can get them from high school to college successfully. They are given personal and educational counseling, SAT preparation courses, tutoring, career workshops, etiquette workshops, and community service opportunities.

The core of the Political Literacy Program is to take 120 students from these previously mentioned programs. They are given assignments to view elections from different perspectives and then blog about it.

The perspectives are: overall issues, media coverage and campaign, attacks against the opponents and public ads. It will be teaching these students to take in all aspects of the election and not to narrow their spectrums.

Throughout the year they will be examining all different cases of elections. They started with the most recent New York Mayoral election that occurred at the beginning of the course between Bloomberg and Thompson. The amount of ads and talking that has surrounded the hugely popular election gave these students lots of topics to cover.

Bringing in this new level of technology will help create a new learning environment for understanding and getting involved in American politics. These high school students will also be lucky enough to get specialized tutoring time with University students.

By incorporating both high school and college students, it will be a strong help in motivating the students to learn. The end of the course will be around the same time as the 2010 New York State Governor's election.
They are lucky enough to start with their own city and then get to experience the state election.

The opportunities will be maximized and taken to a new level for the Governor’s race. Instead of having a city examined they will examine the state in full. They might find many differences in the way a state campaign is run versus a city race.

All this political information is at high school students and even college level student’s fingertips. The Obama campaign and the desire for change brought young people back into awareness.

There are debates about what will be best for a young person’s future and how it will benefit them; this generation is no longer leaving it to their parents and elders to decide.

Along with University students tutoring, the long term goal of the project is to bring awareness to young people about the importance of politics. Also, to allow the young generation to see politics with a more objective perspective.