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Facing History with the YPP Action Frame––Focusing on Eyes on the Prize: Ain’t Scared of Your Jails

By Chaebong Nam, Adam Strom, and Danielle Allen 

I am pleased and proud to see my colleagues from the YPP Action Frame Project collaborate with Facing History to explore how our ten reflection questions for budding civic agents can support the sorts of inquiry that Facing History so ably guides. Below you will find a powerful suggestion for a classroom exercise that links study of past examples of civic agency with efforts to cultivate the civic empowerment of young people in the present. –Danielle Allen

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The Pitfalls...

By Chaebong Nam

We have seen numerous cases of viral messages that move quickly from a digital context into mainstream media headlines, where they draw still more attention from the public. Celebrities or other influencers can contribute to such online virality as well. Rarely, going viral happens spontaneously. More typically, it results from effortful online and offline efforts or latent conflicts such as #...

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What We Value: Equity, Efficacy, and Self-Protection

By Chaebong Nam

What do we mean by “successful” civic-political agency? Equitable, efficacious, and self-protective civic-political agency is its core. So, what it would look like in practice? The short answer is political friendship (Allen, 2004).

Equity

Political friendship is a virtue, originally suggested by Aristotle. Specifically, it is positioned at a midway point between domination and acquiescence in one’s interaction with others. Equity is the core of...

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The YPP Action Frame with Inquiry-Based Learning I: An Inquiry Cycle

We have ten questions now. What do we do next? How can we help others pick up and bring this Action Frame to life in accordance with their circumstances?

  1. Why does it matter to me?
  2. How much should I share?
  3. How do I make it about more than myself?
  4. Where do we start?
  5. How can we make it easy and engaging for others to join in?
  6. How do we get wisdom from crowds?
  7. How do we handle the downside of crowds?
  8. Does raising our voices count as civic and political action?
  9. How do we get from...
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Danielle Allen's Talk at Tufts University

Danielle Allen gave a talk on the YPP Action Frame at a brown-bag lunch discussion held at Tufts University in November 2015. Her talk tapped into critical issues pertaining to young people’s digital civic-political participation.

    1.    How do we get youth involved?
    2.    How do we keep them involved?
    3.    How do we keep the process inclusive?
    4.    Is there a way to apply the principles effectively? If so, what are they?

The YPP...

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