Can a Week Away Prepare Young People for Civic Life?

The second Askwith Education Forum of the fall semester showcased the American Exchange Project, proffering a model for American students to engage in civics and explore parts of their own country they might not otherwise experience as they make their journey from high school into adulthood.

Moderated by EdRedesign Lab Executive Director Rob Watson, the discussion panel featured Professor Danielle Allen, director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation and founding director of the Democratic Knowledge Project. Three representatives of the American Exchange Project, including co-founder and CEO David McCullough III and two alumni — Allonah Ashworth and Jessica Osei — shared the project’s origin and success stories along with the bold vision for its expansion and adoption across the United States.

The American Exchange Project’s goal is ambitious but simple: offering participating graduating high school seniors the chance to take a weeklong trip to a part of the United States very different from their own hometown in an effort to expose them to new experiences, people, and what makes different parts of the country unique. Founded in 2019, the nonpartisan project aims to be a solution to growing divisions in the United States.

The exchange experience, the forum’s panel argued, could serve as a civic rite of passage for graduating high schoolers that helps connect them with other Americans, develop their own sense of place in a vast and complex country, and give young adults unique opportunities to see themselves and other Americans in unique and lasting ways.

“Preparing young people for democratic life requires opportunities to develop agency and belonging, to understand people, places and perspectives different from their own,” said Watson, “and to see themselves as participants in the future of their communities and our country.”

Overheard At Askwith Hall: Key Takeaways

The Hero’s Journey

McCullough, who started the American Exchange Project with Paul Solmon and Bob Glauber, described the program as a transformative opportunity for high school graduates to take a uniquely personal civic experience that can change the trajectory of their lives for the better.

“This is your hero’s journey,” McCollough explained, noting the program intentionally separates participants from others they might know. “I’m on my own, and I’ve got to meet other people and learn what it’s like to be around new people who are different from me. And then I get to realize who I really am by putting myself next to flavors that are really different from me.”

Allen noted organizations like the American Exchange Project mean “the future is in good hands” when it comes to civics education and noted the success of the project reflected her own classroom teachings of Aristotle’s Theory of Virtues and the power of making connections with strangers.

“It has been extraordinary watching this program build and grow,” said Allen, who wondered if the foundations laid by the American Exchange Project could help build an American society more attuned to the civic roles adults could play as well. “There’s a lot of reshaping to do to build on this incredibly powerful work.”  

Changing Hearts and Minds

Ashworth grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana and spent her Exchange week with a family in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She said her preconceived notions of how northerners live and act were immediately challenged, and she returned home with deep reflections on her own identity and a deep appreciation for her host family.

“They showed me so much love and so much support within a weeks’ time that it changed my heart towards people that I did not know,” said Ashworth, who went on to graduate from Prairie View A&M University and is currently pursuing a master's degree at William James College. “And it caused me to reflect on myself and understand that I had so many strong opinions about people whose names I did not know.”

Osei noted her father, originally from Ghana, completed a foreign exchange program that sent him to Michigan in his youth and inspired her own Project experience – leaving her life in Maryland for a weeklong experience in rural Alaska that changed her perspective on politics, community, and the people whose lives she couldn’t imagine until she saw them for herself.

“I think this is beneficial for everybody,” Osei said. “When we’re so different and we’re coming together to engage in this exchange for such a short period of time with an action-packed itinerary every day, it really brought us together. I think we all took different lessons and put that into the real world.”

Popping The Bubble 

McCullough offered the American Exchange Project as a real-world counter to the troubling impact technology and increasing polarization have had on society in the United States. He described an “enbubbling” as people spend much of their lives in isolated online spheres of influence.

“PEW Research Center found in a study published last spring that 53% of Americans feel on the whole their fellow Americans are morally and ethically bad,” said McCullough. “But the reason 2,200 kids can venture into towns that are effectively random all across the country, stayed with thousands of families, and made friends like that, is because that is just not true.”

Noting political violence is at a 70-year high, he highlighted that teenagers spend an average of nine hours a day looking at a screen and cited studies that measured the length of their scrolling on social media to the height of the Statue of Liberty. Much of that scrolling inevitably focuses on extremes, outrage, and cultivates mistrust of people who are different politically, economically, and socially. It’s something the American Exchange Project aims to counter directly in its programming.

“The reality is it works because of a simple truth: that the vast majority of Americans are kind, honest people,” McCullough said. “I think as a society we are collectively being duped into thinking otherwise.”

What’s Next?

McCullough said his team is working on proposals to expand the program to 10,000 students within the next five years, which could be a “tipping point” in scalability as more school districts and states embrace the work with their own funds. He compared his aims to the Erasmus Program, the European Union funds to have similar cross-country exchange programs for students in its member nations.

Several times in Askwith Hall the notion was put forth that an in-country exchange program could one day be as commonplace for high school students as attending prom. And while that sounds far away right now, McCullough noted that many of the public goods we take for granted like parks and even the education system started as such longshots before they made a permanent impact on American life.

“A lot of the greatest social innovations that have really come to change our society – public parks, the ability to be in school after the age of 14, public libraries – were once thought of as ‘nice to haves’ that, when you reframe them as ‘need to haves’ scale up to fundamentally change society,” McCullough said.

You can watch the entire Askwith Education Forum in the video above.