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The State We’re In program
Click the link to watch the full interview on NH PBS's The State We're In.
The study of the rights and duties of citizenship - also known as civics - isn't something that gets a lot of attention in New Hampshire or across the country. Joining The State We’re In host Melanie Plenda are three people who are doing their part to change that and find fun ways to teach people about how the government and its institutions work: hosts of New Hampshire Public Radio Civics101 podcast Nick Capodice and Hannah McCarthy, as well as Martha Madson, the executive director for the New Hampshire Civics.
This content has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the full interview on NH PBS's The State We’re In.
Melanie Plenda: Hannah, tell us about Civics101 and how you are bridging some of the gaps and putting the fun back in fundamental knowledge.
Hannah McCarthy: The way that Civics101 initially began, it was what you call a two-way show. It was an interview with one individual and a host, and it was quite straightforward and it was great. It was necessary. It was created in response to listeners writing into the station after they'd been paying a little more attention to the news after the 2016 election, and they would say things like, ‘is that legal?’ ‘Can that person do that?’ ‘Who and what is the secretary of state? What is their job?’ The show was created to immediately respond to that. When Nick and I were brought on as co-hosts of the show after Virginia Prescot left to go to Georgia Public Broadcasting, Nick had been playing around with creating a real story for listeners. He knew that Civics101 was being used in schools, but how many students - especially in high school - want to sit and listen to a straight interview?
Nick started to create these soundscapes. He started to bring in characters and together we worked to take civics topics that are notoriously dull and make it interesting. History is exciting. These major decisions that are made that end up governing how a nation functions ad nauseam and interminably all start with a story that starts with people in a room. We consider students to be our sort of secret audience. We've got a large adult audience, but we’re always thinking in the back of our minds, ‘if a student has to sit and listen to this, are they going to stay engaged for longer than five minutes?’
On top of that, we also offer graphic organizers and we make sure everything is transcribed. We're regularly in touch with teachers, we visit classrooms, we present on how to make your own podcast, because we also believe that podcasting itself should be accessible. We try to have conversations about civics, about empowerment, and we try to make it exciting because we truly believe it is exciting. The main point of power for your average citizen is whether or not you understand how the government works and whether or not you exercise your right to enfranchisement; for example, your right to call your Senator or congressperson.
Melanie Plenda: Martha, New Hampshire Civics is also working in the civics realm in a similar way. One of your programs, the Kid Governor program, aims to walk students through the election process. We recently had the immediate past Kid Governor Charlie, and his successor, Charlotte, on the show to speak about their experiences. Can you tell us more about that program and others meant to augment teaching about civics?
Martha Madsen: All of our programs have rigorous content, but we pair that rigorous content with experience and action because, as Hannah said, the engagement part is what makes that stick. If you just learned a bunch of facts but if you never use them, they're not gonna stay in your brain. We are always looking to provide that rigorous content and then make it fun, make it engaging, and make it real.
Our New Hampshire Kid Governor program is a six week curriculum for our fifth graders and they learn about the New Hampshire government. They talk about qualities of leadership and the history of voting rights in New Hampshire. They learn about public speaking and campaigning and elections, and some of these young people decide to run. They create a campaign video with the help of their peers and then an advisory board selects the top seven. 1,500 5th graders this past year from all 10 counties voted this year for Charlotte Cotti, whose interest is in addressing homelessness in New Hampshire. This is our fourth year of this program and we've heard from teachers that the kids are engaged, it's not hard to implement, and it's aligned with school standards. Charlotte Cotti and Charlie Olson now are on a first name basis with the governor. They've met the Chief Justice and they meet advocates in the area of interest for them. They're connected with leaders in real life and they do make a difference.
We have another program for middle schoolers in nine communities in New Hampshire. They begin with a soapbox project, where they research a topic that they care about and they deliver a soapbox speech and share that speech in a statewide forum. They get feedback from state leaders; last year, we had Valerie Sununu, Dan Feltus, and John Broadrick giving feedback to students. They're heard and then some of them are selected to go to the national soapbox event, which is pretty exciting. Had a young woman, a middle school student from Groveton, who was selected for the national showcase and she shared her soapbox speech on body image for young people and how important it was to be aware of that as well as what might be done to help in that realm.
We also have a court education program called Civic603. We have mock trial scenarios for grades five and six so that they can get a sense of absorbing the facts of a case then practice arguing on one side or the other. We have lawyers who act as judges in those situations and we have juries full of students. Grades seven through 12 experience an oral argument right at the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Those are powerful experiences and I don't think any of them will be forgotten by the students.
Melanie Plenda: Nick and Hannah, you weren't experts on government when you started the podcast, but it sounds like you've learned a lot. What are some of the things that have surprised you over the years as you've researched things for the show?
Nick Capodice: I think the thing that shocked me the most is one scholar that we interviewed, Woody Holten, who's tremendous at telling us about the Bill of Rights. I'm obsessed with the first amendment. Woody Holten said, we think of it as this great wonderful thing, and it has become that. However, at the time the framers weren't terribly concerned about speech. They weren't terribly concerned about their guns being taken away. They weren't terribly concerned about anything in those first 10 amendments. He referred to them as ‘a tub to the whale.’ It’s a whaling term; you throw a wooden wash tub out to the ocean and a Levithan turns away and doesn't strike your boat. It wasn't until the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s that we actually started to take the words in, those revered things and have them actually apply to our lives.
Hannah McCarthy: For me, understanding what the actual language is, how the courts have addressed it since, and understanding the power of the Supreme court in terms of interpreting the constitution, and solidifying and clarifying laws, has been fairly gobsmacking. Just to see that you've got this very small group of people who can decide what something means or perhaps choose not to clarify and leave it very broad, and that is going to affect your lived experience in the United States. For example, we talk a lot about Roe V Wade; it's top of mind for any American who's engaged with the news these days. When we're talking about Roe V Wade, we're actually talking about a completely different Supreme court case called Planned Parenthood V Casey, which totally changed the principles established in Roe V. Wade - not totally, but largely, and any discussion about what's gonna happen in Roe V. Wade is actually a discussion about what's gonna happen to Planned Parenthood V Casey. There are many layers to the American government, but I personally appreciate having this stronger grasp of the nuance of things.
Melanie Plenda: Civics101 and New Hampshire Civics are nonpartisan, and yet we live in a time of deep political divides that can be tough to navigate; even factual statements can be seen as taking sides. How do you deal with that?
Martha Madsen: We're nonpartisan as a board, as an organization, and we're very vigilant about that in our communications and our programming. If we have a speaker who has a particular leaning, we make every attempt to either put somebody else in the room with them with a different leaning or at a later date. We are always aware of balance. When we do get pushback and criticism, we seek to listen to that feedback and respond to it. If somebody has that reaction, then we need to be aware of it. We've navigated that fairly well, but it is touchy if you use the wrong word; somehow you're now biased.
Hannah McCarthy: I feel quite privileged to work on a show where we insist on adhering to a nonpartisan dive into civics topics. We do our best to find the facts and simply present them. We have a responsibility to find as many voices as possible to talk about something because you can be nonpartisan, but you can have a scholar who's been studying one element of American democracy and one element of government who has developed their own theories. We're constantly having to find that additional nuance and having to find the various perspectives because there's always bias. We cannot stop a human being from being biased. The best we can do is get as many versions of a story as possible, as many perspectives, various schools of thought, and various modes of research, in order to present the clearest, closest thing to the truth as we can possibly get. At the very least we can do our best to simply gather as much information as we can so that our listeners don't have to do that themselves. We can break it down for them. We have agonizing conversations sometimes about something that's been heavily politicized in the news that we do not personally consider politicized. We cover the issues very carefully and we still will get angry letters, but at the very least we know that we do have listeners across the political spectrum. People are tuning in, regardless of their political leanings. They want to understand how their government works.
Nick Capodice: One way we keep the podcast nonpartisan is the guests that we pick. For example, for our episode on the relationship between the president and the price of gasoline, I didn't call political analysts. Instead, I called a guy who'd worked as a chemical engineer for 30 years. This is a guy who was talking about oil well and flares and sweet crude versus sour crude; stuff that blew my mind. This guy is the most scientific oil market analyst that I've ever met, and he tries to make it nonpartisan too. Hannah alluded to us wrestling over notions about what we can say and what we can’t say. We did a whole series on the midterms, it was one of the first things we did together. We had a discussion about, ‘At the end of an episode,can we encourage Americans to go vote? Will that be seen as partisan?’ I can't believe we had that conversation, but we kept it in.What’s considered a partisan issue versus a nonpartisan issue is always changing. I wrestle with the notion that if you have one person on one side of an issue, you've gotta have someone else in the room on the other side.
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