We should expect a deluge of theories about what has gone wrong with American life and why the public is growing ever more distressed. The only reason we haven't heard many of these theories yet is the widespread expectation that economic recovery will cure whatever ails us, including the public’s current dark mood.

Regardless of the direction our economy takes, however, I believe we can no longer ignore how dysfunctional our institutions are becoming. These include our political, economic, health care, criminal justice and education systems. None are functioning as well as they can and should.

Exactly what has gone wrong? The answer points to our national psychology and culture rather than to our economics or politics. Our exuberant embrace of individualism has inadvertently brought to the surface several negative trends.

One is an anti-social willfulness (“I can do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.”) Aggressive drivers, cell phone addicts, stock traders and officious cops manifest this trend most vividly, but it affects almost everyone. Much of the time, it is merely disagreeable but otherwise harmless. But some clashes of wills lead to violence and stubborn refusals to seek the common ground that democracy requires.

A closely related trend has been documented by Public Agenda research. Public Agenda reports that “a marked deterioration of courtesy and respectfulness has become a daily assault on Americans’ sensibilities…Americans are particularly concerned about the discourteous and disrespectful conduct of children and they hold parents primarily responsible.”

People clustering together in like-minded groups and communities is another negative cultural trend. Increasingly, Americans are becoming isolated from people with different worldviews. Ever more specialization reinforces this isolation as each profession develops its own proprietary frameworks, increasing the difficulty of communicating across sectors.

The upside of greater individualism is that it enhances agency and freedom. The downside is that it reinforces self-centeredness, self-righteousness and arbitrary opinions.

These tendencies are unintended consequences of the great transformation in American values that has taken place in recent decades. As a result, irrationalities are cropping up in virtually all of our important institutions.

Collectively, they are badly damaging our society. Unless they are addressed, the public mood will grow even more unstable, angry and resentful, leading to destructive political consequences.

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

Back when I taught high school Spanish, September was a time ripe with anxiety. I was worried about maintaining strict discipline during the crucial first month, navigating curricula and textbooks for new classes, and setting up my classroom so I could keep a semblance of organization throughout the year (I've never quite figured that last part out).

I had it easy. These days, teachers have a lot more on their minds, especially with the trifecta of new teacher evaluation systems, new Common Core learning standards, and new assessments that often have high stakes attached to them.

These reforms are not without controversy, as is evident from opening any newspaper. Implementation of these reforms has been shaky at best, divisive and distracting at worst.

It is our belief at Public Agenda that education policy – as with any policy – is stronger, more sustainable, and better aligned with over-arching goals when those affected by policy are key partners in its design and implementation. For this reason, we joined forces a few years ago with the American Institutes for Research to develop Everyone at the Table (EATT), an initiative devoted to boosting teacher agency in education reform.

EATT pursues this mission by providing clear methods and strategies, practical materials and tailored trainings to help teachers engage their colleagues in productive, solutions-oriented dialogue about teacher evaluation and other education reform issues. We provide these resources and trainings directly to educators, schools, districts and education leaders. We also partner with other organizations and associations dedicated to improving teacher practice or boosting teacher voice in policy. (We also wrote a book about the project that explores the theory and methodology behind teacher and other stakeholder engagement in depth.)

For example, we have been working with Hope Street Group to provide their teacher fellows with skills and resources to help them facilitate focus-group-style conversations with their colleagues. These discussions typically concern controversial issues like teacher evaluation, professional development and Common Core. Most recently, my colleagues Isaac Rowlett, Katie Barth and I headed down to Hawaii (poor us, I know) for a training with Hope Street Group's newest cadre of teacher fellows.

Hope Street Group, like EATT, is dedicated to ensuring that teachers' voices are heard when shaping better education policy. It does so by working with states to bring teachers to the table on policy formation.

Hope Street Group teacher fellows recruit and organize a group of their colleagues from their region and work with these colleagues to explore and develop collaborative, crowd-sourced solutions. This process gives thousands of teachers a sought-after seat at the table and a voice in shaping education policy. Focus-group-style discussions are one of the ways, along with surveys and virtual engagement, that Hope Street Group fellows engage their colleagues.

Teachers have natural facilitation skills, thanks to the work they do every day in their classrooms. Still, it's tricky under any condition to facilitate a conversation about a thorny subject. Now imagine trying to act as a neutral facilitator during a discussion with your colleagues on a topic that hits close to home for everyone.

Hope Street Group's fellows were up to the challenge. We started with an interactive session, during which Isaac talked about what exactly focus groups are, the role these groups play in stakeholder engagement, the types of skills a focus group facilitator needs, and the challenges some of the fellows may encounter as they facilitate a focus group.

Following this session, the fellows broke into small groups and took turns practicing their facilitation skills. Their colleagues acted out to demonstrate some of the difficult behaviors facilitators may encounter. Some dominated the conversation. Some did their best to derail discussion. Some tried to sow conflict. Some didn't say a word. Some let the conversation lag. Some played on their phone the whole time (on purpose!) Though we laughed a fair bit, the fellows also took maximum advantage of this opportunity for hands-on facilitation experience before going out into the "real world."

For the most part, the fellows responded gamely and skillfully to role-playing. After each fellow took their turn, a period of feedback from our team and their colleagues helped develop confidence and fortify their facilitation expertise.

The training in Hawaii was our second with Hope Street Group; back in July, we had the good fortune of working with their Kentucky and national fellows. With all the Hope Street Group fellows we've worked with, we're continually blown away by the intelligence, professionalism, composure and dexterity these fellows display.

We are fortunate to lend a hand in the Hope Street Group fellows' development as teacher leaders through our work with EATT, and we look forward to their contributions to stronger and better education policies.

Want to learn more about the Everyone at the Table materials? Interested in talking to us about trainings we can provide for you? Email me at arizzolo@publicagenda.org.

You can also purchase the book Everyone at the Table to read about how to meaningfully engage teachers and others on controversial education policies, as well as how doing so can cultivate teacher leadership and elevate the teaching profession.

The public is in a bad funk. This is, of course, not the first time the public mood has turned negative in recent years. Whether one calls it “malaise,” “unwinding,” “off balance,” “wrong track” or some other term connoting a public mood of pessimism, such states of mind are bound to occur whenever our economies and politics are volatile, as they inevitably are from time to time. These moods do no lasting harm as long as they eventually dissipate and the nation returns to its traditional optimistic outlook.

I am worried about this particular funk because I see no signs of it lifting, and some troubling signs that it might even grow worse. Despite a slowly improving economy, a recent Wall Street Journal poll shows that Americans are very anxious about the state of the nation and gloomy about prospects for the future -- a state of mind that has deepened over the past few years.

The poll shows that more than seven out of ten Americans:

• Lack confidence that their children will have a better life than they have had (76%).
• Express deep concern with how our political system is failing us (79%).
• Blame our problems on the inability of our elected officials to take effective action (71%).
• Believe the country is on the wrong track (71%).

These levels of public distress are extraordinarily high. When pessimism exceeds a two-thirds majority it should be seen as a tipping point. Beyond this point, the country’s political mood becomes volatile and unstable.

Growing public frustration is inevitable, especially when the public is convinced that their social mobility is blocked. (The Journal poll reports that a majority believes that growing income inequality between the wealthy and everyone else “is undermining the idea that every American has the opportunity to move up to a better standard of living.”)

What worries me is the root cause of the public funk. People see dysfunction virtually everywhere but don’t understand what’s causing it, and that combination is leading to a deepening public pessimism.

Policymakers tend to assume that the economy will eventually return to strong growth and when it does, the public mood will pick up. My sense, however, is that this particular dark mood reflects a suspicion that something deeper than a slow-growth economy is wrong with America.

Americans clearly state they believe our political system is broken. Suspicion also exists that our health care system is out of control, our criminal justice system is twisted and distorted, our K-12 education system isn’t working as it should, our core business values are wrong-headed and even our higher education system has started to fail us.

These suspicions are not unfounded. It has to be evident to thoughtful Americans that some fundamental flaw is distorting all aspects of American life.

Worst of all, we don’t know what that flaw is and don’t have a clue about how to fix it.

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

This post is written for readers working in higher education reform and was originally published on the Completion by Design blog. Completion by Design is a national initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that works with community colleges to significantly increase completion and graduation rates. Read more about our work with Completion by Design.

“Competency-based education” (CBE) is one of the most ubiquitous buzz phrases in higher education today. But what it is and what it means for the student success and completion movement remains to be seen. Most simply, “competency-based” is used to describe any model or approach that substitutes the assessment of student learning for seat-time measures when determining a learner’s progress toward a degree or credential. There are a few facts and trends that, when taken together, help account for the incredible rise of interest in CBE in recent years:

• The basic “currency” of higher education, the credit hour, was invented to solve an administrative problem and was never intended to serve as a proxy for student learning. Yet here we are today with 60 credit hours and 120 credit hours generally defining the boundaries of an associates and bachelors degree respectively.
• The amount of student-loan debt has passed $1.2 trillion (with $1 trillion of that debt in the form of federal loans), but the amount of learning remains unclear.
• 34 million Americans (more that 20% of the working-age population) have some college credits but no degree.
• Colleges and universities supplement the credit hour with grades as a way to connect time and learning, yet a majority of employers are dissatisfied with the quality of recent graduates and research suggests that student learning outcomes are questionable.
• The tremendous difficulties students face as they try to transfer credits between institutions only demonstrates that colleges and universities themselves don’t believe that the credit hours can be used as a proxy for student learning. If institutions had confidence that earning credits equal learning, then seamless transfer would be the norm.

Competency-based models aren’t exactly new – some have been around for decades, with first-generation innovators like Excelsior College in existence for more than 40 years. And a new generation of innovators at public institutions, those like Kentucky Community College and Technical System and University of Wisconsin-Extension, have built and launched a new generation of models that they hope will scale to a wide range of learners not well served by traditional models.

But there are real and serious questions to be asked about the conditions under which competency-based models are appropriate and for what types of learners. There are also fundamental questions about what constitutes high-quality when it comes to CBE programs.

There is, I believe, a great deal to be learned from colleges that have engaged in wholesale reform of curriculum on behalf of clearer pathways for students. And so I wasn’t at all surprised when Michael Horn at Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) in North Carolina contacted me after hearing that Public Agenda is providing facilitation and project management support to the Competency-Based Education Network. Horn reached out because CPCC has found that its pathway redesign work has led naturally to a competency mindset.

A focus on creating accelerated pathways for students has occurred at warp speed in North Carolina. According to Horn, faculty-led reform -- backed by policy changes at the local and state level -- have resulted in dramatic changes in the curriculum and its delivery.

Over the past four years, CPCC has been involved in a host of interrelated efforts to create coherent pathways for students. These include reforming developmental education so that it is an on-ramp instead of an invidious sorting mechanism, engaging in ground-up curriculum redesign of high demand programs in IT and Advanced Manufacturing, and focusing on pathways for transfer between 2-year and 4-year institutions. Such efforts have led to the implementation of a new intrusive advising protocol that brings together faculty and counselors to co-create with students clear “maps” to degrees and careers.

Horn marvels at how easily “the modularization and digitization of these redesigned pathways have also led to profound changes in pedagogy. Math and technical program faculty have intuitively flipped classrooms and labs, freeing them to engage students in new and creative ways -- online and elbow to elbow.” The picture below summarizes how the various pieces fit together, and shows a coherent vision with intensive activity at multiple levels.

All of CPCC’s initiatives have had one thing in common: the passionate dedication of faculty leadership across the state, backed by leaders hell bent on changing the way students are served. When Horn tells the story of North Carolina’s journey, he focuses on what was most surprising, and this is where our story circles back to the significance of CBE. The speed with which faculty were able, once given the opportunity and support to deliberate together, to establish consensus on competencies and learning outcomes across courses and across educational systems has been eye-opening and heartening. The story he tells underscores the importance of broad-based co-ownership of reform efforts that go beyond thin notions of faculty “buy-in,” and points us toward what is perhaps most promising about competency-based approaches.

While many consider CBE a “new model” and an alternative to traditional modalities, and one that offers a potentially cheaper/faster route to credentials, its greatest promise may in fact reside it its ability to push traditional higher education to think more deeply and creatively than ever before about what rigorous and high-quality learning outcomes work ought to look like.

Today, there are several colleges already coupling competency-informed curriculum redesign with other tools and strategies designed to support their student success and completion goals. For these colleges and the faculty who have done the heavy lift of articulating learning outcomes in ways that help students progress based on what they know and are able to do, the connections between pathway redesign work and CBE are manifold and meaningful.

As the current generation of innovators in competency-based education learn and mature, the lessons learned in North Carolina about the need for broad-based co-ownership of the student-success efforts will become all the more important.

While it is unclear whether CBE will go the way of the MOOCs or grow to become a strong alternative to traditional models, there are undeniable and potentially powerful connections between the work of creating clear pathways for students and the work of ensuring that student progression toward degree is determined by knowledge demonstrated instead of time served. These are exciting times indeed, and those like CPCC who are engaged in the wholesale rethink of their work should be front and center.

Is it possible to transform public opinion from its current state of mistrust, frustration and lack of confidence in our institutions – a mood of being turned off and disengaged – to one of being turned on and fully engaged? If so, what would it take? How long would it take? What are the most promising strategies? And what is the likelihood of success or failure?

Based on extensive research, I am convinced that Americans yearn to have the public voice exert more influence than it does currently. A critical mass of Americans deeply desires to be invited to engage more actively in shaping the public policies that bear on their lives.

Despite this hopeful sign, however, it would be a mistake to assume that the transformation can be quick or easy. It will take a great deal of intelligent effort and leadership to transform the public mood from one that is disengaged to one that is fully engaged – from mistrust to trust, from sounding off and venting frustration to thoughtful deliberation and willingness to compromise.

I can only hazard a guess, but my best guess is that the transformation can’t be achieved in less than one or two decades. Public trust and confidence didn’t dissipate overnight, and it can’t be rebuilt overnight.

It takes time to find, elect and support leaders who trust the public enough to grant average Americans a voice in shaping fateful decisions.

It takes time for the leadership of our great institutions of business, media, law, medicine and education to adopt an outlook that assigns as much importance to the larger community they serve as their own parochial interests.

It takes time for the public to develop a better grasp of workable solutions to the wicked problems of our day.

But we can’t afford another 10 years of unwinding. If we were to drift downward until the mid-2020s, it might be impossible to reverse direction.

The most workable solution is, I believe, a two-prong strategy – one short term, the other long term. The short-term strategy would consist of a series of conventional political stopgap measures for the next decade to buy time and to ameliorate the plight of the bottom two thirds of the income distribution. The long-term strategy would involve the development of a new pragmatic public philosophy to assist thoughtful Americans in deliberating on our future.

I will explore this two-prong strategy in more depth in subsequent blogs.

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

Would eating less margarine reduce the divorce rate in Maine? Could we increase the number of graduate engineering degrees by upping mozzarella consumption? Some correlations are ridiculous, which is exactly the point of the very clever web site “Spurious Correlations."

In K-12 education, though, the link between parent involvement and student achievement makes intuitive sense, and it is backed by extensive research. According to Education Week, multiple studies have shown that "students with involved parents” get better grades and test scores and are more likely to go to college.

You don’t need to convince parents that what they do matters. Nearly 8 in 10 say that parents are more important than schools in determining whether children learn. Teachers are on board too. The vast majority say they’d rather work in a school with strong parent support and good student behavior than in one where they could earn more money.

But there’s less clarity beneath the surface. One key issue: there's a lot of haziness around what we mean by “parental involvement in education.” When surveys ask parents to describe parental involvement, they’re most likely to mention checking homework and going to meetings at school, at least at first. In longer interviews and focus groups with parents, many add in activities like volunteering at school or advocacy on behalf of local schools.

But in extended discussions, it doesn’t take long for parents to turn to concerns closer to home—being mothers and fathers who help their children develop the strong values and good behavior that will help them succeed in life and become honorable, effective adults. Many parents focus on the importance of teaching their children “respect.”

“My son knows he has to respect adults,” one father told us. “He knows the teachers—he could come home and give me an opinion if a teacher did this or that—but [if] the teacher tells you how to do your work…you have respect. Every teacher says he's so respectful. Maybe I'm lucky. I think it all comes from my wife and me at home.”

A mother made a similar point: “All I can do is teach my boys, ‘Listen, you know that you need to be respectful and you’re going to hear things’ . . . They need to just understand that there’s a certain level of respect that you should know.”

Some parents mention the need for “structure’ at home and why it’s crucial to “set limits” for children. Others talk about emphasizing perseverance and hard work. “For my kids?” a father said, “it’s my responsibility for everything . . . . [Too many] kids don’t know what hard work is. . . If it’s too easy at home, then that would be my fault because I made it too easy at home.”

Are parents ill-advised to think that emphasizing good attitudes and behavior is a key to helping their children succeed in school? Not according to teachers. Seven in 10 say that it is “absolutely essential” for parents to teach their children the importance of education and following school rules. Perhaps surprisingly, less than half of teachers say that checking on homework is equally important.

Of course, just as there are different ways to think about parent involvement, there are also different ways to define student success and achievement. Researchers often focus on test scores because they are concrete and easily-handled in a research study. Unfortunately, this narrow definition—which most teachers and parents would either question or expand—sometimes leads to bewildering results.

Here are “findings” from a study of parental involvement and student success summarized in The New York Times earlier this year:

“Regularly discussing school experiences with your child seems to positively affect the reading and math test scores of Hispanic children, to negatively affect test scores in reading for black children, and to negatively affect test scores in both reading and math for white children (but only during elementary school).”

Huh? To be fair, the researchers here were probably just trying to be specific and transparent about their results—not suggesting that black and white parents avoid talking to their children about what happened at school. Still, “results” like these demonstrate the limits of this kind of research.

Looking at data and thinking about correlations can put good ideas on the table and help us all question our top-of-the-head reactions and assumptions. That’s extraordinarily useful. But we also need to listen to what parents, teachers, students, and others in the community have to say before we leap to conclusions. Without the human factor, the numbers don’t really mean that much.

Dialogue research follows strict rules. Participants are encouraged to:

• listen rather than to argue;
• suspend judgment rather than debate;
• dig behind their surface opinions in order to explore their own tacit assumptions;
• engage other dialogue participants to help uncover likely consequences of the strong emotional positions that people take on controversial issues.

The general findings from a variety of these dialogues are quite revealing and consistent across dialogue subjects.

One-day dialogues do not lead to consensus. At the end of a day of difficult dialogue, widespread disagreements persist. Yet, people’s positions do evolve to some degree, and there is almost always some narrowing of differences. For example, on dialogues about illegal immigration, strong opponents of legalization usually soften their opposition as they wrestle with traditional American pride in being a nation of immigrants.

Far more dramatic is the attitude change toward dialogue participants who hold opposing points of view. Almost always, a shift occurs from hostility and contempt to friendliness and cordiality. After a dialogue on abortion, for example, it is not unusual to see pro-choice and pro-life opponents walking out of the room engaged in cordial conversation.

To me the most dramatic finding is what happens when individual participants gradually realize that the group is genuinely interested in their input and thinking. It is not an exaggeration to observe participant attitudes shift abruptly from expressing what I call “raw opinion” – mindless, thoughtless, superficial, irresponsible ventilation – to thoughtful, responsible forms of judgment.

The American public voice is remarkably responsive to being invited to engage. When ignored, neglected and left outside the tent, people lack the motivation to be thoughtful and responsive. In their frustration, they sound off, they ventilate, they shoot from the hip verbally, they don’t stop to think.

But when invited to shape their own and their community’s and nation’s future, the transformation is almost magical. (This is why I titled my book on dialogue, The Magic of Dialogue).

I am convinced that a large part of the foul mood of today’s public – its apparent polarization, mistrust, skepticism, selfishness and lack of pragmatic commonsense – is an artifact of being uninvited to citizenship. We have become bystanders in the great game of democracy.

And we don’t like it.

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

Our democracy is betraying ever-stronger symptoms of stress. Congress is too polarized to take action on urgent problems. The President reels from one crisis to another with sagging levels of public approval. The business community seems blind to everything except its own profitability. Doctors, lawyers, colleges and universities thrive in their own isolated silos, often pursuing their own agendas at the expense of the larger society.

How serious is the widespread sense of our society unraveling?

Does it foretell a trend likely to grow even worse? Or is it a transient mood that will dissipate as our economy improves? Is it deep and profound, or is it superficial and subject to change when circumstances change? What would make it change for the better?

In the quest for answers, I want to share with you some results of extensive research I’ve conducted with the public over the past few decades. The research findings shed light on a number of these questions. They lead me to adopt a cautious optimism. They create reasonable grounds for hope for our future.

In recent decades I have conducted a new in-depth form of research called dialogic research. It seeks to engage small samples of the public in dialogue with one another. It differs markedly from the more familiar forms of public research such as public opinion polls, individual interviews and focus groups.

Superficially, dialogic research most closely resembles focus groups. Typically, focus groups are two- to three-hour discussions with small groups of consumers or citizens to explore their attitudes about or test their reactions to a product or social issue.

Dialogic research sessions are usually twice as long as focus groups. Most frequently, they are full-day sessions. They have different purposes than focus groups and they observe different rules.

Unlike focus groups, the purpose of dialogic research sessions is not simply to reveal people’s attitudes and feelings or to test their reaction to a product or public policy. Dialogic groups are much more ambitious. These groups use dialogue to achieve a high level of mutual understanding among people who disagree with one another. They dig behind highly controversial issues such as abortion, illegal immigration, taxes, climate change and gun control.

For example, Public Agenda incorporates dialogic research into its Learning Curve methodology. In extended focus groups, participants first engage in open discussions about their views and experiences about the topic at hand. Next, they are presented in a nonpartisan fashion with key facts about the issue as they ask questions and work through what those facts mean for people’s lives. Participants then engage in facilitated deliberation, during which they consider a variety of approaches to resolving the issue at hand. Finally, in small surveys and one-on-one follow-up interviews, participants reflect on the deliberations and talk about their views.

This methodology assesses how participants' opinions evolve as they move along the Learning Curve. Recent participants in Learning Curve focus groups about health care costs were able to move beyond their ample frustration about the U.S. health care system in relatively little time. After engaging with some key facts, participants deliberated on a few different approaches to reducing the burden of health care costs. They were not only willing but eager to weigh even complicated, technical approaches, and they did so civilly.

One participant perhaps summed up the benefits of dialogic research, saying, "There were some differences but I think ultimately everybody was willing to compromise. Now, why the government can't come to that consensus, I have no idea."

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

Economic inequality and blocked social mobility are so closely linked they are often confused with one another. But they are two quite different problems.

Economic inequality refers to the widening gaps in income and wealth between the low-middle and high income strata of our society. Social mobility refers to the ease (or difficulty) of moving up the income escalator through one’s own efforts.

Advocates tend to offer one-sided strategies to address the two problems. Those focused on social mobility tend to emphasize redistribution strategies. But advocates of redistribution do not always realize that reducing income inequality may not improve social mobility. Conversely, strategies for easing social mobility may leave income inequality barely touched.

There are also large differences in public support for the two strategies. Strategies for improving social mobility enjoy much broader public support than redistribution strategies.

In our era of specialization, it is important to decide whether the strategy of choice for addressing both problems is economic or political. I agree with the many economists like Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz who strongly insists that they require political rather than economic remedies.

Stiglitz characterizes economic inequality and social immobility as complex political problems that politicians can’t solve through conventional legislation and regulation. He believes that the public at large has to get directly and fully engaged. The American public has to confront and wrestle with the problem, but, as he states, "they can do so only if they understand the depths and dimensions of the challenge." This is an eloquent phrase, but it is difficult to unpack its concrete, specific meaning.

I agree with Stiglitz that without strong public engagement and support, conventional political tactics will prove insufficient. But I’m not sure how we go about mobilizing the public to confront the issue in its full "depth and dimensions.”

At present, the American public is so divided and disengaged that Stiglitz’s advice seems a counsel of despair. We live in an era of all-pervasive public mistrust and disengagement (aside from relatively small numbers of activists at the ideological extremes). At present, our public discourse is not up to the demand for deep engagement and thoughtful deliberation. And it is not likely to be for years to come.

On the other hand, if one takes a moderately long-term point of view, there are reasonable grounds for optimism. If we can get beyond the current disengaged mood there are ways of encouraging strong public engagement, and there are powerful incentives for doing so.

Rebooting Democracy is a blog authored by Public Agenda co-founder Dan Yankelovich. While the views that Dan shares in his blog should not be interpreted as representing official Public Agenda positions, the purpose behind the blog and the spirit in which it is presented resonate powerfully with our values and the work that we do. To receive Rebooting Democracy in your inbox, subscribe here.

We were saddened to learn that a long-time friend of Public Agenda, Arthur White, died over the weekend after a long and deeply fruitful life. Arthur was a co-founder of Yankelovich Partners with Dan Yankelovich, Public Agenda’s co-founder.

A life-long advocate for equal opportunity, Arthur also founded Jobs for the Future and Reading Is Fundamental. He worked closely with us on a series of studies of young adults’ views on higher education and college completion. And he was a warm and wise presence at Public Agenda events, a valued adviser to the organization, and a wonderful “connector,” always ready to introduce people to one another when mutual benefit and public good could result.

We will miss his insights, his enthusiasm, and his dedication to making our country better.