ABOUT COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS: Community Connections is a lesson collection designed for adult learners and community colleges, with the goal of inspiring student civic action. This might be respectful debate or conversation about a local issue, planning a community event, or a creative project that helps connect local, national and global issues.
To use this lesson: First, watch the video and answer the questions below as a warm up. Next, choose one or more of the activities under "Take Action" that best fits your classroom. Or, use the segment above to inspire your own original classroom activities — the spirit of these lessons is to connect current events to actions that make your community a better place for everyone!
SUMMARY
Political scientist Robert Putnam has spent decades studying divisions over race, religion, culture, wealth and how we might find our way back to a more unified nation. In this segment of Judy Woodruff's America at a Crossroads, Putnam discusses his idea that increasing personal isolation has led to our current political instability, and how community organizations can help solve the issue.
View the transcript of the story.
WARM-UP QUESTIONS
- Who is Robert Putnam, and what is his background?
- What is the main idea about politics in America in Putnam's book, "Bowling Alone"?
- How does isolation and loneliness lead to political extremism, according to Putnam?
- Why does Putnam think our current politics is like the "Gilded Age" of the late 1800s?
- When did isolation from community begin to change in the U.S., according to Putnam's book, "The Upswing"?
FOCUS QUESTIONS
In this segment, author Robert Putnam offers one theory, or central idea, about the reason politics in the U.S. has become so divided in the U.S. in recent years — that people have become lonely and isolated, and that leads to distrust.
- What is your theory? Why do you think politics today in the U.S. is notable for its "growing isolation, distrust, inequality and political discord" as Judy Woodruff describes it?
- What do you think can be done to counter this isolation and distrust?
Media literacy: Do you know what non-political organizations in your own community exist to bring people together to solve problems? How could you find out more about them?
TAKE ACTION
What power does your classroom or your institution have to combat isolation and loneliness in your community?
Use this activity to plan a community event that is open to the public and that is designed to inspire dialogue across differences and mutual respect. What would be the focus of the event?
You can also use this activity to set up a class debate about what you think are the best ways to reduce polarization in the U.S. Or use this activity to debate what you think are the biggest media-focused causes of polarization in the U.S.
For students interested in more of Robert Putnam's theory, you can watch a full hour-long lecture he delivered at the Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics below.
This project was funded under the 2024 Leonore Annenberg Civic Mission of the Nation Initiative, sponsored by the Leonore Annenberg Institute for Civics. LAIC is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
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