Deborah Rivas-Drake shares insights on how to talk to kids about elections with National Geographic

Professor and Associate Dean Deborah Rivas-Drake tells National Geographic that talking with kids about elections “helps them understand themselves as a community member and can help facilitate their sense of responsibility to other people in their community.”

Rivas-Drake is the Prinicpal Investigator on the William T. Grant-funded project Social-Emotional Learning, School Outcomes, and Civic Engagement Equity: Leveraging Family and Community Influences. She says that even though children are too young to vote, by talking to them about the democratic process, “You’re planting seeds that will bear fruit later in terms of their understanding of themselves as civic and political actors who have agency.”