provided by Research Papers in Economics
LIMITS OF PUBLIC POLICY EDUCATION
James C. Barron
Washington State University
This session had its origin last year in Omaha when Alan Hahn
presented an overview of eleven public policy education projects
funded by the Kellogg Foundation (Hahn, et al.). Hahn described
the objectives and the approaches to policy education and reported
that most had struggles dealing with the line between education and
advocacy. These struggles were quite overt and recognized in those
projects which had advocacy organizations as major coalition part-
ners. In the projects with extension as the predominant player there
was also tension, but it was less obvious and not well recognized.
While those extension-led projects were in agreement that neutrality
was the appropriate approach, there was disagreement in most proj-
ects about what constituted neutrality. The nonextension coalition
members and other observers suggested that extension was not as
unbiased as they claimed or thought themselves to be.
Hahn argued that the conflicts were not about education versus
advocacy, but what range of alternatives or viewpoints was being
presented and what was left out. It is clearly possible for a project to
selectively present a set of alternatives that would lead most people
to come to a particular position. Thus, Hahn says, the question is
more about balance versus bias.
Another issue in public policy education is the selection of the tar-
get audience. Only one of the Kellogg projects openly acknowledged
empowerment as a major objective. Three of the eleven placed any
emphasis on targeting audiences whose interests and perspectives
were poorly represented. In discussion following Hahn’s presenta-
tion, there was some disagreement among the conference partici-
pants about whether empowerment is an appropriate objective of
extension public policy education.
This is not a minor issue. If we select as the target audience one or
more groups with a major stake in the policy outcome who also have
a relatively narrow set of interests, it is likely that the range of alter-
natives and consequences deemed feasible by the audience will be
more limited than it would be if a broader set of interests were in-
cluded in the audience. Is this education or advocacy? Is it balanced
or biased?
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