1996 National Public Policy Education Conference
Forces That Shape
Our National Values:
Implications for Policy Education
David Mathews
chairman and CEO
Kettering Foundation;
former U.S. Secretary
of Health, Education and Welfare;
former president,
University of Alabama
Kettering is a research organization begun by inventors, bold in
imagination. They made machines that flew, cars that cranked by
themselves. They believed there wasn’t anything they couldn’t do,
using technology.
But attacking problems such as world hunger led them to shift
their focus from the technical to the political and, within the political,
to the mysterious “public.”
Kettering still is looking for Orville and Wilbur Wright—for the
inventive who see the world a little differently and take us the next step
forward.
Shaping
National Values:
A Non-Profit
Perspective
What some Extension educators are doing these days suggests that
invention also happens in politics, particularly when educators take a
different approach to policy.
Kettering’s studies are finding that when people have to make
policy choices themselves, they are more likely to read the news and
Ieam the facts. They also learn something you can’t teach in conven-
tional ways—what makes issues so difficult to resolve...the tradeoffs...
the costs and consequences...the lunches that aren’t free.
When they get together and engage each other directly in making
choices, people actually create knowledge. They learn how citizens
address issues—how different the public “take” is from the partisan,
the technical and the ideological. They find out what is essential to
public action, which are the things people are and are not willing to do
to resolve an issue. They develop the skills needed for making choices
together, so they can act together.
These skills will be essential as Americans face problems that just
won’t go away: crime, drugs.... With the devolution of federal
programs, communities will have to work together as never before.
Kettering publishes National Issues Forums (NIF) books designed
to develop the skills of making choices together. From their use, we are
learning about the effects of “choice work.”
For example, about 50 percent of the time, people in forums
change their minds. More often, they change their opinion about other
people’s opinions. They don’t agree, but they understood why others
hold a different stance. And that insight affects the way people relate to
and work with one another.