Dear readers,

“Children and youth, millions of them the world over, restless with tremendous energies…requiring only a dynamic purpose to make that force the most constructive factor in social progress,” wrote Stanford professor Paul Hanna for the Progressive Education Association in 1936. According to Hanna, “the supreme educational challenge” was joining “the energy of youth to the task of progressively improving conditions of community life.” What was true at the height of the Great Depression is even more urgent now.

Today Americans are not only divided about politics. They are increasingly distrustful of institutions, including public schools, and of each other. Last October, before the election, Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law School and researcher Jon Cohen of Survey Monkey found in surveying more than 3,000 registered voters that 80 percent say the country is more divided than ever. Young adults are the most distrustful. There is little public discussion about joining energies of youth to the work of improving community life.