Paul Loeb has spent thirty years researching and writing about citizen responsibility and empowerment - asking what makes some people choose lives of social commitment, while others abstain. The author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, Generation at the Crossroads: Apathy & Action on the American Campus, Nuclear Culture and Hope in Hard Times, his new book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While, will be published in 2004.

On Nov. 4, 2003, he appeared on a live, interactive CET broadcast to discuss civic engagement with students and the educational community. Some classrooms also included a reading of Our Town by Thornton Wilder and viewed the ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre Our Town production to expand their discussion of civic engagement and the place and time in which they live.

The broadcasts are a collaborative effort of CET, The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation and Northern Kentucky University's Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement. They are funded by KnowledgeWorks Foundation and NKU's Scripps Howard Center for Civic Engagement, with additional support from WGBH.

Paul Loeb discusses social commitment with high school students on Election Day 2003.
Paul Loeb discusses social commitment with college students on Election Day 2003.

Topic Correlation to Ohio Academic Content Standards
Social Studies
Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities
Show the relationship between participation and attainment of civic and public goals (grades 6-8), analyze the ways people achieve governmental change, including political action, social protest and revolution (grades 9-10), evaluate various means for citizens to take action on a particular issue (grades 11-12) and explain how the exercise of a citizen's rights and responsibilities help to strengthen a democracy (grades 11-12).

The Lincoln Community Center's Our Town Project
Teenage residents of the West End call to us to get involved in making our town a better place to live. A part of the Paul Loeb broadcast on November 4, this video is the result of a cooperative project between CET and Lincoln Community Center, where the participants are on their way to becoming future community activists. The kids examined the ExxonMobil Masterpiece Theatre program Our Town; viewed a documentary about a high school class in Compton, California, called O.T.: Our Town; and read excerpts from Paul Loeb's Soul of a Citizen and the play Our Town.