The making of good citizens.

Kids too young to vote are learning about community problems and how to solve them. At the same time, they're learning how the legislature works. So far, 11 states have picked up the program, but sponsors want more involved.

The kids at inner-city Crockett Middle School in Phoenix are street-smart. Most of them are Hispanic. They see, feel and live the rough side of life every day. They are survivors.

So it should come as no surprise that Crockett's eighth graders targeted a Gentlemen's Club, which some years ago would have been called a strip joint, as a class project and community problem under an innovative program: We the People... Project Citizen.

Co-sponsored by the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Center for Civic Education, Project Citizen teaches middle schoolers how to identify and deal with a public policy problem in their community. They gather information, conduct interviews with key players, develop an action plan and encourage elected officials - from school board members to state legislators - to adopt their proposed solutions. With a striptease bar just over 300 feet from their school (within the legal limits, they soon discovered), the Crockett students' problem was drunk drivers so near a school. Their solution: bartenders should be trained to recognize when patrons were drunk and not allow them to get in their cars and drive.

The students met with and interviewed police detectives, school board members, teachers, representatives of a neighborhood association and community professionals in their Project Citizen exercise. More than once employees of the striptease bar hung up on their telephone calls, and calls to government officials often were not returned. But they persevered and put together a portfolio of the problem and their ideas for a solution. They practiced a presentation they would make before a panel of judges at the state Legislature.

One of the judges, Michael Fischer, director of Project Citizen for the Center for Civic Education in Calabasas, Calif., says the program started five years ago with a large-scale pilot operation in California called the American Youth Citizenship Competition. Middle schools were targeted for the program because most high school civics courses concentrate on the federal government. NCSL's Karl Kurtz, another judge in the Arizona competition, says that experience made it clear to him that eighth graders have the "knowledge, energy and enthusiasm necessary to develop innovative public policy solutions to problems in their communities."

Last year, schools in 11 states were involved in Project Citizen. In addition to Arizona, programs ran in Alabama, California, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. Winning portfolios from statewide competitions across the country will be on display at NCSL's 1997 annual meeting in Philadelphia in August, and a panel of legislators and legislative staff will select a national winner for Project Citizen.

NCSL and the Center for Civic Education are pushing more legislatures to get involved with the project. "We hope to have 36 states this year," says Fischer. "The level of participation varies. Legislative involvement is extremely helpful, although Indiana has a good program with no legislative support yet. In Alabama, the Legislature actually funded Project Citizen with a $5,000 grant."

LEARNING ABOUT THE LEGISLATURE

Surveys from all over the country show that voters have low opinions of the work of state legislatures and that they know. little about what their lawmakers do. There's also a growing sense that America's long traditions of volunteerism and civic involvement in local communities are deteriorating. Bowling Alone is the title of Harvard University professor Robert Putnam's book analyzing declining civic and group participation in American life. It captures the concern that we are no longer the nation of joiners once described by Alexis de Tocqueville.

NCSL's Kurtz says the organization believes that the "best long-term solution to these problems is education - not just book learning but hands-on, experiential education - about state and local government and how to get involved in solving community problems. Project Citizen is an ideal tool."

Lynda Rando, director of the Arizona Center for Law-Related Education of the Arizona' Bar Foundation, a co-sponsor in Arizona, says the mission of her organization is to increase public understanding of the legal and political systems. "I think this program is wonderful, teaching kids about the Legislature and the role they can play. Everyone becomes more knowledgeable. Not just the kids. It robs off on the parents. The lay public has a misunderstanding of policymaking at the Legislature."

Rando's group, which is an arm of the State Bar of Arizona, supports the program by providing 10 free sets of Project Citizen material to each participating school. The material guides the students and their teacher through the process of studying a problem, gathering information, examining solutions and developing public policy.

In Arizona, five of the 20 classes participating last year made an oral presentation before a panel of judges. The judges included 11 legislators, educators, an attorney, Fischer and Kurtz.

Clearly, some students were awed, meeting legislators for the first time, having lunch with them and making their presentations in the restored House chamber where the state's founding fathers crafted statutes early this century. Others seemed comfortable and in complete control as they argued their case, documenting and defending their position.

"It gets more people involved, knowing what the legislative process is all about," says Representative Herschella Horton, an enthusiastic supporter of Project Citizen. "One of the most important aspects is that we are reaching people at an early age," she says. "They realize they can have an impact, they can be involved in their community."

IMPORTANT ISSUES

Lawmakers, teachers and others who have worked with students in Project Citizen are intrigued by the issues that concern youngsters. For example, students at Kyrene Centennial Middle School, which won last fall's statewide competition in Arizona, chose as their subject: "The Quality of Human Growth and Development in AIDS Education." Their teacher, Janet Thor, says: "We used to call it sex education." Other subjects that were considered by various schools included gang prevention, graffiti, school overcrowding, censorship and dress codes.

Sara Chesterfield, whose students at Crockett took on the exotic night club in their neighborhood, says Project Citizen gave them a second chance to try to resolve a thorny issue. "While the place was being built two years ago, the students picketed. Teachers and neighborhood organizations went to the state Liquor Board to stop it, but they weren't successful. It was just far enough from the school to be beyond the 300-foot limit."

Many of the students who were in sixth grade when they picketed the bar were eighth graders when they took up the cause again. This time, their objective was not to close the bar. "They wanted to make it a policy that all people who serve liquor should be able to recognize when a person is intoxicated, perhaps through their body language, and to stop serving them," Chesterfield says. "Sure, it's the law, but it's not being enforced. The kids are concerned that a driver who is impaired will be leaving the bar about the time they are getting out of school. If a customer is drunk, they want the bar to provide that person with a safe ride home.

"These kids are survivors, and they want to continue to be survivors."

The kids were undaunted by the lack of cooperation from the people who run the bar. One of the students, Catherine Canales, says: "I kind of knew they were going to do that. When you call someone and tell them you're against them, they're going to hang up on you. I wanted to talk to them. Our goal is to have bars everywhere in the state train their employees. There are drunk drivers everywhere."

Canales values Project Citizen because "it shows that all teenagers aren't bad. We learned that if we stick together, we can make a difference." Another Crockett student, Hector Leon, says he's not disappointed because they were stonewalled by the bar. "The state has to help us," says Leon. "The bar won't listen to us. We need a statewide law. That would make a lot of people safer."

Their counselor, Chesterfield, says she would like to start the next project with sixth graders. Then they could follow through for a couple of years if they don't achieve all their goals, much like legislators do with a bill that fails to pass the first time it is introduced. During the process, Chesterfield's students were confronted with the bottom line question of who would pay for their proposed instructional program for bartenders.

"I think we learned that the economic issue is the most crucial issue," Chesterfield says.

Senator Randall Gnant says Project Citizen helps young students learn something about current issues and how they could be solved. "What I like most about the program is that the students pick their own problem, come down to the Capitol and make a presentation," Gnant says. "They make three presentations before three different panels. By the time they make their third presentation, they're all polished." The senator hopes students realize that a new law is not always the solution to a problem. "More community involvement may be the answer," he says.

The winning subject chosen by Janet Thor's students at Kyrene Centennial Middle School could very well become an issue for the Legislature, but not right away. First, the students plan to ask the local school board to call a community forum to evaluate the quality of sex education courses. Later, they will take their proposals to the Department of Education, and eventually to the House and Senate.

Students Katie Taylor and Mitchell Radigan told how their group finally settled on sex education after brainstorming sessions that touched on a number of subjects. They narrowed the topics to teen pregnancy and book censorship. When they couldn't find any sex education books dealing with AIDS in the school library, they decided that students needed to know more about the deadly disease.

"We found out that most students were not as informed as they should be and as teachers thought they should be," Taylor says. "The judges at Project Citizen liked what we had done and said we were brave for picking the subject."

Although Thor's students will be graduating this spring, the project continues. They plan to present their suggestions on sex education to local high school district officials. Thor says the students learned that they can talk to adults and get decent feedback. "They also learned how government works, and that you need to start at the grass roots level," she says. "I wish more schools were involved. I would do it again - in a heartbeat. I learned that students are a constant source of inspiration and knowledge."

Representative Horton acknowledges that some of the topics selected by the students probably aren't fodder for the Legislature. For example, youngsters in a Tucson elementary school are interested in gang prevention.

"They see gangs in the upper grades, but they have no gangs in their school and they want to keep it that way," says Horton. "I was very encouraged. They need to use community resources, perhaps have a probation officer assigned to the school."

While gang prevention in elementary schools may not seem like a legislative issue, Horton is quick to add: "All politics are local, everything affects the local community. We have to look at educational funding so every child has an equal opportunity to education. That translates into a very local issue."

Funding for Project Citizen is an issue, Horton says, just as the Crockett students learned when they proposed an instructional program for bartenders. "That's real life," she says.

WHAT CAN LEGISLATORS DO?

Legislators can get involved in Project Citizen by:

* Ensuring that the legislature endorses Project Citizen either through a formal resolution or a written commitment by legislative leaders

* Appropriating or raising funds to support Project Citizen

* Assisting in the selection of schools and teachers to participate in Project Citizen

* Assisting classes in conducting the necessary research to accomplish their task

* Serving as judges for statewide competitions

* Presenting certificates of achievement to students, teachers and schools.

Project Citizen can be conducted on a small budget. Its costs will vary from state to state, depending on the level of activity. The Center for Civic Education will provide free curriculum materials for up to 10 classrooms in each state. The primary costs that might be incurred relate to competition among different schools if transportation to a central location is required. The Arizona Bar Foundation's program costs for last fall's statewide competition were approximately $9,000 for 10 classrooms.

The Center for Civic Education has established state coordinators for Project Citizen in the education community in approximately half the states. To find out who the coordinator is for your state, contact Karl Kurtz at NCSL [phone] or [e-mail].

Don Harris is a free-lance writer in Phoenix.