Mark Kassen and Chris Evans make their pitch to Senator Lisa Murkowski.
ASP
You may have caught the press junket last fall when actor/producer Mark Kassen, techno-entrepreneur Joe Kiani, and Marvel Cinematic Universe star Chris Evans launched their civic engagement website, A Starting Point. The site came along at a time marked by increasing calls for civics education in schools, and it turns out the website’s second act helps meet that need.
“That was always part of the plan,” said Kassen in a phone interview. But first they wanted to make sure the site was on solid footing and up to speed before they made that next move. They had been talking to the group Close Up, a DC-based civics education group that became their partner in launching ASP Homeroom.
It is, quite simply, a civics tool that teachers can actually use.
Focusing on “bridges instead of boundaries,” the site provides quick, clear introductions to topics and issues. Click on one of the topic “starting points,” and you’re taken to a list of questions related to that topic. Click on one of the questions and you can select from a list of Democratic and Republican politicians providing their answer in about sixty seconds. So under “Healthcare” you can find the question “Why is the Affordable Care Act effective or ineffective?” and in turn choose from many speakers, including Senator Bob Casey or Representative Bruce Westerman, to answer the question in a brief video.
The site also includes “Daily Points,” in which elected officials put up a video that comments on a current issue in under two minutes, or “Counterpoints,” in which two politicians are matched up to cover both sides of an issue—though still in separate videos.
The legwork involved is impressive. Back in 2019, Kassen and Evans made week-long trips to DC to try to convince members of Congress to sit down for videos and be featured on the as-yet-nonexistent website (initially, Kassen said, they only had three or four slots booked out of nearly thirty). Starting Point also created the technology themselves, including an app that elected officials could use to self-record spots. Kassen said that has not turned out to be so useful, yet the site includes at least one selfie-style video recorded overlooking a DC parking lot just last week. And the total list of contributors—politicians willing to offer their two cents—is now huge.
There are several things that the site gets right.
One is that it is pure resource. It’s not a program, nor does it tell teachers what they’re supposed to do with it. It’s typical for resources to come with teacher guides, lesson plans, and other materials, which both reduce the flexibility of the materials and reflect the agenda of the people writing the materials (it also, far too often, reflects the writers’ lack of teaching expertise or knowledge about how a classroom works). As a retired teacher, I can imagine a hundred different ways to use this resource, both to enrich other materials and as units that can stand on their own.
This resource is remarkable for its lack of agenda beyond providing information. It’s also remarkably drama-free. Since none of the elected officials share screens with each other, there’s no opportunity for the kind of showy fireworks that make cable news so entertaining and uninformative (that, says Kassen, was part of the deliberate intent of the site).
It’s true that this allows politicians to appear unfiltered and un-fact checked. But it also means that students can learn not just about the policy issues, but about what the people who write policy believe. Most videos come with links to additional resources. It’s a perfect opportunity for students to learn the fine art of fact checking politicians, and to further educate themselves about the issues.
For Starting Point’s goal of civic engagement, the partners can point to tens of thousands of people newly registered to vote, and hundreds of thousands who have used the site’s tools to reach out to elected officials.
It is hard to imagine a simpler, cleaner, clearer, more compact tool for exposing students to the many sides of different policy issues in the country. It’s like having elected officials stop by for current events day. It’s also a master class in how people with celebrity clout, entertainment biz connections, and techno-entrepreneur savvy can use their powers for good. Recommend it to every civics teacher you know.
