How to overthrow the status quo.

• Position: Civic Responsibility - Teaching kids to be civic minded

The disenfranchised Occupy Wail Street protesters and the citizens of Main Street have united in untold numbers. Across the nation, people have taken to the streets to overthrow the greed and politics they say have hijacked the American dream. No longer can you work hard and get ahead, they claim--the system is rigged to promote the rich, powerful, and greedy.

Time magazine names "The Protester" its 2011 Person of the Year. However, the young people who turned out in droves to vote in 2008 now are abandoning the political process. Seeing hope in neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, they are disengaging out of disillusionment.

Former TV news anchor and reporter Mary Jane McKittrick, author of Boomer and Halley--Election Day: A Town Votes for Civic Responsibility, declares it is time to remind people that civic duty is not solely the responsibility of elected officials. "It's easy to blame Wail Street, the White House, Congress, the pundits, and everyone in between, but we fail to see the role we've all played in the fiasco. We voted for these people. We abdicated our responsibilities to them. We let them have the power. Now we, the people, are powerless. No wonder our kids think the system is broken and they don't need to participate."

This problem is why she wrote Boomer and Halley, part of a series designed to help parents teach four- to eight-year-olds civic values, including lifelong civic involvement. A successful democracy depends on civic-minded citizens, but people do not get that way overnight, McKittrick points out. It is a value instilled in children from a very young age. That is not happening.

"We're the 99% complacent; people have stopped being involved. America has stopped voting," admonishes McKittrick, citing a Project Vote analysis of the November...