By Philip Sean Curran
State Assembly members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey faced a crowd of future voters in the children’s room of the Freehold Library July 22, when one of their younger constituents floated an idea for a new law.
Free ice cream every Friday, the little girl said, making a suggestion that raised questions and even some objections. “Even ice cream can be complicated,” said Downey at one point during an event meant to educate children about their government.
Now in its second year, Kids Congress provides a lesson in basic civics, something Downey and Houghtaling said they feel is lacking among children and even adults. The two state lawmakers, crediting a staff member of theirs for coming up with the idea, plan to go around their legislative district this summer to three different locations for a program geared toward children ages 6 to 10. Freehold Borough was the first stop of Kids Congress, with Neptune Township and Eatontown to follow.
Inside a library constructed in the early 1900s with financial support from businessman Andrew Carnegie, 13 children and their parents attended the event. At tables, the young ones did some coloring of the state seal and the state bird, the yellow goldfinch, or tried their hand at throwing rings at the top of a cutout of the Capitol.
Kevin Scott of Howell brought his 7-year-old son, Owen. “We need people to be more active in politics,” said Scott, who lost his bid for state Assembly two years ago.
The son might not follow his father into running for political office, as Owen made clear he has no interest in being a candidate when he gets older.
Michele Montecalvo was with her twin sons, Sal and Enzo. Like Scott, she, too, ran for public office, for a seat on the school board in Marlboro last year, and lost. But she said she felt it was important that “kids are engaged at a young age.” Engagement was a focus of the Kids Congress. Downey, addressing the children, gave a breakdown of the different branches of federal and state government and stressed the importance of checks and balances.
“Because you want to make sure that not one branch of government has too much power,” she said to them. “We want everybody to have a little bit of say in what goes on, so that’s why we have three branches to check each other.”
Later they went around the room asking the children what laws they’d want to see enacted. Their answers ran the gamut from outlawing hunting for sport to making children eligible to work.
“We want to earn money,” one youngster called out.
In an interview earlier in the morning, the lawmakers lamented the lack of knowledge that people have about how government works or even what their jobs as state lawmakers entail. Downey, a native of Freehold Township, recalled that as a seventh-grader at Eisenhower Middle School, her teacher taught about the government, something she finds is missing nowadays.
“We’re losing that kind of education, where people really don’t know how a bill becomes a law anymore,” Downey said.
She and Houghtaling were elected to the Assembly in 2015 to represent the 11th legislative district, made up of 18 towns in Monmouth County. As one of 80 members of the lower house of the Legislature, Houghtaling finds that his job is a mystery to some.
“Not everybody knows what an Assembly member is,” Houghtaling said. “Some people think we’re factory workers. They know what a senator is. They know what the governor is.”
Two years ago, they introduced a bill that would reintroduce civics back into the classroom. But they faced pushback from teachers, who said there was not enough time in the school day to add another course on top of what they already have to teach.
Instead, they plan to introduce a different bill this year to make November “Civics Month.”
“And since it’s an election month, we’re figuring that, at this point, maybe then schools will concentrate,” Downey said. “And that’s our goal with them, to work on really focusing in on civics during that time period. And so maybe at that point it’ll be a more active class in every school.”
In New Jersey, a state known for its rough-and-tumble politics, children can and do make their voices heard.
A few years ago, the two lawmakers proposed making the horseshoe crab the state arthropod, based on the urging of fourth-graders from a school in Rumson.
“I looked at my staff member at the time and I said, ‘Well, this is a great way to introduce them to how an idea becomes a law,’” Downey said. “So we actually drafted the bill, submitted it and we’ve been waiting for it to go through. So we’re trying to push it.”
