While high schoolers across the country learn about filibusters and checks and balances from textbooks, for 200 years a small group of lucky teenagers has learned about our government through hands-on experience. For one semester to a full year, seventy 16-18 year olds have served with honor as pages in the House of Representatives. But, as of August 31, teens will no longer have this opportunity due to budget cuts in Washington, D.C.

The U.S House of Representatives Page Program gave high schoolers the opportunity to play a small, but nevertheless crucial role in communication within the legislative halls as congressional pages — interns who deliver messages, answer phones, and call up representatives to the floor. In fact, the congressional page program groomed many important politicians, diplomats and entrepreneurs, from Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft to KJ Estudillo, class of 2011.

The elimination of the annual five-million-dollar congressional page program was to help alleviate our nation’s fourteen-trillion-dollar debt, according to House Speaker

John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. In a joint press statement released on August 8, Boehner and Pelosi stated that cutting the program “is necessary due to the prohibitive cost of the program and advances in technology that have rendered most page-provided services no longer essential to the smooth functioning of the House.”

Although budget constraints are a legitimate concern in these financially strained times, the termination of the congressional page program deprives politically-intrigued teenagers of an invaluable opportunity to experience the workings of government firsthand. Worse, the diminishing of political knowledge among young people is a current concern, and the dissolution of the page program is just another reason why people not old enough to vote will be detached from Washington. A 2010 study conducted by the National Assessment of Education Progress showed that no more than 25 percent of American fourth, eighth, and twelfth graders have proficient knowledge of civics; shockingly, a mere five percent of high school seniors can describe the system of checks and balances regarding a president's power. The nation benefits from engaged citizens who are crucial to a smooth-running democracy, yet only one in 20 teenagers reads a newspaper, according to Reuters, a global news agency.

Congress should recognize the page program as an opportunity to regenerate our youth’s interest in politics. Even if pages aren’t directly involved in the decision-making processes of politics, the experience of working in the House of Representatives is exciting. Duties have varied with the times; in the 1820s, pages’ responsibilities included monitoring the fireplaces and bringing mint juleps to the politicians. Who wouldn’t want to play bartender in the nation’s Capitol building?

Despite the wide range of tasks that pages perform, including raising the flag atop the Capitol building, and waking up representatives for an early morning vote, according to Boehner and Pelosi, the “traditional mission of the Page Program has diminished.” Now, in Congress, instead of a page delivering messages from one representative to the next, this job can be performed by a computer or a smart phone. Indeed, technology has come a long way since pages were first employed in Congress, and perhaps it is more efficient to send messages electronically than to hand deliver them, but youth can still gain valuable knowledge by having a role connected to our nation’s movers and shakers.

Instead of dissolving the program permanently, the program should simply be reformed to make the pages more useful. Besides, most people

agree that a teen is more tech-savvy than the average adult; the page program should harness this expertise so that politicians can learn a thing or two about how to best maximize technology. Also, the presence of young people in Congress serves as a subtle reminder to politicians of the importance of America’s youth, after all, our representatives represent everyone, not only those old enough to vote.

The presence of young people can also have a positive effect on the atmosphere, “…if you have to treat the page decently, then members feel more inclined to be civil to each other” Former House historian Raymond Smock said in an August 8 Washington Post article.

Since the time that our nation was founded, each year only seventy lucky high schoolers were chosen to be congressional pages, hence, the termination of the program may seem irrelevant to most teens. However, the decision has greater symbolic repercussions. It is discouraging for youth to feel shut out of the political process in this country, one founded upon the principles of democracy. While the U.S House of Representatives Page Program has been eliminated due to budget constraints, for centuries, in actuality, the experience of being a page was priceless.

A version of this article first appeared in the Sept. 9, 2011 print edition of The Lowell.

Illustrations by Vivian Tong.