Democracy is an unrealized but not an unrealizable ideal. When dealing with the young, it may be important to impart a pride in the country and its history before exploring its failings. Cognition and affect both matter in the inculcation of an ethic of civic engagement. Interest can be catalyzed by both positive and negative feelings. In other words, to encourage the interest of adolescents, encourage them to feel something.
Positive feeling are equalizers, negative feelings intensify differences.
Depending on one's prior level of self-efficacy, negative feeling can either mobilize or demobilize. Although there is evidence that material things have an increasingly high value in US culture, scholars have found, consistent with the truism, that money does not produce happiness. Motivation can be seen as intrinsic or extrinsic. Some things are done for their own sake. Doing them makes life fuller.