A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Friday, April 24, 2015

ORDER

As I indicated in my last posting, I want to dedicate a few postings to the structure of good arguments.  Why?  When one considers the study of government and civic affairs, much of it is involved with making and judging arguments.  Most of that is about what constitutes good policy; should the government do this or that?  So something a civics teacher should try to instill in students is the wherewithal to determine whether a particular argument is sound and reasonable.  As Philip Selznick[1] points out, this does not mean that arguments should follow the tenets of rationalism in which all but reason is used to construct and accept an argument.  There is room for emotions in good arguments but, as the following will indicate, one needs to be disciplined in the use of reason and emotions as well as relying on religious or other philosophic beliefs.  I have often mentioned that some argument or position is a radicalization of some theory or ideology; that is, that the particular belief or claim of knowledge is held to be true and should trump all other considerations.  The problem with such arguments is that they assume perfect knowledge, something we humans have proven to be quite deficient.  “Ain’t nobody perfect.”

In the last posting, I related the “five pillars of reason” according to Selznick.  These I labeled the disciplines of good argumentation and they are order, principle, experience, prudence, and dialogue.  I briefly defined each in that posting.  With this posting, I want to begin expanding on the meaning and significance of each, starting with order.

Good arguments do rely on reason – the quality in which one attempts to consider evidence in a dispassionate way.  What that basically means is that one has to put a considered restraint on emotions, the rhetoric of others – and of oneself – and any preconceived biases or inclinations.  This denotes a slowing down or allowing enough time to reflect, to put things – ideas or objects – in logical order.  Selznick quite rightly points out that this discipline needs to be extended not only to the consideration of means toward some ends embedded in some argument, but to the ends themselves.

One of the problems of ideologies is that they tend to proffer their vision or belief of the right/correct life and yet, under such a posture, ideologies fall short of reflecting life or other aspects of realities in what one would deem totally true.  There is always some mistake as to what is claimed to be reality.  This is not only the case of some belief based on religion or some philosophy (such as Marxism), but also on belief based on science.  We simply don’t know it all.  So the discipline of order must account for this: a structural imbedding of doubt and of thinking and having to decide in terms of probabilities, not certainties.  And even when the knowledge proves to be sound, it offers a view of what is that is less than totally consistent and dependable or totally free of obstacles.  Selznick writes:
People are “reasonable” and show “good sense” when they accommodate their goals to what the world is like.  They seek change within a framework of limited alternatives and necessary trade-offs.  This ambient order, properly understood, is not an alien system of domination.  It is the world to which we belong, on which we depend, of which we are integral parts.[2]

Order leads us to think in terms of frameworks, not technical manifestos or social architecture.  It also avoids discrete values or goals, such as profits or payloads, as be-all aims of any effort.  One sees this type of offense when considering the modern corporate structure in which the goal of maximizing profits for shareholders becomes the trumping goal for just about any business decision a corporation makes – such as providing sub-living wages to workers.  This reflects the type of thinking in which rationality is divorced from reason.

In federalist theory, I have argued that the trump value of that normative theory is societal wellbeing.  Is this not a case in which rationality outstrips reason?  I believe not.  First, societal wellbeing is not a discrete value; it is a general value subject to interpretation.  The argument allows for diverse options and part of this theory in guiding civics curricular choices is not to indoctrinate students, but to facilitate those inquiries that might lead to benefits of our common welfare.  The student so led, though, must be encouraged to practice and gain proficiency in the exercise of order in such endeavors.



[1] Selznick, P.  (1992).  The moral commonwealth:  Social theory and the promise of community.  Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press.

[2] Ibid., p. 58.

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