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, October 30, 2015

FACTORS AFFECTING A PERSON’S LIKELIHOOD TO CHANGE

The last few postings have been about change, as in the case of organizational change.  The aim is to share some ideas associated with making profound change in a school’s curricular efforts.  Specifically, the aim is to have schools abandon, as a guiding construct, the natural rights perspective and adopt federation theory.  The last set of postings looked at types of change strategies:  rational-empirical, power-coercive, and normative-re-educative strategies.  Let me share with you how Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne summarize the difference between empirical-rational strategies, the most commonly used type, and the normative-re-educative type that is most closely conducive to federation theory:
[W]hat we have called rational-empirical approaches depend on knowledge as a major ingredient of power.  In this view, men [and women] of knowledge are legitimate sources of power and the desirable flow of influence or power is from men [and women] who know to men [or women] who don’t know through processes of education and dissemination of valid information.

Normative-re-educative strategies of changing do not deny the importance of knowledge as a source of power, especially in the form of knowledge-based technology.  … In addition, exponents of normative-re-educative approaches recognize the importance of noncognitive determinants of behavior as resistances or supports to changing – values, attitudes, and feelings at the personal level and norms and relationships at the social level.  Influence must extend to these noncognitive determinants of behavior if voluntary commitments and reliance upon social intelligence are to be maintained and extended in our changing society.  Influence of noncognitive determinants of behavior must be exercised in mutual processes of persuasion within collaborative relationships.  These strategies are oriented against coercive and nonreciprocal influence, both on moral and on pragmatic grounds.[1]
Excuse the length of this citation, but I feel the authors capture quite well what the differences of the two approaches are and I find this distinction revealing in that I associate rational-empirical strategies as being in congruence with natural rights thinking and normative-re-educative strategies in congruence with federalist theory thinking.  And with these three approaches – also including power-coercive – described and somewhat explained above and in the preceding postings, I want to next shift our attention to the individual being called upon to change.  What are the challenges from the perspective of that person (the planned-for); what are the dynamics occurring within that individual as he/she is asked or expected to change?

In keeping with the general tenor of this blog, I will address this other perspective as a case of a political change, one in which the person is being subjected to a political confrontation; that is, a situation in which the person is either asked or expected to make certain changes within his/her organizational role(s).  In essence, what is generally being asked when one is considering organizational change – in our case, change within a school – is aiming a chosen strategy that will have individuals change their course of action from what it is now to a different course of action in the future.  At times, these can and are likely to be changing an established course of action – the way things have been done in a particular school over a significant amount of time.  One wants to implement a change with the least amount of cost and, if done under the auspices of a federalist mode, one in which the planned-for will submit to the change out of his or her own accord; then what is sought is not only a change of mind, but also a change of heart.  Let me add, the particulars of what is changed is not a priori determined, but is developed in collaboration between the planned-for and the change agent.  That is, the approach, under such a goal, will be of the normative-re-educative category.  In short, in order to accomplish this, the process used will have to “get into his/her/their head(s)” and that includes not only what a person believes to be true, but also what a person believes should be true.  Whatever is chosen as the specific strategy, therefore, will have to account for an array of factors.  In this posting, I want to give a broad overview of what these factors are.  This will be limited to a run-down of the list of factors I believe are influential in such a change.

I will present these factors in a logical order.  One should not read into this order any claim that the decisions people make in adopting any change of mind and heart follows this order.  It is merely presented this way to assist in your understanding of what I am trying to communicate and, more important, in my attempt to get a handle on what goes on with a person who is so subjected.

The first set of factors is what I call contextual inheritance.  This is made up of two elements:  social-cultural inheritance and genetic inheritance.  Simply, social-cultural inheritance has to do with the cultural tradition in which the individual has been socialized with its array of norms, customs, cultural narratives (including ethnic, racial, religious, and national traditions), values, and other cultural legacies that relate to the challenges of change the individual is confronting.  On the other hand, genetic inheritance includes all those biologically determined forces impinging or otherwise influencing the individual’s decision-making processes.  For example and very important, genetically determined level of energy a person brings to life and its challenges will animate or depress the entire motivational outlook a person brings to a particular demand for change.  We vary, among ourselves, in how energetic we are about work, relationships, likes and dislikes.  This whole genetic inheritance is popularly referred to as how a person is “wired.”  Both the social-cultural and the genetic elements set parameters on how one is disposed to act.

The second set of factors is something I have already described and explained in this blog: the mental domains that influence the individual in his/her decision-making.  The domains are the ideal (how reality should be), the real (how reality is), and physiological (drives and other bodily influences – which are obviously, highly dependent on how we are “wired”).  Of course, what is actually real will deviate from how the mind “knows” the real, even in cases when the perception is stronger than a belief and is held as knowledge.  Our ability to “know” the truth is less than perfect; that means, we, ultimately, construct what we consider to be true.  The other condition affecting our mental images of the ideal, real, and physiological is that many, if not most, of these images are either subconscious or non-conscious.

The third set of factors is the emotional dispositional filter.  This mental orientation is not a product of reality, but of feelings.  Such emotions as anger, love, loyalty, trust, humor, comradery, and the like will be significantly influential in the decisions we make, including those that are political in nature.  In a political situation, it is not necessary to identify the exact emotions that are triggered in a given confrontation, but what is important is that whatever emotions are brought to the fore will lead to one of several dispositions.  These include a solo disposition, an allying disposition, and/or an antagonistic disposition.  So, for example, if the emotion felt is anger over some political confrontation, this emotion might lead to an antagonistic disposition.  The overall disposition a person feels in reacting to a confrontation, itself, can be based on one, two, or all three of these more specific dispositional reactions.  So, one might be disposed toward antagonism, but to be expressed by the individual without any assistance from others; i.e., a solo disposition.  In another situation, it can be antagonism in coordination with others.  In a third situation, it can be just plain antagonism without any thought or motivation to seek being alone or being in alliance with others.  Under such a situation, if an opportunity arises to act antagonistically, the person might take it, whether it is done with others or not or whether it is acted upon openly or not.  In general, therefore, the particular disposition for a particular situation can be one, two, or all three of these more specific disposition types.

The fourth set of factors is the intended mode of action chosen by the individual.  This is the simplest of the factors; there are only two possibilities.  A person, when confronted with a situation, can either demand something politically or support someone or something politically.  Those are the only two modes of political behavior.  But whether the mode is demand or support, each has four optional types:  individual acts in pursuing immediate self-interest, individual acts in pursuing long term self-interest, collective acts pursuing immediate self-interest, or collective acts pursuing long term self-interest.  While there are shades among these options – an option can be intermediate self-interest – the general thinking, planning, and intent is to either be immediate – what is good for me now – or have long term self-interest – what is good for me, let’s say, a year from now.

And the fifth and last set of factors affecting the decision of an individual – which will affect the consequences of whatever action is taken – is the interactive tenor one adopts.  Here, the choices come directly from transactional analysis and they are a “parent” interactive tenor, an “adult” interactive tenor, or a “child” interactive tenor.[2]  The “parent” tenor is demanding and authoritative.  The “adult” is reasonable and calculating.  The “child” is feel-good seeking and immediate.  Each of these is more complex, but these short descriptions, I believe, give you a good sense of what each tenor generates in the form of behavior.

I will stop here for now.  I still want to describe further, in upcoming postings, what this model indicates: the attributes of the dynamics when these factors are in “action” as in when an actual decision-making process is transpiring.  Also, one would benefit from understanding the anticipating consequences of each of these factors “doing their thing” in actual confrontations.  When all that is reviewed, I will then revisit a topic I have written about before:  the distinction between theory-in-use and espoused theory and how levels of “internal consistency” and congruence affect how likely the individual (the planned-for) will productively engage in change.




[1] Chin, R. and Benne, K. D.  (1985).  General strategies for effecting changes in human systems.  In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin (Eds.), The Planning of Change (pp. 22-45).  New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, Winston.  Quotation on p. 39.

[2] Here the classic source is Harris, T. A.  (1973).  I’m ok, you’re ok.  New York, NY:  Avon Books.  In this text I am changing the terminology from that of Dr. Harris.

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