As I indicated in my last posting, I want to present a
content analysis of the government textbook, Magruder’s American Government.[1] The book will be from here on referred to as Magruder’s – that’s what we in the
business call it. Again, my purpose is
to see how much the book encourages a student in one direction or the other
between thinking in a collectivist fashion or an individualist fashion. This will not be anything like an extensive review;
one, I believe, is not needed. For my
purposes, by asking a few questions about a few topics of content, we can get a
good sense of where the book’s emphasis is along this dimension. The questions guiding this analysis are: what is the assumed
motivation of a student in his or her reading of the book’s content? Is it to further the student’s role within
collectives or is it to advance his/her knowledge of what is useful to advance
personal political/governmental ambitions?[2] Does the book cover the needs of
organizations or other arrangements or does it focus on what the individual
needs to know to advance private concerns?
The content choices are developing community (better known as community
development), placing a demand on government, influencing local governmental
policy, and describing or explaining a governmental agency – such as Social
Security. I have chosen these topics
because they relate directly to social capital.
In turn, social capital refers to a societal quality which is
characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian
political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.
Let me start by sharing the book’s table of contents. Remember, we are interested, as I pointed out
in my last posting, in how much the author of the book, William A. McClenaghan,
dissects the subject matter. Here are
the chapter titles and number of pages in each chapter:
Chapter 1 – Principles of Government, 26 pages
Chapter 2 – Origins of Government, 38 pages
Chapter 3 – The Constitution, 26 pages
Chapter 4 – Federalism, 28 pages
Chapter 5 – Political Parties, 30 pages
Chapter 6 – Voters and Voter Behavior, 32 pages
Chapter 7 – The Electoral Process, 30 pages
Chapter 8 – Mass Media and Public Opinion, 28 pages
Chapter 9 – Interest Groups, 26 pages
Chapter 10 – Congress, 28 pages
Chapter 11 – Powers of Congress, 34 pages
Chapter 12 – Congress in Action, 34 pages
Chapter 13 – The Presidency, 36 pages
Chapter 14 – The Presidency in Action, 26 pages
Chapter 15 – Government at Work: The Bureaucracy, 30 pages
Chapter 16 – Financing Government, 26 pages
Chapter 17 – Foreign Policy and National Defense, 38 pages
Chapter 18 – The Federal Court System, 26 pages
Chapter 19 – Civil Liberties:
First Amendment Freedoms, 32 pages
Chapter 20 – Civil Liberties:
Protecting Individual Rights, 34 pages
Chapter 21 – Civil Liberties:
Justice Under Law, 34 pages
Chapter 22 – Comparative Political Systems, 32 pages
Chapter 23 – Comparative Economic Systems, 30 pages
Chapter 24 – (Florida edition) Governing Florida and the
States, 34 pages
Chapter 25 – (Florida edition) Florida’s Local Government and
Finance, 31 pages
There are 180 days in the school year. Many weeks of the school year are not made up
of five days. For example, Thanksgiving
week is only three days. Many schools
operate under the assumption that every course taught can follow the same
format in that tests are assigned a specific day of the week so as not to
overload a student with too many tests on the same day. So your test day in biology would be on a
Monday, social studies on a Friday, language arts on a Wednesday, and so on. The natural approach is to divide your course
by units that last a week and attempt to cover a chapter per unit. That means a chapter needs to be covered –
given the practical constraints of the calendar – in a week’s time. Now put yourself in the shoes of the average
high school student – a person who cares next to nothing about the topics
covered in Magruder. And then there is the fact that government is
one of six courses you are taking. Government
in Florida is offered usually in the senior year and some of your other courses
might include pre-calculus, physics, and world literature. So figure in applying to colleges and the
general exhaustion of being at this type of schooling for twelve or more
years. And for the teacher, this is the
challenge if you choose to accept it:
teach American government in such a way as to promote social capital
using the above content.
My first reaction to the above list of chapters is that the above
content puts almost all of its emphasis on the structure and working of the
central government and how it is influenced – only two chapters, at the end of
the text, are dedicated to local government and most of that attention is at
the state level. Social capital is
promoted by participation in governmental affairs. For most of us, effective participation is
limited to involvement with local government – usually city or county
government, not national government.
Why? Most of us do not have the
resources to affect national policy, but we do have the resources to influence
local politics and policy formation. So
if the goal is to promote participation which in turn encourages social
capital, shouldn’t the emphasis in our government education be directed to the
local level? That’s what makes sense to
me. The above distribution of attention,
on the other hand, I judge to be geared not to participation, but
observation. If successful, the above
content seems to me to be geared to informing the average citizen so that he or
she will be knowledgeable enough to view the national news, understand it, and
perhaps vote for national policy makers from a knowledge base that can
translate personal preferences to those voting decisions.
What I will outline in the next few postings are exceptions
to this general observation of Magruder’s. Let me emphasize that the exceptions are just
that; they make up few entries in the textbook and are easily lost and ignored,
given the overall challenge of “teaching” an almost 800 page textbook in fewer
than 36 weeks. In the next posting, I
will specifically address the topic of community development.
[1]
McClenaghan, W. A. (2013). Magruder’s
American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition). Boston, MA:
Prentice Hall/Pearson.
[2]
By political/governmental ambition I do not necessarily mean a pursuit of a
career in politics or government. I am
referring to any desire one might have in which government action is necessary
to fulfill. This can extend from filling
in a pothole to receiving a Social Security payment. Of course, it also includes getting a
government job.
