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, June 24, 2016

HE SAID, SHE SAID

In this blog I have argued for a federated approach to the running of schools.  I mostly have done so because in promoting federation theory as the guiding construct in choosing civics content, I feel that such a civics curriculum would be highly assisted by its being taught in a school that exemplified the concepts and principles that make up that construct.  What does that mean in terms of how the school is run?  Well, it means several things.  That is not to say that the construct’s ideas dictate a modus operandi, but it does demand that the school be run respecting certain qualities.  To understand this, let me go over some basic attributes I have shared in the past – attributes that characterize federal collectives.

A federal collective is one in which the participants in the collective have gotten together and agreed to the commitment that the collective will be united under federal principles.  That agreement, preferably in writing, states that the undersigned pledge to: a set of purposes for forming the collective, a set of principles by which the collective will be governed, the structure of the collective (including positions of authority and subordination), any added elements or relations the collective recognizes, identify any provisions for acts that diverge from the agreement (such as sanctions or other punishments), and a recognition of the solemnity of the promise to keep the provisions of the agreement.  Of course, the last part is the signatures of those agreeing to this pledge.  This type of founding agreement is called a compact.  In order for the typical public school to take such a commitment seriously or to even attempt setting one up is a demanding enterprise and one that falls outside the expected mode of operations that characterizes how the vast majority of schools is administered.  Most schools are simply entities within established school districts and they, in turn, are not federated unions, but substantially sized bureaucracies.  We citizens have allowed these bureaucracies to develop.  Why?  Mostly for the sake of efficiency.  As the famous jurist, Louis Brandeis, pointed out, a cost for republican government is the inefficiencies they entail.  In order for a public school to be federated is to grant it an anti-bureaucratic status; that is, enough leeway so that more of its policy decisions can be made at the school site.  For example, a federated school would almost out of necessity be allowed to select its assistant principals and in that context give the principal primary say as to who should be hired.  As it is, these decisions are made at the district level.  Such authority at the school level would seriously disrupt existing power relations within the vast majority of school districts.  What is being considered, therefore, would be transformational in nature.

So that is the context for what follows.  In such a federated school, certain conditions would have to be put in place; the school would have to establish and support a certain sense among the staff, especially among the teaching faculty.  They would need to generate and maintain a partnership among themselves in which, while their own individual integrity is recognized, they would expect and demand that each participant set his/her goals within the collective in such a way as to not offend the common good of the whole enterprise or within any sub- organized arrangements within the school – such as in a department (e. g., the social studies department).  Part of what is defined as the common good is to pursue actively the purposes of that collective and that might be contrary to the wishes of one or more individual teachers at any given time.  And to pull that off, the participant has to be knowledgeable, to a higher degree, about what such working arrangements demand.  This type of thinking and feeling is foreign to many, if not most, teachers who see their authority in the classroom as their domain.  And yet what he/she does in that classroom has ripple effects in the functioning of that school.  He or she has to understand that to maintain a sovereign view short-circuits any attempt at a federated approach.  The thing is that for a federated scheme to work, the staff, teachers particularly, have to want it to work, and agreeing with such an aim needs to be close to unanimous.

Where in everyday life do we come close to such a commitment?  Why, in the institution of marriage.  As I see it, the more specific the aims of a federated arrangement are – that is usually among smaller collectives – the more demanding it is to have such a commitment.  On the other end of this continuum, for example, would be the federated sense of being a citizen of the US; there, the aims are more broad and dispersed.  But in a marriage, demands are fairly specific in terms of expectations.  So it is at a worksite.  You have your roles and such factors as time, financial resources, norms, and the like, are usually spelled out.  In most work spaces, therefore, federated arrangements are not established and workers do not count on such voluntary levels of compliance and commitment.  Instead, most workplace models are based on contractual arrangements:  I do so and so and you pay me so much.  Federated arrangements have an entirely different sense and feel.  It is more of a “we” sense which is sustained among the workforce by collective goals and agreement on all of the aspects that make up the collective.  Some have described this sense as being organic in which individual cells are in congruence with all other cells.

And, as with a marriage, the interpersonal relations have to go beyond a contractual definition.  The way coworkers interact and communicate takes on a heightened importance.  And this leads me to a body of research that I think is pertinent to this whole business of federated relationships.  The research has been conducted by John Gottman.[1]  Gottman had married couples simply talk between themselves at his research locations and their back and forth sessions have been analyzed using a number code in which a researcher would write down a string of numbers, each one recorded every second and indicating what type of comment was being made.  This research was started in the 1980s and in a relatively short amount of time, these notations have allowed the researcher to predict with a high degree of accuracy whether any particular couple was going to remain married in the ensuing years.  Further research using less time of analyzed comments has shortened the amount of observation time needed in order to solicit high rates of predictability.  What that indicates is that the way couples, in this type of federated arrangement, communicate is very important in determining whether or not a particular arrangement will be successful or not.  Why?  One can only speculate, but it seems that the way we communicate reflects how we feel toward the other person and this in turn will, of course, lead to how we act and how we are motivated to act.

The research was also able to determine what types of communication are detrimental; that is, what types of messages prove to be fatal to the marriage.  As one would guess, negative messaging is involved, but some is more detrimental than others.  The research identified four types of negative messaging:  defensiveness, criticism, stonewalling, and contempt.  In the account I read, a distinction was made between criticism and contempt.  Criticism occurs, for example, when one would say the partner is selfish, or that he/she never listens to what I say.  But contempt raises the bar to a whole other level.  Contempt occurs when one spouse belittles the other in the form of an insult as in he/she is scum or a bastard.  Often, what is generally considered foul language seems to accompany such utterances.  And that, the use of contempt, is what seems to be the indicator that the marriage will not last.

But in a workplace, outside of a marriage situation, contempt verges on raw insult without the veneer of informality, at least usually.  There are stronger norms against the use of contempt.  If there is contempt among workers, one would expect that the language is more nuanced or hidden.  But I believe the Gottman research is still useful.  In any attempt to establish a federated arrangement, participants would do well to become aware of this research.  Any negative messaging, and some will always be called upon in work situations from time to time, needs to avoid any of the forms identified above, but above all, there is no place for contempt.  Negative messaging should always be related to specific behaviors or the lack of desired behaviors and with sufficient contextual content so as to communicate that the worker is not the target; the behavior or lack of it is.  If there is a question about attitude, values, motivation or other motivating factors, these should be communicated sensitively, in private between supervisor and subordinate.  Again, training for this is important because it’s not whether such communication will be needed, but when and how it will be needed and exercised.  Perhaps, if the resources are available, any large school should hire an expert in such matters to train and supervise how such communication is being conducted within the school among its staff members.

Of course, the question would be asked:  is all this worthwhile?  Why not just go for the contractual model?  I would argue that any collective would benefit from such concerns such as those relating to how fellow workers communicate, but I would also submit that this blog has given enough reasons to date to justify the effort; that is, to become more federated than they are at present.  Of course, such efforts are motivated by understanding and pursuing long-term interests and we seem to find such motivation hard to find.



[1] As reported in Gladwell, M.  (2005).  Blink:  The power of thinking without thinking.  New York, NY:  Bay Back Books.

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