A CONTEXT FOR CURRICULAR APPROACHES

This blog is going to, with this posting, take a bit of a turn.  I am going to place more emphasis on the notion of change.  I have already addressed this general concern quite a bit.  My aim is to share what I know about instituting change at a school site or any organizational setting.  My reason for this shift is that I hope my promotion of federalist theory might motivate some out there to seek a change in their local schools toward this approach in civics education.  Another reason is that what I know about change overlaps, a great deal, with federalist thought.  So by writing about change theory, I am addressing two issues at once.  I have delved into change theory and have posted a significant amount of material.  I even offered a model of what a change agent might encounter in terms of the individuals he or she encounters in a change effort.  This posting will begin to address the target of a relevant change project; that is, this posting will look at curriculum, per se.  After all, my overall aim is to have federalist theory be the construct that guides curriculum developers and curriculum workers – from teachers to national curriculum professionals – in selecting the content for government and civics courses of study at the secondary level.

In my general comments concerning curriculum, let me identify my main source of general curricular information.  There are a number of books that provide introductions to the topic of curriculum and curricular theory.  I will be primarily using Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues by Allan C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.  This introduction is in its seventh edition.  As for my treatment of curriculum, I will not be about making you a curriculum expert.  My more modest endeavor is to share with you those aspects of curriculum that help a parent or some other interested citizen in instituting a change in the curricular offerings at a local school.  I might also include the average teacher as a potential audience for this “instruction.”  Teacher preparation programs do not expend a lot of effort in teaching their students about curricular theory.  The idea is that the average teacher is charged with implementing the existing curriculum, not with questioning or meddling in what the curriculum is, either in its entirety or in part.  As I have pointed out in this blog, for the average teacher, the curriculum consists of taking the provided textbook and “teaching it” from cover to cover.  That teacher does not question or even think to question why the particular textbook was chosen or if the subject matter could be taught in a different way or for different aims and goals.

In this blog, I have already addressed other aspects of curriculum.  I have, for example, distinguished curriculum from instructional plans.  The former is more the strategic aspect of planning and instructional plans the more logistical application of the curriculum.  I have critiqued what I view characterizes most curricular efforts in our nation’s schools, particularly curricula that are in place concerning civics education.  I find it appalling how little effort is made to make sure curricular decisions by the state or the school district are made to ensure that regular teachers are either understanding of, loyal to, or abiding by those decisions.  Most teachers are out there with little direction about what options are available or are engaged in little discussion as to curricular issues.  Please, don’t interpret this as my belief that we have a teacher corps that can be described as a bunch of mavericks.  As I just pointed out, most teachers simply follow the textbook that is chosen by a school’s administration from a limited number of approved titles.  Teachers might have a say in which text will actually be chosen, but the options available pretty much mirror each other in content and organizational structure.

I also addressed the different curricular philosophies – I called them educational philosophies – that exist.  They are perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionalism.  This description is a good lead into what I want to next address, curricular approaches.  Most treatments of this material begin with the curricular approaches that are out there and later describe the different prominent philosophies.  I feel it is best to reverse that order.  Philosophies get at motivation and, for me, that is always helpful to know before getting into the more specific aspects of what people are doing.  Therefore, initially getting a grasp of curricular philosophies provides useful foundational information.  If it is helpful, let me point out the postings that looked at the different philosophical traditions.  The titles and dates of these postings are A Socratic Interlude (2/19/16), No Nonsense Education (2/23/16), Live and Learn (2/26/16), The Ideological Leftists (3/1/16), and The Heroic Self (3/4/16).  If you did not catch these postings, they are available; just click the archives feature of this blog.  Those postings are arranged so as to describe the range of philosophies from the most conservative to the most liberal.  With that view of motivational orientations, one can look more confidently at the different approaches that curriculum developers utilize. 

I will point out that the field of curriculum, as Ornstein and Hunkins describe it, is a quarrelsome field.  This level of disagreement ranges from definitional issues to developmental issues to issues of implementation.  That’s right; the professionals in this field can’t even agree on what it is they are doing or what their responsibilities are.  But be calm; this debate is in academia.  For the rest of us, the field is about what is taught in our schools in terms of subject matter and its structural elements.

I noticed on TV that there is a commercial college, one that specializes in the field of management and employs an experiential instruction strategy.  This choice reflects a curricular issue and, in turn, a curricular or educational philosophy.  So if you are not satisfied with merely putting a degree on the wall, but want to bust the walls down, that’s the place for you – so I’m told.

So, my next efforts will be to convey the different approaches to curriculum.  Ornstein and Hunkins inform me that there are two basic types of approaches, the technical/scientific and the nontechnical/nonscientific types.  Under the technical/scientific there is the behavioral approach, the managerial approach, and the systems approach.  The academic approach and the reconceptionalist approach comprise the nontechnical/nonscientific type. 

If most schools are immune to the issues all these options represent and if most teachers just follow a textbook, why take the time to deal with these issues?  Because, one, being introduced to this material will provide context for what is going on in the school with which you are concerned; two, being knowledgeable of the material can be a source of ideas for what is possible or desirable in terms of curricular choices; and three, being aware of the material provides you with a language by which to discuss and, if need be, argue the related issues that curricular change entails. 

CLASHING IMAGES

We’re in it again, the presidential election season.  You might say we’ve been in it for a while.  Yes, people have been running around the country and saying vote for me for over a year.  Trump announced his candidacy a year ago last June 16^th.  I maintain that Clinton has been running for four years.  Evidence?  Did you happen to see the video that was produced when she left the State Department which featured a long list of foreign leaders who provided testimony as to her effectiveness as secretary?  I felt then that she was running for the highest office in the land.  But now we have entered the time when the average citizen will take note of what is happening as it pertains to the upcoming election.  The conventions are, for many, the first conscious attention they expend on the question:  whom will I vote for come November?  This election, more than most, brings to the fore a theme I have been writing about since this blog began in 2010: the upgrade of the natural rights construct as our prominent view of our government and politics.  For those new to this blog, let me briefly summarize that view.

The natural rights perspective is a view that places its highest priority on the rights of the individual.  This priority is based on a moral claim that each individual has the right to determine his/her own sense of what is good and evil, what his/her goals in life should be, and that the government is a service agency that exists to meet his/her needs in a competitive arena with other citizens.  The only proviso is that the acts in which one citizen engages do not directly hurt other citizens.  For them, this defines liberty.  In everyday language, it says “I have a right to do what I want to do.”

This view of government and politics replaced in the late 1940s a more communal sense, a federalist sense which places much more emphasis on the communal nature of government and politics.  And here, in this election, we have each of these perspectives being emphasized.  As a matter of fact, this distinction between the two sides is a bit heightened.  It is a distinction in messaging that I, for one, underestimated.  Apparently, as one of the TV pundits, Michael Steele, pointed out, given the economic hardships that many Americans are experiencing, their focus is on their own individual challenges and, in turn, they are looking for a president who is promising to address those needs and wants.  Of course, that refers to Mr. Trump’s message.  On the other hand, we have a candidacy that is promulgating a “stronger together” theme.  The latter message is a more federalist one; it is more communal.  Steele’s point is that the Clinton campaign is at a disadvantage with this message.

I agree.  I generally agree because of this nation’s proclivity to harbor the natural rights construct.  When confronted with federalist ideas and ideals, they react, mostly at a subconscious level, with a sense that what they are hearing is a naïve, soft, unrealistic, and weak position, a position unviable in an atmosphere when voters are confronted by such daunting demands.  This is particularly true in states that were at the core of our manufacturing industry that have lost so many jobs over the last number of decades.  Instead, there is a candidate who in message and in style communicates an image of strength.  That, in a nutshell, is Trump’s advantage especially as it pertains to the swing states, such as Ohio, in the Midwest.

Does that mean Trump is going to win?  No.  There are a lot of factors that go into a campaign.  This is something civics teachers should convey to their students.  One problem we have is that when we are rooting for a particular candidate, we hear what we want to hear, and when the candidate does not win – if that is the case – a sense of cynicism is likely to take hold.  With cynicism, legitimacy issues arise.  In terms of this election, one factor affecting the outcome is most citizens’ sense of what is appropriate behavior and demeanor for an eventual president.  In this, Trump has a disadvantage.  That is but one factor and there are many others.  But I will be interested in how an individualist presentation will do in competition with a more communal presentation.  I will not be surprised if the Clinton side diminishes its communal messaging and hits on another theme.  I remember her husband, in his run for the presidency, early on used the term, “new federalism.”  This was quickly dropped in his campaign.  In any event, Betty Davis’s “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” is an apt sentiment for the upcoming campaign for president.  I hope that whoever wins does so in a way that allows him or her to legitimately govern when the smoke clears.