This blog
has renewed its efforts to report on the state of civics education. Early in the history of the blog, this writer
presented such a report. He feels an
update is in order. The conclusion here
is still the same; that is, schools have not been sufficiently successful in
their efforts to teach the youth of this nation how to become democratic/republican
citizens.
The overall quality of the nation’s citizenry is better than what
one should expect, given the lack of successes experienced in the
classroom. But one is always somewhat
uncertain; how many poor citizens can a nation sustain and still function
sufficiently well, especially in a democracy?
With that in mind, one should be able to expect much from its school
system and its civics education curriculum.
To
contextualize this criticism of civics education, the finding that schools are
deficient in terms of civics education is easily lost in the deluge of reports
that points out the lack of success in all areas of education. While different reports vary somewhat, the US
ranks about seventeenth in its schools’ success rate when compared to other
national systems.[1] That systemic reality, in and of itself,
makes any efforts in civics daunting.
To
this point, this blog has reported on the success rate of schools in imparting
governmental/political knowledge, encouraging its students to engage in the
political process, and on some of the skills one needs to count on to engage
successfully, such as consistent thinking.
What will be looked at next are those aspects that reflect dysfunctional
attitudes in relation to social capital.[2] This blog has set social capital as an
overall goal for civics education and that, by necessity, prescribes that certain
attitudes be promulgated. What are those
attitudes?
In
addressing this question, certain facts are deemed relevant. The following citation from the Washington Post, from a few years ago,
contains a familiar message.
More
than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim, nearly
double the percentage saying so early last year. Independents, too, are now
more apt to see the president as a Muslim:
Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage
points.[3]
To
a civics teacher, this report is comparable to a science teacher hearing that
20% of the population believes that an outbreak of a dangerous flu is caused by
evil spirits or that disease is the product of supernatural elements instead of
the spreading of certain microbes in our environment. It reflects more than a lack of knowledge or
a disinclination to get involved. It
reflects an attitude that can only be described as the antithesis to social
capital.
To
keep this regrettable belief about President Obama in context, one can “Google”
the number of people who think President George W. Bush, of an opposite
ideological persuasion, had an active role in either instigating the 9/11
attacks or was consciously unwilling to stop them to further his plans to initiate
a war with Iraq. It also makes the 18%
figure in the above citation a conservative number.
One
can safely speculate that many who think President Obama is a Muslim will
probably not think President Bush is a mass murderer. Since there is a lack of overlap between
these two segments of the population, one can only wonder how much over the 20%
figure the actual percentage is that represents people who harbor such
counterfactual “knowledge.” This is easy
to chalk up to the “crazies out there.”
But 20% or more of 320 million people is a lot of people.
When
people believe unsubstantiated conclusions that undermine the legitimacy of a
president, one needs to question whether the nation’s schools are educating
them sufficiently well, especially when it comes to knowledge concerning their
government and politicians. Further,
one needs to question the attitudes and values that encourage or enable such
conclusions.
And here is where this review takes a turn. Attitudes and values are central to the next
metrics of good citizenship under consideration; i.e., civil behavior. On a practical level, parents and teachers
should and mostly are concerned with the extent to which we live in a civil
society. After all, should not civics
education and social studies in general be about giving the young the knowledge
and skills to be pleasant and constructive citizens?
The assumption here is that civics education should promote a
citizenry disposed to helping one another.
Different people might have differing views on this question. As stated earlier in this blog, some people
just don’t believe schooling – and especially public schooling – should be
about instilling values and attitudes.
That chore belongs to parents and maybe the church. If one feels this other way, then one does
not agree that civics’ goal should be promoting social capital.
Many
television pundits, early in the financial crisis which began in 2008,
speculated that the burdens associated with this downturn would result in great
changes in social behavior. The nation
would be less materialistic, less narcissistic, and more inclined to save money,
or so they said. Yet dire economic
downturns are not usually coupled with more responsible attitudes taking hold.
This
latest extreme downturn, to a milder extent (at least, milder to date),
mirrored the reaction in the Great Depression.
In the 1930s, the world saw the rise of nationalist movements that
culminated in a world war. Today, across
Europe and the US, as reflected in the last election (2016), one sees a rise of
similar nationalist/populist sentiments.
The questions presently being considered are: how far will such sentiments grow and how
much will globalism take a beating among the populations of the Western world?
As
for increasing the savings rates of Americans and their becoming more
empathetic, what does the data show? The
media currently reports that savings rates by Americans have increased,[4]
although the level of debt is still very high and savings rates cannot be
considered high (circa 5.5%). And perhaps
these changes will lead the citizenry to become more empathetic and, in turn, a
more civic minded people. Time will
tell, but so far there are no signs of this happening.
Unfortunately,
as of this writing, economic challenges often lead to divisiveness and extreme
politics as was noted above. One can
judge whether the current level of political discourse is more civil or
not. And to add to the mix, our economy
has improved greatly in the years of Obama’s second term, and we are now
reverting to the more self-centered mode of economic behavior that
characterized the American public prior to the financial collapse.
All
of this – the connection between economic woes and political behavior – has a
backdrop. Starting in the 1990s, there
was a sense that social behavior was becoming too uncivil. This sense was reflected in the writings of
social commentators across the political spectrum.
Citizens
in general seemed concerned over the low levels of civility being manifested in
contemporary American life, ranging from the lack of social etiquette to
outright criminal behavior. Commentators
ranging from Hillary Clinton on the left, to Michael Novak on the right,
expressed such sentiments.[5]
A lot of the behavior one saw in the
last presidential election should give concern.
It
stands to reason that if teachers and parents were charged with promoting among
their students or children a disposition toward civil behavior,[6]
a broad-based concern among these adults would have developed and they would
have called for action that addressed this perceived lack of civility. In addition, academics from the field of
social education would also have voiced focused commentary over this situation.
Instead,
there seemed among these practitioners, scholars, and even parents to be little
written or discussed that indicates any central consideration for these
conditions.[7] Of course, incidents such as the Columbine
school shooting and the shooting at Sandy Hook caused a great deal of concern
over the short term, but there does not seem to be a sustained professional
response from educators to any lack of civility that many in the rest of the
scholarly community see as plaguing the nation.
Increased
public outcries seem to be directed toward many issues, but to date, civility
is not one of them.
Recently,
this writer had a conversation with a prominent government official of a major
American urban area. The question was
asked about how things were in his jurisdiction. He said crime was drastically down, but the
big problem was traffic. Having a bit of
knowledge of that area, it is the opinion of this writer that that urban area’s
major problem is a lack of civility.
That
opinion was substantiated by a recently published study that ranked the city
the rudest city in America.[8] But this is not an issue that would even be
considered a governmental problem by this prominent public official. This fact reflects a great deal about how the
nation tends to see government, civility, and, in turn, civics education.
[1] For
example, Marian Wilde, “Global
grade: How do U.S. students compare?” Great Schools, April 2, 2015, accessed on
February 27, 2017, http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/u-s-students-compare/ .
[2] Political scientist, Robert Putnam, tells us that social
capital means having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian
political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.
[3] Jon Cohen & Michael D. Shear, “Poll Shows More
Americans Think Obama Is a Muslim,” The
Washington Post (Washington, D. C.), August 8, 2010, accessed February 28,
2017,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081806913.html
.
[4] Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, “Paul Samuelson’s Amazing
Intergenerational Transfer,” in Samuelsonian Economics and the Twenty-first Century, eds. M. Szenberg, L. Ramratten, and A. A. Gottesman (New York,
NY: Oxford
University Press, 2006), 42-53 AND Trading Economics, “United States Personal
Savings Rate,” Trading Economics
2016, accessed February 28, 2017, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings
.
[5] Don E. Eberly, “Introduction: The Quest for a Civil
Society,” in Building a Community of
Citizens: Civil Society in the 21st Century, ed. Don E. Eberly (Lanham,
MD: University Press of America, Inc.,
1994), xvii-xlviii.
[6] Michael B. Lybarger, “The Historiography of Social
Studies: Retrospect, Circumspect, and
Prospect,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, ed.
James P. Shaver (New York, NY:
MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 3-15.
[7] Jean M. Twenge & W. Keith Campbell, W. K. The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of
Entitlement (New York, NY: Free
Press, 2009).
[8] Katrina B. Hunt, America’s Rudest Cities, Travel and Leisure, 2016, http://www.travelandleisure.com/americas-favorite-places/rudest-cities .
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