OPINIONS AND ARGUMENTS

With the last posting, this writer completed his review of content which he will use in the development of a unit of study for a civics high school course.  That course, at least in Florida, is entitled American Government.  It is a semester course and shares the senior year, social studies requirement with another course, economics – each is a half credit.  This blog has been, in real time, going through the various steps a teacher might take in developing a unit.  The topic of this demonstration is foreign trade and how that trade affects the availability of jobs in the US.

Previously, this blog identified a potential course outline – its list of units in order of presentation.  To remind the reader, here is that outline:

•         The individual – short term interests vs. long term interests

•         The family – the effects of divorce

•         The neighborhood – responsibilities toward problem children

•         A small business – treatment of employees

•         A labor association (such as a union) – efficiency and quality issues vs. worker interests

•         A large corporation – product safety

•         A local government (either city or county) – zoning or racial/ethnic divisions

•         Law enforcement agency – judicial rights applicable to an accused

•         White House – leadership that advances social capital

•         Congress – the extent that money (donations) is influential

•         The courts – the role of interpreting constitutional principles as expressions of social capital

•         Society during wartime – special demands on citizenship

•         International associations – levels of interdependence between nations

As the reader can see, each unit is listed by stating its main area of concern (e.g., Congress) and a related issue that, if studied, would target addressing a social capital related issue.  This blog has made the claim that federation theory is primarily focused in advancing social capital[1] and civic humanism.[2]  Therefore the above issues are judged to reflect related concerns of these societal qualities.

The current unit being developed was seen to potentially be logically inserted in the “large corporation” slot or the “international associations” slot.  The decision was made to situate it with the latter issue or, as the last unit of the course.  The course, as a semester course, lasts eighteen weeks.  There are thirteen units which means at least four of the units can be two weeks in length, while the remaining units would each be one-week long.  The extra week would be reserved for administrative purposes.

As pointed out in a previous posting, this demonstration is introducing a new instructional approach the developer calls historic dialogue.  Overall, this instructional strategy progresses through the course by working through the following development:  discussion-argument-debate.  As this unit under discussion is the final unit of the course, it is assumed that students would be at the debate level.  This posting, though, will describe briefly each of these stages – two in this posting and the last one in the next posting.

Discussion stage, at the beginning of the course, simply has students expressing their opinions concerning the issues the content highlights.  So, for example, in the second unit, if the teacher uses the identified issue, divorce, the teacher would bring up a suggested policy change in the divorce laws – possibly making it more difficult to secure a divorce. 

Perhaps the old state of New York standard can be discussed in which divorce was only granted if one of the parties engaged in an extra marital affair.  This was changed in 2010 to allow for “no-fault” divorces.  Given the divorce rate is presently at 40 to 50 percent nationally, and all the disruptions that causes, should the divorce laws change and become more stringent.  This could make for a spirited discussion.

At this point, the purpose would be to get students comfortable with expressing an opinion allowing for little to no criticism.  Students could just express what they think without having to defend their positions or, if they do, briefly.  A historical study of New York’s law could accompany this discussion and be beneficial as it would expose how law can affect family relations.  Also, the discussion is limited to one option:  should the old New York law be reestablished?  Yes or no.

The next stage is argumentation.  Here the student, who is now hopefully comfortable with expressing opinions, is further encouraged to engage in an argument.  The focus now shifts in having students, in their consideration of an issue, entertain two or more options.  The question becomes:  which of the two or three policy options should be implemented?  These can be policy positions or legislative bills (or a part of a bill) or suggested actions.  Class arguments can be conducted with the teacher being highly conscious of detecting illogical arguments such as the fallacies this blog reported on several postings ago.[3]

The object is for students to begin building argumentation skills.  This calls on a regimen of critiques aimed at improving student skills and is spurred by hearing, understanding, and applying critical evaluations of their arguments.  Students should be, during this stage, instructed on the basic components of a sound and meaningful argument.

Soundness is composed of applying the demands of the various components that make up a sound argument as identified by Stephen Toulmin’s model.  That model is composed of a conclusion, supportive factual information (datum statements), warrant statement(s), backing of a warrant statement(s), qualification(s), and reservation statement(s).[4]

Meaningfulness reflects how qualitatively the argument relates to federalist values and how many people are affected by its provisions.  So, for example, if a policy affects the equality status of millions of people, that is meaningful.  Students, in the experience of this writer, tend to lack an appreciation on how policies can affect citizens, especially if the issue involved does not directly affect them.  Teachers should strive to get their students to become more sensitive to these effects.

This ends this initial description of the instructional strategy this unit will implement.  In parting, the reader should consider that to this point, this account has briefly reviewed the first two stages of the historic dialogue approach to teaching civics.  What remains is the third stage, debate.  That will be the topic of the next posting.

---

[1] This blog, using the writing of Robert Putnam, defines social capital to mean a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[2] Civic humanism is defined as a collective bias which holds that we, as citizens, are in a partnership in this polity.

[3] See posting, “Fallacy Types,” August 29, 2017.

[4] See posting, “Toulmin’s Elements of a Logical Argument,” August 22, 2017.

TO BE PRO MARKET OR NOT

With this posting, this blog completes a development phase for a unit of study in a civics course at the high school level.  This is a demonstration for purposes of sharing with the reader what a teacher might consider in devising a civics unit using federation theory as a guiding perspective.  The series of postings so dedicated reports, in real time, the writer’s effort to identify the content of the unit.  That content consists mostly in a listing of insights – sixteen to date.  This entry points out the two final insights.

          The seventeenth insight is:

In trying to nurture domestic businesses – so that they can bolster their prospects in foreign trade – the national government invests in education, invests in infrastructure, and subsidizes research and development.[1]

Lesson idea:  This insight is alluded to in other previously identified insights, but it is felt that its explicit value – advancing the competitive abilities of a nation’s businesses – needs to be stated clearly and unequivocally.  The aim here is to have students make the conceptual distinction between these set of policies and those that distort market mechanisms. 

This nurturing approach, it might be argued, also distorts market mechanisms in that they are government operations, but there is a difference.  These nurturing strategies do not artificially affect the demand or supply of the goods that are bought and sold in foreign trade markets. 

But when a nation, for example, manipulates that nation’s currency (one of several activities that a government can do to affect supply and demand), it directly increases the demand for its exports – by making them cheaper – and lowering the demand for imports – by making them more expensive.  This is not nurturing, it’s “stacking the deck.”

As such, this latter strategy – what might be called anti-competitive strategies – is by some accounts unfair.  The question becomes:  should the victim of such nefarious policies counter them with similar moves?  If so, does it lead to just a circular anteing up of such actions; e.g., higher and higher tariffs or more manipulation of currencies or more direct subsidies?

In terms of instructing this insight, it can be added to how the thirteenth insight is taught – see previous posting – where students research anti-competitive strategies such as subsidies.  The teacher can ask students how nurturing strategies are similar and dissimilar to anti-competitive strategies.

The eighteenth insight is:

In international trade, if a nation’s products are losing favor among customers, then its national currency will lose value.  Why?  Because one needs that nation’s currency to buy that nation’s products and if less people are buying its products, they need less of that currency – lowering its demand. 

When the value of a currency goes down, though, then it takes less of another nation’s currency to buy that first currency.  This, in effect, lowers the final price of that first nation’s products.  They become cheaper and, therefore, will be in more demand as time goes by. 

The opposite happens when a nation’s products become more favored by customers.  Currency value of the nation goes up, those products become more expensive, and the demand for the products goes down. 

In short, if currencies values can float according to market forces, they will act to stabilize the balances of trade/payments among nations.  But when a nation manipulates its currency, that policy aborts the market from arriving at such a balance.[2]

Lesson idea:  Teacher can devise a simulation activity in which goods are sold using artificial currencies.  There can be three nations and each nation sells one or two products.  Each nation has a currency and this currency needs to be “bought” by foreign actors to buy that nation’s product(s).  The simulation is set up so that demand for the various currencies are established by the money sellers determining how much of another nation’s currency is needed to buy that currency. 

To simplify the simulation, product prices are fix and the only variation occurs with the prices of the currencies going up and down.  Also, to simplify the simulation, a “central bank” can be the agent that buys and sells currencies.  The details of such a simulation need to be worked out.  For example, the simulation can take on a game structure with winners and losers.

That ends this phase in which the developer identifies the content of this foreign trade unit along with the various lesson ideas that might lead to actual lesson plans.  He will next address the instructional structure the unit will take.  This will be done in the next posting.

---

[1] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust:  How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).

  

[2] Ibid.