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.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

PAYING STUDENTS?


Yesterday, March 5, 2018, the NBC Evening News[1] presented a story having to do with motivating eighth graders to behave civilly.  It seems the school, in Philadelphia, has had a problem with students fighting.  The report did not mention the income level of the students’ households, but let it be one of a low-income area.  Why?  If it is, it further makes the point this posting is going to make.
          To address the problem of fighting, the school’s principal hit upon an idea.  The eighth grade happens to be the last year these students will attend this school.  Next year, if they pass their courses, they will be off to high school.  The principal apparently decided that speaking in terms of duty or discipline was not working.  Something new had to be employed.  How about money?
          She made a deal with the students:  if they refrained from any fights for the duration of the year, every student will receive, upon graduation, a hundred dollars.  But to get the hundred dollars there cannot be one fight in the time these eighth graders had left.  One fight, by any of them, and no one will get any money.  So far, according to the report, it’s working; not one fight has occurred.  In addition, the whole tone of the class – and of the school – has changed. 
The news report, highlighting this one young girl, claims that the students are opting a more positive behavior not only in terms of these students’ interactions, but in their approach to their studies.  They are exhibiting productive student behaviors.  The atmosphere at the school has become studious and civil.
Is this a good idea?  Is paying students to do what they should be doing a positive turn?  Yes, they might be better behaved now, but if authorities pay students or citizens, for that matter, to do what they should be doing, what is the long-term lesson such a policy would promote?  Given the overall ideals this blog advances – summarily identified as federation theory – can it support such an innovation?
Paying students is not a new idea.  It has been suggested and implemented before in other schools.  One can be assured that studies have been conducted as to its viability.  But here, this writer wants to limit this reaction to a purely ideation of its merit.  To help, this posting looks at Kolberg’s model on moral development. 
Essentially, Lawrence Kolberg’s model holds that an individual must progress through stages to arrive at moral decisions based on moral standards which are generally quite abstract, especially to young people.  Here are those stages[2] written in shorten phrases:  obedience/punishment, self-interest, conformity and interpersonal accord, authority and social order, social contract, and universal principles.[3]
Most eighth graders are about 14 years old or so.  They are teenagers and as such they, according to the model, should be at the “authority and social order” level of moral thought or the “social contract” level.  In either case, the moral thinking should be of the type that the individual can appreciate the social bonds necessary to carry out a social organization or institutionalized grouping, such as a school.  Yet paying students refers to the second stage:  “self-interest.”
There are various social-personal conditions that inhibit a person from progressing along these stages.  Many of those conditions have to do with deprivation.  Low-income sets those restraints in place that often lead to deprivation.  Poorer people see, feel, and experience those lacking comparisons they see others enjoy.  Others have finer clothes, finer things to do, finer personal relations, finer cars, finer vacations – one gets the idea.  This lack is not necessarily unjust, but it has its effect.
Why are low-income areas around the world those areas more apt to have higher crime rates and the like?  Why are their schools less apt to be successful?  Yes, there are the exceptions.  Sometimes those exceptions are due to some talented professional – a dynamite teacher, preacher, police officer, etc.  But whatever those things or conditions are, according to Kolberg’s model, one needs to address the moral questions that corresponds to where they are morally.
If one accepts this notion, then one can speculate that this principal judged her school’s student prominently being at the “self-interest” stage and, therefore, needs to find that level of reward that is meaningful to this group of students.  They should have advanced from this lower stage way back when they started school.  Yet here they are, as eighth graders, exhibiting that lower level of moral thinking and decision-making.  Hopefully, they “graduate” from this level before they get to high school.
Consequently, federation theory or any other approach to human interaction or civic education needs to make allowances for these types of developmental factors.  There are other types of factors – e.g., developmental motivation factors[4] – and no approach to curricular issues can be indifferent to these concerns.  An approach needs to be sufficiently nuanced to account for such realities.



[1] The NBC Evening News with Lester Holt, NBC News, March 5, 2018.

[2] The terminology varies.  The model is presented having three stages with two steps each.  Totally, that would be six steps that a person must accomplish before moving on to the next step.  Few people accomplish all six steps and are usually stymied at the third or fourth step.

[3] This terminology and subsequent information is taken from The Psychology Notes Headquarter (accessed March 5, 2018, https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/kolberg-1-550x382.png&imgrefurl=https://www.psychologynoteshq.com/kohlbergstheory/&h=382&w=550&tbnid=RCfQRhnlhhgKnM:&tbnh=146&tbnw=211&usg=__Iwq_JyVMOnOGnUJeiYZPWXaQ7e0%3D&vet=10ahUKEwiy78iP1tbZAhXEmVkKHS7yDf0Q9QEILTAA..i&docid=EQaID5J_EbwbyM&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy78iP1tbZAhXEmVkKHS7yDf0Q9QEILTAA).

[4] As described by Abraham Maslow’s model on the motivation of needs.

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