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, November 20, 2018

THE INDIVIDUAL WITHIN COMMUNITY


[Note:  This posting will mark the 800th posting of this blog.  As when this blog hit the 400-posting mark, its writer will begin a break – this time for one or two months.  The blog itself will still be found at this site and its archive feature will be in effect.  The reason for this respite is that the writer wants to finish another writing project.  Hopefully, the readers of this blog will be on the lookout for the blog’s resumption.]
For those readers who have been reading the last few postings of this blog know it is currently reporting on some of the fundamental ideas of phenomenology psychology/philosophy.  In the last posting, it reported on a developmental model presented by the philosopher Hegel.  In that model, humans are described as experiencing, through the years of their lives, a maturing process – a development in three stages.  The reader can scroll down to the last entry to read that description.
          Hegel is mostly noted for offering a historical-dialectic model in which through history, human societies are cast as working themselves through a series of conflicts over various ideations of what the nature of societal/political life is and/or should be.  Through these conflicts the events of the past are “guided” to be what they have been. 
That guidance took form through the antagonism inherit within certain societal qualities or elements such as subject and object of knowledge, nature and mind, self and other, freedom and authority, faith and knowledge, etc.  The aim here is not to explain his complex philosophy, but to provide a context for Hegel’s view on human development – it’s based on contradiction and tension within a person’s consciousness.
To summarize the three potential stages, one can apply the following: 
·        in the first stage a child naively accepts what he/she is told or explained to be real and the child makes moral determinations by relying on authoritative/moral positions of those in authority;
·        in the second stage, a young person – usually of teenage to young adult years – questions authority and strives for, without much sophistication, freedom; and lastly,
·        in the third stage, a mature person comes to terms with authority and other power-holders by understanding his/her freedom is advanced within communal settings.
The word “potential” is used because there is no guarantee that any individual will advance through all three stages – they might not even advance beyond the first stage.  And besides – or because of – the shifts from stage to stage are fraught with contention, conflict, and tension.  This posting aims at sharing Philip Selznick’s view[1] concerning the implications this development has on the health of a commonwealth. 
A commonwealth relies on its populous to be supportive of its basic values, aims and goals, general processes, and institutions.  To the degree that populous engages in personal changes, characterized by conflict – between the individual and society and within themselves – one can readily see this does not tend to help maintain or advance the commonwealth’s health.
          Of course, this is a matter of degree.  A society of any stability can accommodate various levels of such conflicts.  Heck, one can argue these conflicts provide some beneficial elements; e.g., spurring on creativity and motivation.  But to maintain a functional level of such tension, prudence calls for societal processes to establish those institutions to help it handle these conflicts.
This creates roles within a society and in which schools have a part.  And that role can only be successfully met with an understanding of what is taking place within each of their students.  But further, school personnel – those who deal directly with students on an ongoing basis – need to acquire a sophisticated understanding not only of what is happening, but what is needed to happen to advance toward what is healthy for the student and for society. 
Schools, as this blog has argued and provided expert opinion supporting, are not currently meeting this obligation very well.  In part, the educator, as best as he/she can determine, needs to commit to know and understand what constitutes the student’s consciousness.  And the Hegel model helps in devising the questions that educators should ask of what he/she perceives student behavior to be including what those students’ expressed concerns and desires are.
Such questioning can be directed at specific concerns.  The first is the issue of freedom.  Here, teachers need to understand that true freedom – as opposed to intuitive freedom – can only be obtained by a person being true to themselves.  This further calls for an inner strength that students might find hard to attain and a self-awareness most people try to avoid.  And central to this process is the use of reason.  Only through this questioning and process can one enlarge one’s consciousness – a challenge that lasts a life time.
Hegel did not believe in subjective morality.  There is a right way in his eyes. 
He did not believe people choose ideals or decide for themselves what is right or wrong.  Rather, the moral worth of an event, decision, or practice is known by the contribution it makes to an objective and immanent ideal, derived from human nature and the human condition, whose dimensions are revealed as history unfolds.[2]
This view demands two, what seems to be, opposing approaches.  The first is an objective view of what is happening – what events mark a person’s life.  And the second is an understanding of the historical context within which one is placed.  While times change – and with it the prevailing assumptions, biases, and understandings – one is served and services a functional consciousness by approaching reality with examined preconceptions.  It is a posture of proactive attentiveness; a person views reality with a “fresh look.”
How?  By evaluating the conceptual world – what some might call, one’s theories-in-use – about what is happening.  These conceptualizations often take on a hidden quality as the person opts a posture of “that’s just the way things are.”  In political matters, for example, beliefs structure perceptions; i.e., they form, and, in turn, they dictate what one perceives to strengthen existing and invested-in opinions.  That way of viewing constrains consciousness and hinders maturation.
So, while everyday experiences can be the source of hindrance, it still is the only venue that affords one the opportunity to grow.  Phenomenologists call that one’s lifeworld and it exists both at the personal level and at the societal level.  In each level it is unique.  It is the stuff of which one’s life transpires, it fills the textured settings – the details – of the different elements of one’s experiences.  It provides the “wellsprings” of life.
And through the lifeworld and its uniqueness the conscious landscape is formed in which one’s moral and “spiritual” life can ground itself in what is concrete.
Acceptance of uniqueness brings a realm of freedom – the freedom to be different and to be oneself.  Interdependence, however, creates the enmeshed, embedded, implicated self.  Without awareness of that condition, and responsibility for it, freedom is unguided and spiritually empty.[3]
This take on phenomenology reminds the writer of the work of Thomas Reid and his argument for common sense.  Once one matures beyond a stage, looks back with some chagrin, he/she might view the whole prior years and embarrassingly think, why of course.
[Note:  So long for a while.]


[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1992).

[2] Ibid., 67.  Emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., 69.

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