A MEANING OF THE COMMON GOOD

The professional organization of social studies educators is the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).  This writer is a former member.  Retirement tends to loosen such bonds.  He was a member roughly from 1970 till 2007.  His feelings concerning the organization is mostly positive.  He does wish them well.

          Recently, it came to his attention that the NCSS issued a publication which attempts to set forth a policy position regarding the Common Core Standards – a US Department of Education effort – to encourage state departments of education to upgrade their state standards.  Apparently, the concern is that since the US must compete in a global economy, its education should be comparable to those of other advanced countries.  The issuance of the Common Core Standards is a way for the federal government to promote a better posture in that competition.

Recent reviews as to that comparability between the US and other nations have not been encouraging.  The US, in various ranking estimations across the various subject areas, has not been stellar.  While different reports vary somewhat, the US ranks about seventeenth in its schools’ success rate when compared to other national systems.[1]  So, there has been pressure from numerous sources to improve the nation’s educational efforts.  One specific demand is that state’s need to improve their standards – they are lacking or so the critics claim.

There is an obstacle to the federal government just upgrading these standards.  Under the nation’s constitutional makeup, the power to run educational systems is reserved to the states.  That makes the federal role a bit tricky.  The federal government can issue standards and suggest states adopt them.  This adoption can vary in terms of how extensively they are utilized.  In the case of social studies, the story is a bit more complicated. 

Yes, the federal government has issued the aforementioned standards.  Common Core standards are issued in terms of various subject areas:  English/Language Arts, Mathematics, and Science.  Missing?  Social Studies, which is usually treated as a core subject area in most secondary schools.  But they are not totally overlooked; they are indirectly included.  They function as a source of content material for English/Language Arts standards.  In the past two postings this role is characterized as a “backdoor” role.

The current effort of this blog is to provide some critical judgement of this role, in general, and of the standards the NCSS’ publication provides.  That publication is being referred to as the C3 Framework.[2]  The last two postings began this critique by reviewing the C3 organizing principles.  Now, the blog turns to the substantive portions.  Here is an introductory statement of the body of the publication:

Introduction in the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for social studies state standards, the call for students to become more prepared for the challenges of college and career is united with a third critical element:  preparation for civic life.  Advocates of citizenship education cross the political spectrum, but they are bound by a common belief that our democratic republic will not sustain unless students are aware of their changing cultural and physical environments; know the past; read, write, and think deeply; and act in ways that promote the common good.  There will always be differing perspectives on these objectives.  The goal of knowledgeable, thinking, and active citizens, however, is universal.[3]

Perhaps one can interpret this as a summary statement of the project’s principles. 

It, though, stands as more substantive than the five principles this blog shared in its previous two postings.  This determination is made not because it is substantive enough, only that it is more so.  At least, this statement identifies an aim.  Apparently, students need to do all the listed activities, e.g., know the past, for a purpose.  That is to advance the common good.  Of course, the next concern would be:  what constitutes the common good?  Again, this is the type of philosophical element that a summary or introductory statement should address.

Without such a philosophical commitment, one is left with a circular argument:  the common good is seeking the common good.  Is the common good what most people think is the common good?  Is it one in which the economy grows irrespectively of how that growth is distributed?  Is it advancing democratic norms – perhaps moving toward dismantling such an institution as the electoral college (given its anti-democratic character)?

This writer suspects that the defenders of the publication would state that such questions get into content and the efforts of the developers of the C3 Framework were to only provide an outline toward a more demanding curriculum, leaving content issues to the states.  If this is the case, the judgement here is the effort is not worth the time used to develop this document.  Part of the problem with any deficiencies with social studies is its content.  Those who have tried to reform social studies – for decades – have seen the problem as only being one of instruction, but that is a short shrift of the entailed problems.

The message of this blog has been that, yes, instruction is deficient, but more central to the woes of social studies is the problem of a content component that is reluctant to meet responsibly and meaningfully such questions as:  what is the common good?  Further, this shortcoming is part and parcel of the establishment’s avoidance of such questions due to its reliance on the natural rights construct to determine its content decisions.  The above introductory statement presents itself as transcending ideological bias, but it is not.  It is partial toward market values.

To offer a definition for the common good that falls under this publication’s perspective, the following is provided:  The common good is what is determined it is by the collective opinions of a population at a given time.  It is as if the common good and its elements are commodities to be consumed by the preferences of the consumers, the citizens of the nation.

This view is transitory; there are no transcending concerns other than for the mechanism by which to determine what is popular and the liberty, on the part of the individual, to express that judgement.  There are no duties or obligations other than those everyone assumes for him/herself. 

In other words, why should students “know the past” or be active in the political process?  They should master these objectives to be able to voice their educated choice – period.  The argument of this blog is:  the founders of this nation started the ball rolling for more loftier purposes than this.

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[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] National Council for the Social Studies, Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life (Washington, D. C.:  NCSS, 2013), accessed April 16, 2018, https://www.socialstudies.org/c3.

[3] Ibid., 5. 

FURTHERING A SECOND-RATE ROLE

This blog, in previous postings, has addressed the question:  why civics education?  It, in answering this question, placed the function of civics, and more generally of social studies, at the center of why there is public education.  Mainly, the subject area is aimed at instilling – at least, in helping to do so –those attitudes and values that support democratic-republican governance.  So, in the spirit of this mandate, in all documents that address what social studies should be doing, this central function should be prominent.

          Yet, considering the C3 Framework,[1] a National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) publication, the last posting made the argument that that work treats this central concern as an afterthought.  At least that is the opinion of this writer after reviewing the principles the NCSS identified for this effort, which is to accommodate Common Core standards to state social studies standards.

Apparently, in a time that the relative importance of social studies has taken a hit over the last several decades, the NCSS is trying to improve that standing by issuing this publication.  A problem is, though, that this effort is being attempted in a time in which general views of governance and politics is mostly held under the guidance of a mental construct, the natural rights construct, that diminishes the importance of republican (with a small “r”) values and beliefs. 

That is, that construct is mostly antagonistic to something called civic humanism:  an individual commitment to define personal interests in terms of the common good even, if by doing so, short-term interests are limited or even sacrificed.  Natural rights promotes individually defined interests and precludes any effort by public institutions to instill or even promote any normative set of beliefs other than liberty. 

Consequently, any observation of today’s political scene seems to amply demonstrate the reluctance of most people sacrificing anything that hints at being their immediate interests.  The last posting offered a criticism of this point of view as it is expressed by the first principle of the C3 Framework project.  This posting looks, with a critical eye, at the rest of the principles.

The second principle reads:  “inquiry is at the heart of social studies.”  This is an instructional principle.  Inquiry is an instructional approach that calls for students to investigate, test, make conclusions, and be able to defend and apply those conclusions.  The inquiry method was initially promoted as a reaction to the Soviet launching of Sputnik satellite back in the late fifties and sixties. 

At the time it resembled the scientific method and was applied across all the social studies subjects, including history.  It introduced a more amoral approach to the study of human behavior – students were to deal with the facts and form behaviorists conclusions as to why humans behave as they do.  At the same time, to be honest, there was also a move to promote the inquiry over “controversial” issues, but such a normative approach left moral or value questions up to what was of concern by the public at a given time without any sense of priority.[2]

The third principle reads:  “social studies involves interdisciplinary applications and welcomes integration of the arts and humanities.”  This principle betrays the diminished role of social studies.  Instead of social studies having its own set of standards within the Common Core framework, it has a “role” by providing content for the English standards – a sort of a backdoor avenue to making its presence felt.  This is a far cry from a central role social studies should have as the last posting argues.

          As a matter of fact, Common Core purposely avoids content commitments and is respectful of state educational authorities’ role in determining content.  Therefore, it bolsters, in terms of content, what is prevalent today and that tends to be overly structural in nature.  For example, in terms of civics and government, they would be emphasizing the structural elements of government and that lends itself to memorization demands on the part of students.  This is the ongoing criticism of education in America and is contrary to the second principle above.  It is also at odds with the other principles of the C3 Framework – read on.

          The fourth principle reads:  “social studies is composed of deep and enduring understandings, concepts, and skills from the disciplines.  Social studies emphasizes skills and practices as preparation for democratic decision-making.”  This principle is too vague to take seriously.  What disciplines?  The social science disciplines with their scientific commitment to shun any substantive value orientation?  Equally unclear is a commitment toward democratic decision-making.  This leaves too much up in the air. 

Of course, this is a principle, not a standard.  One needs to see how it is applied in the subsequent content.  This writer presents this concern here as a foreshadowing of what will be on his radar as he further reports on the C3 Framework’s substantive content.  To remind the reader, his hypothesis is that this effort favors such a valueless view.

The fifth principle reads:  “social studies education should have direct and explicit connections to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts.”  This principle does not need any further comment; it further supports the “backdoor” role social studies subjects play in the minds of educational authorities.

The next posting will begin reviewing the substantive content of the C3 Framework document.

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[1] National Council for the Social Studies, Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life (Washington, D. C.:  NCSS, 2013), accessed April 16, 2018, https://www.socialstudies.org/c3.

[2] There was one national program, the Jurisprudential project, that did try to place in priority values inherent in the US Constitution.  See Donald W. Oliver and James P. Shaver, Teaching Public Issues in the High School (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966) AND Fred M. Newmann, and Donald W. Oliver, Clarifying Public Controversy:  An Approach to Teaching Social Studies (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1970).