A FEDERALIST ANGLE ON CIVIC/POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

With the last posting, this blog left the reader with an “assignment.”  He/she was to answer the question:  How well could he/she read federalist biases into the C3 Framework’s standards?  Of course, the C3 standards are the stated aims the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) identified for state civics education officials and other educators – e.g., teachers – to adopt.  That is, these standards are what these educators should, through their students’ performance, strive to achieve. 

C3 is part of the Common Core Standards project the US Department of Education developed.  It is to be implemented, through encouragement, by state public education systems.[1]  The last several postings have looked at how these civics standards have been contextualized.  Overall, this blog judges the NCSS’ description of C3 standards as somewhat deficient – they lack enough of a rationale as to why they have students achieve what they call on students to achieve.  The reader can read those critiques found in the last two postings.

But those postings made the case that a teacher or educator could read into the standards a federalist rationale.  What follows, follows that advice.  That is, this posting begins to look at the standards to assist educators who wish to be guided by federation theory in their planning and instruction.

The standards are presented within three conceptual categories:  Civic and Political Institutions, Participation and Deliberation: Applying Civic Virtues and Democratic Principles, and Processes, Rules, and Laws.  Here and in the two-following postings each standard is highlighted and, if appropriate, a comment or two will be offered.  These comments indicate how each standard can become a federalist standard.

To remind the reader, the following set of questions are federalist questions and give the reader a sense of how the standards are potentially “federated.”  They are:

·        How engaged should citizens be in solving public issues? 

·        How much are citizens involved in collaborative efforts to solve public issues? 

·        How much should citizens see public issues as threats to federalist values including equality, liberty, and, most importantly, the health of the commonwealth? 

·        How much is an issue over trust (or a lack of honesty)? 

·        How much does the issue reflect over-prioritization of self-interests over communal interests? 

·        How much is power and authority concentrated or diffused in relation to a given public issue?

In other words, does the content of a civics course, unit of study, or lesson reflect concerns over social capital or civic humanism?[2]

Here are the Civic and Political Institutions standards and accompanying commentary:

·        Individually and with others, students distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.

This standard addresses directly what most people think of when they hear the word, federation.  A federal system is one that has multi-level governments – it is a noncentralized system.  Of course, the US has such a system with the federal/state government arrangement.  While there are also local governments – county and city governments – constitutionally these local governments are creatures of the state whereas the state governments are created not by the central government, but the people of the respective states.  It is a complex system. 

This standard is federal enough as written.  This writer might have added a phrase – such as, “to appreciate the lack of over-concentration of power within the US …” – but to do so would have probably demanded an additional standard that distinguishes the American system from those of other nations or of international systems. 

The point is that American federalism – along with what might exist in other nations – allows for local socio-political culture to express their political biases.  Also, as a related issue, nations might have federalist structures, but lack in having federalist processes.  To be a federated system, the processes are more essential, but the structure is also very important.[3]

·        Individually and with others, students analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans’ participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.

A federalist view sees this standard as an opportunity to make some very important distinctions.  The history of the US has been one in which various views over various social qualities have arose and gained follow-ship – currently, one might see “Trumpism” in this light.  Of interest is to distinguish federalist thought vs. natural rights thought vs. critical theory thought.  These vying perspectives are particularly important among educators, but they are also important to provide context for what a federated American government course or civics course is attempting to do.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements on the maintenance of national and international order.

All polities are the product of one of three processes:  force, accident, or choice.  This standard paves the way for students to look at each of these processes – their histories and examples – and how the US was not the product of a military/strong “man” development, nor the product of a cultural tradition in a given territory, but the product of a group of founders getting together and choosing to set up the polity.  This leads logically to the next standard.

·        Individually and with others, students explain how the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government that has powers, responsibilities, and limits that have changed over time and that are still contested.

This standard marks the point of instruction that a teacher can provide the evidence that US constitutions – both at the central and state levels – are compacts.  As such, they are sacred agreements among the citizenry of the respective jurisdictions.  That means that citizens are committed to abide by the provisions of those compacts as equal participants with equal benefits (rights and other privileges). 

It also forms a partnership no matter what any citizen does – subject to appropriate sanctions for abuses or other offenses to the agreement.  This includes, but not limited, to disobeying the law.  Of course, this reflects the history – stretching all the way back to the Mayflower Compact (which was technically a covenant) through the development of the colonies, the development of the national government – the Articles of Confederation and the US Constitution – and the fifty states.

·        Individually and with others, students evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.

This can be a potentially important standard.  Of importance, a la federalist values, are problems and solutions defined in terms of the common good as opposed to the good of individuals, selected groups, corporations, or other organizations that can be linked to a sub-societal arrangement.  Of course, federated instruction would ask those questions that has students consider whether actors are defining their interests in ways that place in priority self-interest over the common interest or the other way around.  These types of questions undergird federated instruction.

·        Individually and with others, students critique relationships among governments, civil societies, and economic markets.[4]

This standard does not elicit much of a federalist concern, but it does steer the conversation to the interaction between political actors.  In turn, one can question the motivations those actors bring to those interactions.  Therefore, this standard can further in the direction of the preceding standard.

          The next posting will pick up on this review by looking at the second category:  Participation and Deliberation: Applying Civic Virtues and Democratic Principles.  That category promises a rich area to amplify since it introduces the concept, civic virtue.

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[1] National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), College, Career and Civic Life (C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards), accessed May 21, 2018, https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/2017/Jun/c3-framework-for-social-studies-rev0617.pdf .

[2] This blog defines these social qualities as follows:  social capital is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation and civic humanism, as Isaac Kramnick describes it, “conceives of man as a political being whose realization of self occurs only through participation in public life, through active citizenship in a republic.  The virtuous man is concerned primarily with the public good, res publica, or commonweal, not with private or selfish ends.”

[3] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).

[4] National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), College, Career and Civic Life (C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards), 32-33.  Each of these standards are taken from this source.

C3 STANDARDS

After the last several postings concerning the C3 Framework – issued by the National Council for the Social Studies within the national initiative known as the Common Core standards – one might rightly ask:  well, what exactly do the C3 standards say?  This posting addresses this question.  The overall relevant concern of this blog, as stated previously, is:  how “federated” are these standards?

          To be federated, the standards need for students to consider federalist questions.  They include: 

·        How engaged should citizens be in solving public issues? 

·        How much are citizens involved in collaborative efforts in solving public issues? 

·        How much should citizens see public issues as threats to equality, liberty, and, most importantly, the health of the commonwealth? 

·        How much is an issue over trust (lack of honesty)? 

·        How much does the issue reflect over-prioritization of self-interests over communal interests? 

·        How much is power and authority concentrated or diffused in relation to a given public issue?

In other words, does the content of a civics course, unit of study, or lesson reflect concerns over social capital or civic humanism?[1]

          The last two postings point out that within the C3 document there seems to be a turn toward these concerns.  Do the civics standards themselves follow this more federated turn?  Below is a sampling of them and that selection is limited to those that are identified for completion by the 12^th grade.  The reader can logically deduce what the standards are for the lower grades.  The listed standards can be considered logical aims that lower level standards are helping to achieve.

          But before revealing these standards, one can appreciate how the C3 developers approach federated concerns by considering their inclusion of the concept, civic virtue.  Here are how the developers define this quality:

What defines civic virtue, which democratic principles apply in given situations, and when discussions are deliberative are not easy questions, but they are topics for inquiry and reflection. In civics, students learn to contribute appropriately to public processes and discussions of real issues. Their contributions to public discussions may take many forms, ranging from personal testimony to abstract arguments. They will also learn civic practices such as voting, volunteering, jury service, and joining with others to improve society. Civics enables students not only to study how others participate, but also to practice participating and taking informed action themselves.[2]

The judgement here is that this statement is a hopeful description.  While one can still read into it a more structural concern – it misses the richness of a federated commitment – still the use of civic virtue does hint at what direction the standards should take.  That is, it can be questioned as to how targeted it is at issues regarding moral politics, but a sense of morality can be detected. 

Yet, one can judge the statement as being limited to procedural or behavior dimensions of good citizenship such as voluntarism.  In other words, it lacks any sense of what one should volunteer to promote or advance.  But one can harbor a degree of hope that when these standards are applied, an educator can read into them a federated sense of moral politics.  This account proceeds with the assumption that one can interpret the standards in this more normative fashion.

          The standards are divided into three conceptual categories:  Civic and Political Institutions, Participation and Deliberation: Applying Civic Virtues and Democratic Principles, and Processes, Rules, and Laws.  If one reads these standards as reflecting a federated view, as opposed to a natural rights view, one can ask a telling question:  do the applications of these standards depend or are sufficiently reliant on materials such as the typical employed textbooks one finds in American classrooms?  To the degree they are, they are reflecting a natural rights bias.

If the reader is familiar with American government textbooks – the most prominent is Magruder’s American Government[3] – does he/she question how much in line are these standards to the content of those textbooks?  As written, the judgement here is that there is only limited daylight between them.  In other words, an educator who wants his/her efforts to reflect a more federated approach – in terms of content – needs to “read” into the standards that bias.  The primary key into doing so is the standard’s use of the term civic virtue.

Here, at last, are the 12^th grade standards.

Civic and Political Institutions:

·        Individually and with others, students distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze the role of citizens in the U.S. political system, with attention to various theories of democracy, changes in Americans’ participation over time, and alternative models from other countries, past and present.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze the impact of constitutions, laws, treaties, and international agreements on the maintenance of national and international order.

·        Individually and with others, students explain how the U.S. Constitution establishes a system of government that has powers, responsibilities, and limits that have changed over time and that are still contested.

·        Individually and with others, students evaluate citizens’ and institutions’ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.

·        Individually and with others, students critique relationships among governments, civil societies, and economic markets.[4]

Participation and Deliberation

·        Individually and with others, students apply civic virtues and democratic principles when working with others.

·        Individually and with others, students evaluate social and political systems in different contexts, times, and places, that promote civic virtues and enact democratic principles.

·        Individually and with others, students use appropriate deliberative processes in multiple settings.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze the impact and the appropriate roles of personal interests and perspectives on the application of civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights.[5]

Processes, Rules, and Laws

·        Individually and with others, students evaluate multiple procedures for making governmental decisions at the local, state, national, and international levels in terms of the civic purposes achieved.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze how people use and challenge local, state, national, and international laws to address a variety of public issues.

·        Individually and with others, students evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.

·        Individually and with others, students analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means of changing societies, promoting the common good, and protecting rights.[6]

So, here is an assignment.  After reading these standards, what does the reader think?  Are they suitable for a federated view of governance and politics?  The next posting will address this question by further analyzing these standards in how they allow a more federated interpretation.

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[1] This blog defines these social qualities as follows:  social capital is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation and civic humanism, as Isaac Kramnick describes it, “conceives of man as a political being whose realization of self occurs only through participation in public life, through active citizenship in a republic.  The virtuous man is concerned primarily with the public good, res publica, or commonweal, not with private or selfish ends.”

[2] National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), College, Career and Civic Life (C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards), accessed May 21, 2018, 31, https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/2017/Jun/c3-framework-for-social-studies-rev0617.pdf .

[3] William A. McClenaghan, Magruder’s American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition) (Boston, MA: Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2013).  In a series of postings in 2015, this blog extensively reviews this textbook.  That review attempts to answer the question:  how federated is Magruder’s?  The reader is invited to visit those postings that report that analysis.  They are:  “A Textbook Bias” (January 5), “Focus” (January 9), “Magruder’s on Community Development” (January 12), We Get Letters” (January 16), Magruder’s on Volunteering” (January 20), Magruder’s on Working on an Election Campaign” (January 23), Magruder’s on Practical Concerns of Citizenship” (January 27), and “Magruder’s on Social Security” (January 30).  The overall judgement is that Magruder’s serves to define civics curriculum at the high school level and that definition is to convey a mechanical view of government, governance, and politics.

[4] National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), College, Career and Civic Life (C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards), 32-33.

[5] Ibid., 33.

[6] Ibid., 34.