[Note: this posting
marks an end of a series of posting in which the writer provided updated
information relating to the question of how effective civics education has been
in the US.]
The last posting looked at the last of the elements this blog
has identified as being those social characteristics composing what one can
call good citizenship. Those
characteristics include being civically literate, politically engaged, being
disposed toward engagement, becoming skillful in that engagement, civility,
and, the last one, being disposed and exemplifying law-abiding behavior. In terms of the last element, the previous
posting pointed out that while overall crime rates have dramatically decreased
in the last several decades, not all is well in this regard.
That is, while overall crime rates
have been reduced, the US is still the leading nation in terms of incarcerated citizens
and residents and has the highest crime rates when compared to other countries
(the reader is invited to look up that posting to see the evidence for these
claims).
To continue this account, this
posting begins by pointing out that there has also sprung up criminal activity in
certain areas since the nineties. One
such area, for example, is the institution of dispersion and selling systems of
heroin to many Americans addicted to opioids.
A good deal of this activity has been initiated by Mexican drug dealers
but took advantage of demand that already existed among many Americans.
They – the Mexicans – devised
effective, on-demand distribution arrangements in numerous communities around
the US. Their customers are not
inner-city junkies, as the heroin trade of old was and found in major urban
centers, but among, in many cases, middle class whites who have gotten
themselves hooked on opioids.
Oftentimes, these middle-class
customers became addicted after they were exposed to some chronic pain
management protocol under the supervision of legitimate doctors. A lot of this, in turn, was based on an
underestimation of the addictive quality of the drugs prescribed and aggressive
drug company strategies in marketing opiates.
Once hooked, these people became desperate to find cheaper and unlimited
supplies of a substitute drug – heroin, a type of opioid – to satisfy their
cravings.[1]
While this account finds the plight
of these people highly regrettable, it nonetheless judges their behavior and
many others who are involved as illegal.
The growth of this legal problem reflects the lack of support current
American society offers to such unfortunate individuals.
A telling incident is described by
the journalist Sam Quinones when the number of such addicted individuals came
to light in a New Mexican region called Chimayo. He writes:
That night, Kuydendall [a federal DEA
agent] walked into the Rancho de Chimayo restaurant, and was startled to see
congressmen, judges, the head of the New Mexico State Police, and city councilman,
along with Bruce Richardson, the board of the Chimayo crime prevention group.
“You
have done nothing,” Richardson told the officials that night.
He
brought forward a large pickle jar filled with used syringes. The public officials gave the what Kuykendall
considered elected-officials responses, appeasing no one.
He
drove home to Albuquerque that night.
The politicians’ presence told him that they knew things were bad. He had always told younger agents to focus on
the biggest dealer wherever they were stationed. That dealer may not be Pablo Escobar, he
would say, but the biggest dealer in a small town is still a problem in that
town.[2]
The sense this writer gathers from
this short excerpt is that the problem of heroin consumption had time to start
and get started before this reaction took place. Also, that the citizens described took on a
consumer of government services orientation toward the elected officials – how
are they, the politicians, going to
fix the problem, with little to no expression of how “we” will fix the problem.
All of this developed under the
purview of these effected communities, but they were slow to respond to the
tragedy these cases represented. More
interactive communities, it is believed here, would have been more apt to
discover and find solutions or ameliorations to the resulting opioid crisis. But that full story is for another venue.
As
for the bigger picture, one can see criminality as a degree of incivility. This account has identified the lack of
civility in American society as a definite social problem. It is hard to determine whether, by
historical standards, it is more acute today.
It could be that today's civics educators have not done any worse on
this score than those of past years and, of course, this blog does not place
total blame for these conditions on civics educators. But, irrespective of how relatively severe
the problem is today, the nation’s civics educators should address it.
And
that effort should not address it as merely one other topic, but as a concern
central to the mission of civics education.
One
can make a further point to those who do not see this issue as being serious as
depicted here. Those who cite, in order
to down grade the issue, that a lot the problem is due to over-zealous policy
of adjudicating minor drug sellers, one should know other crimes are
downplayed. Oftentimes, what has been
dismissed as just cultural proclivities – yet harmful to some population of
victims – are best handled in some informal ways.
In
recent years, news services have told the nation, for example, of how many
under reported and under addressed cases of sexual abuse there have been. In many instances, those in authority ignore
or do not suitably address such abuse against predominantly women in the
military, college campuses, and in some industries such as in show business. Such incidents have sparked the “Me Too”
movement among feminist groups.
This
account does not make a claim as to whether such under or non-reporting of such
crimes outnumber cases of long prison sentences for drug crimes. But it does recognize that people in the
nation are not readily going to jail and prison for legal behaviors – those
behind bars in the overwhelming number of cases did break the law.
Before
leaving this issue of criminality and incivility, one should acknowledge the
degree to which one sees unreported incidents of racism and anti-Semitism. They also are being under reported whether
the incidents are within or outside the law.
These two examples of less than ideal attitudes or lack of respect for
fellow citizens have an ugly history in the nation. They deserve more comment than what is being
given here.
The
nation has made significant advances in eliminating these dispositions, but –
and this particularly refers to racism – there are still incidents of their
occurrence that lead to tragic results.
Since roughly 2015, the nation has become conscious of unspeakable
incidents in which unarmed, African American suspects have been seriously
injured or killed by those in authority under highly questionable
circumstances.
Other
types of examples frequently make the headlines. There have been mass killings in churches,
synagogues, and schools where multiple victims were senselessly shot and even
killed. While naturally most Americans
do not engage in such behaviors and most overt racist or otherwise motivated
deranged acts do not occur in everyday life, the level of occurrence and their
antisocial quality indicate that below the surface, many Americans do harbor
racist beliefs and values.
A
more recent event was the hate inspired demonstrations in Charlottesville,
Virginia that resulted in the death of a young woman as a white supremacist –
as shown on the news tape – drove his car into a group of counter
demonstrators. Yes, such cases are
complex and controversial, but the number of cases cannot avoid being a source
of supportive evidence for the conclusion that there do exist racist or other
prejudicial attitudes among the populous to significant degrees.
This
needs to be addressed in civics classrooms.
But isn’t the current youth population that is made up of millennials exhibiting
more positive behaviors, more positive attitudes and values? Recently a USA
Today article questioned this recent, popular notion; i.e., that today’s
youth are more communally oriented and civic minded. The article debunks this and reports they are
not.
Online, this writer
looked up the academic review study upon which the USA Today article is based.
He found an abstract for that study; it is reported in an article
published in the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology.[3] The article reviews three studies in which
three generations of citizens were analyzed regarding their reported goals.
Specifically, the goals
related to “extrinsic” values such as money and image, “intrinsic” values such
as self-acceptance and community, concern for others such as expressed through empathy
and charitable donations, civic orientation such as interest in social problems,
political participation, and community service.
Other than community service, which has become a graduation
requirement in many secondary high school programs, the Gen X generation (born
1962-1981) and the Millennials (born after 1982) demonstrated declines in these
characteristics as compared to Baby Boomers (born 1946-1961).
This further provides evidence that among the nation’s youth there
is a serious lack of social capital as defined by Robert Putnam. To remind the reader, social capital is a
societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry,
egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and
cooperation.[4] Central to this blog’s argument advocating a
change in the ongoing approach to civics education are the lack of communal
attitudes and behaviors among the American young.
In summary, therefore, the belief in a need
for changes in civics classrooms is highly warranted. The current efforts in civics education are
judged here as deficient in terms of imparting civic knowledge or civic
literacy, skills in attaining knowledge, skills in political engagement,
dispositions supporting political engagement, dispositions toward formulating reasonable
and defensible positions concerning governmental issues, and adequate levels of
desire toward maintaining civility and law-abiding behavior.
As an educational institution, schools
are woefully deficient as far as these important areas of social interactions
are concerned; that is, they are not doing sufficiently well in civics
education. And with that this review and
updating of how effective American schools perform the responsibilities
regarding civics comes to an end.
[1] Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
(New York, NY: Bloomsburt Publishing,
2015).
[2] Ibid., 150-151
(Kindle edition).
[3] Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith
Campbell, and Elise C. Freeman, “Generational Differences in Young Adults' Life
Goals, Concern for Others, and Civic Orientation, 1966-2009,” Originally in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
March 5, 2012, accessed on PDF cite, May 16, 2019, https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-102-5-1045.pdf .
[4] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon
& Schuster, 2000).
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