[Note: If
the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped
by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings. The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View
of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).
Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has
affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]
This
posting picks right up from the last one.
That posting observed that civics education in US schools has been
guided by the natural rights view of governance and politics. In terms of values, they place in priority natural
liberty[1]
above all other values and that leads to many concrete consequences. The consequences range from ignoring serious
challenges to the political society of the US to resulting in an instructional
approach devoid of the very humanness politics entails.
To illustrate with a simple example, a teacher
who might be guided by an alternative construct, federation theory, might on the
first day of classes begin by having students reflect on how the government is
an extension of who they are as a people.
The discussion would be general, and the teacher might want to just get
a handle on how students think and feel about government.
A look at the first recommended
activity in the Magruder book, a popular high school textbook, suggests
the following:
As
students get settled, ask them to answer the following question: What have you done recently that involved
government that affected you or someone you know? (Sample responses: rode on a public bus; obeyed street signs; attended
a public school)
Then
have each student describe at least four useful things government does for its
citizens. Have students share their
ideas.[2]
Right
off, the student is defined as a consumer of government services. As such, that mindset encourages the view
that the government is something apart from citizens, not an extension of them.
Yes, too much can be made of this
example. This questioning that is suggested
could be one in which the author of the textbook believes it is initially
important to establish government’s relevancy to some practical concern – riding
a public bus. But in reviewing this and
the other popular textbooks, one can analyze their content to see if this
initial tone reflects what they contain – this blog will proceed to do so for
the Magruder book and one other popular textbook.
And that tone communicates that the
government is merely a service dispenser – services rendered in exchange for
tax dollars spent. Or stated another
way, what the Constitution establishes is a marketplace for public services
not the protector of a societal partnership.
In addition, this message places the
emphasis on individualism – as contained in the natural rights construct in
which students are encouraged to develop their own values and goals. Consequently, it will have students relate to
society from self-centered points of references. There is nothing inherently wrong with asking
students to hold their interests as being important or of value. But to impart those interests within a
federated arrangement, the questioning needs to be contextualized in how those
interests relate to justice and civility.
Without that context, the natural
tendency is for the young student to be introduced to the subject without a concern
for what constitutes good citizenship. In
that void, natural tendencies take hold and those tendencies easily legitimize self-centered
biases.
This is so not because of a logical
necessity for them to be so judged, but because of human nature. An absence of any direction toward
responsible civic posturing will give license to students to see social
conditions as only opportunities to promote self-serving values and goals.[3]
He or she will see civic issues from a
“what's in it for me?” angle. People
need to be taught a level of civic responsibility; it doesn’t come naturally.[4]
There are many levels of intensity in
which civic oriented pedagogical objectives can be sought. But whatever level one sees as a reasonable
counterweight to total self-indulgence, that level needs to be taught and
encouraged in young citizens if we expect a corresponding level of civil
behavior to manifest itself.
For the sake of discussion, in terms of
even the staunchest believers in the natural rights construct, they still
believe that citizens, no matter what their personal values are, must be
responsible enough to obey the laws. If
limited to a concern over law abiding behavior, then what is the purpose of
government?
The only positive role that government
would have is to provide sought after services and if this perspective
prevails, it encourages the citizen to take on the role of a consumer. Government, as has been pointed out in
describing the natural rights' view, is pictured as this large overarching
institution that exists to render services.
Under this view the citizens are the consumers. By paying their taxes, they are portrayed as
entitled to those services in much the same way as shoppers are entitled to the
services of a private vendor.
Under this approach, government loses a
lot of its “of the people” and “by the people” qualities and maintains only its
“for the people” reason for existence. This
message, while not explicitly expressed in civics instruction, is assumed in
the presentation that textbooks provide.
Since the overwhelming number of
teachers relies on the given textbook to define what the content of their
instruction is, then how a textbook approaches a subject is central to what is
taught. The entailed strategy, therefore,
tends to ignore communal concerns and the promotion of a citizenry aligned to
mutual responsibilities and obligations.
There is also evidence that in addition to textbook writers, the federal Department of
Education has favored, through its funding practices, this bias. It funds organizations in the field that,
more or less, utilize this natural rights construct as their theoretical
base. This has been the expressed preference
of the federal government until an apparent shift of late. This shift will be described shortly in this
blog.
But until that recent effort,
the federal government, in the language it uses to describe grant related funding
(either in its directives or in the products those grants have produced) assuages
the more virulent individualistic forms of the construct. But, even in its apparent shift, it has not
promoted another organizing ideal or concept to challenge or replace this
prevalent perspective.[5]
For example, significant
federal funding has gone to the Center for Civic Education and to the
Educational Testing Service to produce the National Assessment Educational
Progress (NAEP) testing program known as the Nation's Report Card. As
part of its testing, NAEP includes civics.
That testing in large measure is based on standards developed by the
Center for Civic Education.
The language of that
organization has adopted more concern for civic engagement and related duties. But success is still based on the ability to
do well on tests that in turn rely on information contained in utilized
textbooks. That testing reflects the
point being made here and will be reviewed in this blog in an upcoming posting.
This posting will stop here in its lead
up to analyzing two of the earlier cited textbooks. This blog will review the content of the
above cited textbook, the Magruder book,[6]
and also the Clencoe book.[7] Between them, they account for most of the
reading material distributed to high school students for the course, American
government. By doing so, that will
basically define the civics curriculum that American school districts
implement.
[1] Natural liberty is was captured by the following
citation: “[John] Winthrop identifies ‘natural
liberty’ as the liberty ‘common to man with beasts and other creatures.” It is,
in other words, the “liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as
well as to good.’ Importantly, this type
of liberty resists all authority and ultimately, is the source of moral evil.” See
“The
First ‘On Liberty,’” Intercollegiate Studies Institute: Educating for Liberty, October 28, 2011,
accessed on July 1, 2018, https://faculty.isi.org/blog/post/view/id/686/. Emphasis added. A more common account of this concept is a
liberty in which everyone has the right to decide his/her values and the rights
to live accordingly as long as he/she does not prohibit others of the same options.
.
[3] A whole rationale for capitalism centers on this
notion. Capitalism works because it in
effect targets and gives incentives for people, within certain parameters to
seek their self-interests. Jonah
Goldberg calls the success of market economies to harness individual self-interest
as “The Miracle.” See Jonah Goldberg, Suicide
of the West: How the Rebirth of
Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American
Democracy (New York, NY: Crown
Forum, 2018).
[4] Natural tendencies do encourage social ties
especially with those seen as members of one’s group. A person naturally wants approval by those
deemed important, but that sense of linkage does not override tendencies to
manipulate situations to garner sought after desires. This is especially true for most young people
during adolescence. Therefore, such “attachment”
drives do not inhibit opportunistic behaviors that tread on other’s interests
or rights. This blog has addressed the
challenges of adolescence (see “Stages in Hegel’s Maturing Process,” Gravitas: A Voice for Civics – a blog, November 16,
2018, accessed April 28, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2018/11/stages-in-hegels-maturing-process.html.) Also see Philip Selznick’s reporting of
Hegel’s maturation model in Philip Selznick, The Moral
Commonwealth: Social Theory and the
Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1992).
[5] See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation: Implementing National Civics
Standards (Tallahassee, FL:
Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020). Of
particular interest see Chapter 1, “C3 Framework of Standards.’’
[7] Glencoe United
States Government: Democracy in Action (New York,
NY: McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).
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