[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 continues this series’ account on the effects the
natural rights view has had on civics education. Prominently, among those effects civics has portrayed
a more objectified view of government and politics. Previous postings reveal that political
science, under the influence of the political systems construct, imposes a
mechanical or an organic view on how the political system is described and
explained in the nation’s classrooms.
Has the way political
science, the discipline, defined or observed its subject matter affected how
civics education treats its subject matter?
After all, political science is the main source of information for that
secondary subject. As it turns out,
political science has experienced meaningful changes since 1950.
The practitioners of that
discipline, in effect, shifted from one image of politics to another; the first
reflects the behavioral revolt and the second, the post-behavioral revolt (both
reviewed in previous postings). That discipline went through more than one
basic shift during the twentieth century and one those shifts, the second, had
to do with this concern of how one could analogize governance and politics.
As for calls emanating from
the post-behavioral shift, to update the way one views political systems – not as
machines but as organisms – one can observe that the treatment most teachers
use is machines. They do not consciously
do this but in effect that is the way they tend to view their subject matter. But for the sake of discussion, one can
concede that the better way of perceiving this subject is to look at a
political system as an organism.
If teachers were to take
this organic view seriously, what does that mean in their attempts to teach
students about the realities of governance?
David Easton's political systems model does address such organic
elements as community, regime, and authority as integral parts of the political
system. But these elements are presented
in a typical civics classroom by way of explaining how a system provides
expected services.
The political system makes
authoritative allocation decisions about sought-after benefits. The context in which these allocations take
place are within the social makeup of particular groups, e.g., laws concerning
gun control, or of the society as a whole, e.g., national defense policies. Those collective settings, when viewed more
organically, encourage a study or merely an observation toward a more humane
perspective than what one can garner from a mechanical view.
But within this organic view,
a sense emerges; that is, that the “organism” is mostly governed by external
forces which are bombarding the system with a plethora of inputs. Therefore, this “organic” view does not alter
the operative assumption that, to a meaningful degree, the system has a passive
character – one of agency. As such, the system is incapable or highly
limited in its ability to voluntarily initiate action.
To be a bit more
concrete: Imagine a single cell organism
floating in a fluid. It is attracted to positive
sustenance and avoids discomforting elements.
That is how the political system is viewed “organically.” It is not viewed as having even
self-motivating capabilities of a flea or an ant. One can observe, such a view does provide one
an explanation for the apparent hypocrisy of which too many politicians can be
accused.
They simply seem to seek
the immediate reward or avoid the immediate punishment. After all, politics is defined by some as the
“art of the possible.” And the possible
is determined by what the accumulated political forces in the environment contain
at a given time. As Easton indicates, as
one might be drawn to behaviorism in psychology, one would perceive government
as issuing chosen outputs with the expectation of being rewarded by those who
operate within the system and have the requisite levels of power.[1]
This leans toward a highly
deterministic view of politics in which the political system, like the organism
just described, is merely responding to stimuli in its environment. While political behaviorists were not so
crude as to be purely deterministic, the influence of such views are more than
just inconsequential. They have lent
themselves toward encouraging the presentation of political and governmental
realities in detached and almost inhuman fashion.
It also presents a system
incapable of truly leading the populace.
It merely responds to political pressure. At a minimum, this approach can not be judged
(at least by this writer) as one that encourages a populous to seek to establish
and/or maintain a federated relationship among its members – its partners – and
with the government.
Secondary textbooks,
assuming one buys into this organic image, capture an essential aspect of this view. In their pages, a vision of government
emerges as something out there and while it responds to the electorate, it is
not part of the electorate, much as pointed out in a previous posting, a
department store and its customers are two separate elements.
For example, in terms of feedback,
as those in authority hear and see how people are reacting to past policies and
actions, those in government can adjust or correct perceived “mistakes.” Does one want an example? Consider how the various state governments
are currentlyreacting to the covid 19 crisis.
Not only does the image
presented in textbooks relate to a system devoid of any leadership potential by
those in government, but the picture it presents is also misleading. They do not sufficiently take into account the
factor of power among the populous. Not
all stimuli have the same effect. That
is, as described earlier in this blog, not all participants in the system are
equally capable of exerting influence, i.e., not all of them have the same
power.
Government is thereby a
service-rendering entity for some more than others, not an extension of the
people as a whole. This is not portrayed
as a reality, but the lack of equality is not alluded to as an ideal. Textbooks present an image where all seem to
be equal in this process. This blog in
short order will provide the evidence to back up that claim.
Let this writer remind the reader that the role of textbooks
cannot be overstated. Again, most
teachers depend on textbooks to basically make their curricular choices.[2] This
following quote captures the effects that textbooks and other supportive
materials have on what is taught not only in civics, but across the whole
curriculum:
Instructional materials
represent the resources that teachers use to develop student understanding of
subject-specific concepts and skills in the enactment of the curriculum. Such materials include textbooks, workbooks,
laboratory manuals, manipulatives such as three-dimensional solids, laboratory
supplies and equipment, videos, laser discs, CDs, software, and websites. Developed by many different entities,
instructional materials often become critical, defining components of
instructional programs … In particular, commercial publishing firms with
K-12 divisions dedicated to producing and selling school textbooks are central
players in shaping what most teachers teach … Educational material
production is “big business” … Thus, although publishers can and do produce
materials in response to particular educational changes, decisions to invest in
such developments are always tempered by estimates of the potential demand for
materials supporting those changes.
Accordingly, curricular content specified as important by textbook
adoption policies in large states has great influence on the content of
commercially available texts.[3]
Research into
this concern has been consistent.
While this quote mentions other sources than the textbooks, one
should remember supplemental materials are part of the textbook product. That is, the textbook companies provide to
schools these supportive materials of what their textbooks describe and explain.
To point out the obvious, these “big
businesses” have an interest in assuring that the content of their books,
especially those that relate to civics do not pose challenging messaging to the
system in which they operate. The
natural rights view is well ensconced in how the system operates at the school
site.
[1] David Easton, “The Current Meanings of ‘Behavioralism,’” in Contemporary Political Analysis, ed.
James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY: The
Free Press, 1967), 11-31.
[2] Stephen
J. Thornton, “Teacher as
Curricular-Instructional Gatekeeper in Social Studies, in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning,
edited by James P. Shaver (New York, NY:
MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 237-248. While this citation is dated, there is no
reason to believe the point made is not as true today as it was in 1991.
[3] “Chapter 4, Curriculum As a Channel of
Influence: What Shapes What Is Taught to
Whom,” in Investigating the Influence of Standards: A Framework for Research in Mathematics,
Science, and Technology Education, edited by Iris R. Weiss, Michael S.
Knapp, Karen S. Hollweg, and Gail Burrill (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2002), emphasis added. This report is a product of the National
Research Council’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.
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