[Note: From time to time, this blog issues a set of
postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous
postings. Of late, the blog has been
looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their
subject. It’s time to post a series of
such summary accounts. The advantage of
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different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and
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To carry on with a look at
Hegel’s views on people maturing described in the last posting, that
philosopher is known more for his historical-dialectic model (and noted for its
effect on Karl Marx). His maturing
model, like his historical one, emphasizes contradictions and conflicts and
warns that there is no smooth road to adulthood.
And such tensions naturally have their problematic
consequences on the social arrangements within which they occur. If one keeps in mind how social arrangements
of just about any sort depend on people actually getting along and behaving in
ways that bolster cooperation and collaboration, one can readily see that
maturing issues can be important. They
are of such importance that one can easily find cultural expressions that look
at situations in which these tensions become intense – see movies like West
Side Story[1]or
Rebel Without a Cause.[2]
In addition, these tensions feed and are fed by dysfunctional
political movements. Currently, that
would be the level of tribalism in which issues are defined – not necessarily
openly – by “identity” perceptions which, in turn, cater to the natural “Us vs.
Them” biases people are apt to express.
And what this points out is that professional educators, to address this
shortcoming as it affects good citizenship, need a well-founded understanding
of what is happening with these young people.
No,
they don’t need to be psychologists, but to be effective they do have to have a
good sense of what these tensions are and how they work themselves into how
young people see reality and strive to satisfy what they perceive they want.
Unfortunately, the evidence seems to indicate – given the general levels of
narcissism – that they are not doing a very good job of addressing this
challenge.[3] Leading fellow educators toward better
results could naturally be civics educators and beyond them, social studies
educators in general.
Those
educators could start by reviewing those concepts and values that highly relate
to the underlying issues involved, and no issues are more involved than those
relating to freedom. And here, a
distinction is helpful although in the public media one never hears that this
distinction even exists. That would be about
how people define freedom.
As
the previous posting pointed out, the young person coming to terms with how they
seek their freedom from authority figures (parents, school personnel, and other
authorities), are heavily influenced by prevailing views of freedom or liberty. And as this blog has pointed out numerous
times, that would be the natural rights view and its promotion of natural
liberty.[4]
But
in the history of humankind, there have been various views of freedom and that
can be said for the US. And in the US, the
main division relates to the distinction between what prevails today, natural
liberty, and what prevailed in the years before World War II, federal liberty. The former bolsters the general sense of
doing one’s own thing and the latter incorporates a sense of doing what one
should do without legal or other constraints.
And
this other view introduces, beyond market values, the values of some moral
construct, namely a federated morality.[5] That morality highlights as a requisite the responsibilities
of being cooperative, collaborative, and communal. It encourages one to develop a respect for equality,
not just in relation to the law, but in the conditions under which people live. Further, those conditions should meet some
reasonable levels. And, in line with
these concerns, one should respect people being able to act from their own volition
to do what is right.
Hegelian
notions lead to a two-pronged approach by those who want to affect this
maturing process. On one plane, they
need to deal with the reality of what exists, the conditions they observe. On a second plane, they are taking into
account the historical context in which they live – and today, what prevails is
the current global economic world that, despite possible policies to the
contrary, exists. And this affects their
consciousness which, in turn, relies on mental visions or biases such as
advanced organizers in people’s cognitive makeups.
All
of this is not at the conscious level, there are also subconscious forces at
work. That’s right; it’s a bit complicated
indeed. And it’s hard for a given person
to become a responsible citizen. The
easier path is just to react to events. Yet
the responsible path, the one that bolsters the probabilities to a more
productive, happier future, is to reflect on what is at stake with a given
challenge, what is a moral reaction, and what leads to a better result for all
involved.
Why? Because beyond being moral, it leads to positive reciprocal interactions, positive sentiments towards others, positive access to the communal assets and good wishes, and to positive self-fulfillment of who one truly is. And this revelation in general terms is not so complicated or mysterious.
It turns out that adopting this view as an
overall understanding and as a plan increases the chances of success in most
interactions. Upon such successes, one
falls into the habit of taking into account the interests of those involved. That is, it pays in a variety of ways for people
to be more reflective instead of being merely reflexive.[6]
[1] Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (directors), West
Side Story, United Artists, 1961.
[2] Nicholas Ray (director), Rebel Without a Cause,
Warner Brothers, 1955.
[3] Jean M. Twenge, and W. Keith Campbell. The
Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. New York, NY: Free Press, 2009. This writer believes that this shortcoming is
more a product of systemic factors rather than professional malpractice by
educators.
[4] That would be the view that everyone has the right to
determine their values and goals and the right to pursue those values and goals
short of interfering with others to do likewise.
[5] A review of this moral code can be found in Toward
a Federated Nation. See Robert
Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:
Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL: Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).
[6] One can be reflective and immoral as morality is defined in the prevailing social arrangement. In dramatic form, as an example, one can see the behaviors of the “godfather” in the movie, The Godfather. There, the Don, Vito Corleone, constructed his morality based on family loyalty. Here, the tragedy lies in this character not accepting a social environment in which the level of “Us” goes beyond not only the family or the region in which he lives but incorporates a nation-state. Surely, his was not a federal morality even within the family. There, there was a hierarchical arrangement with the Don at the top instead of an arrangement in which its members were federated among themselves. Within his moral purview, though, he did act in a reflected fashion. See Francis Ford Coppola (director), The Godfather (the film), Paramount Pictures, 1972.
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