THE TEXTBOOK EFFECT

 

[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 such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

This writer, through a series of postings, dated from May 15 to June 26, 2020, provides a review of how the established national entities of civics education have viewed that subject matter.  Those entities include leading textbook publishers and the Center for Civics Education.  That view(s) can be detected in the form of standards such organizations issue and in the content one can find in the leading textbooks adopted in the various states to be used in classroom instruction.[1] 

In general, this writer used two sets of questions to guide his study.  But before sharing those questions, it should be stated that he was attempting to test a hypothesis, i.e., current civics education, as practiced in American classrooms, is guided by the natural rights view of governance and politics.  And the natural rights view promotes several qualities:  scientific language and methodology, reductionism, objectified analysis, and a general avoidance of normative questioning and reporting.

To informally test this hypothesis, in terms of textbooks, the following general questions were used in reviewing two popular publications: 

·       Do the books convey natural rights’ descriptions or explanations of the various aspects of governance or politics?  If so, how?

·       Do they entice students by being relevant or entertaining in some way?  If so, how?

·       And do they relate to some federalist values or concerns such as political interactions that can be described as communal and collaborative? 

This first set of questions identifies a direction or a general realm of interest this writer wanted to pursue in looking at the evidence he identified.  But to actually address the hypothesis, he applied the following:

·       Do they, the textbooks, describe politics in an amoral fashion? 

·       Do they describe citizens as consumers of public services and ignore or avoid mentioning them as being federated to promote the common good? 

·       Are political interactions basically treated in isolated fashion in that only the immediate rewards and punishments are considered?  That is, do they employ reductionist foci in their descriptions and explanations? 

·       Are issues of justice or civility ignored or at best assumed to be in place as the books review various competitive situations that politics entails?

To do his review, he looked at two popular textbooks used at the high school level, Magruder’s American Government[2]and Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[3]  For each he randomly selected five paragraphs and asked the above questions to analyze the content of the books.  He reported the content of those paragraphs, their context within the books, and an evaluation of their content by informally using the above questions.

He found the samples indicate various qualities and, from them, derived several conclusions.  They are:

·       Both textbooks used basically the same tone and language.  That is, they employ a matter-of-fact reporting style.  Reflecting a scientific language, it is objectified and, in the case of Glencoe, supply a good deal of statistics to convey derived conclusions that the book is making (Magruder does not provide such quantified information to any meaningful degree).

·       They both avoid any call for students to become active or involved with the various issues identified and described in their accounts.  Instead, the focus is on the structural elements of either the national government (little attention is given to state and local government) or on certain elements in the political system that exist outside of the government (such as in political parties).

·       Without using the term, citizens are portrayed as consumers of governmental services.  As such, they ignore the “of” and “by” roles Lincoln bestows on American citizens, essential roles in a republic.  That is, they do not encourage or explain how Americans can fulfill these other partnering roles that the Constitution establishes.

·       What issues these books address are what the professional literature calls “controversial” issues.  That is, they are issues that garner a good deal of current interest among the citizenry.  They are not chosen because of some normative standard beyond their “popularity.”  In other words, they are not chosen due to some affront to any given standards of moral principles.  As such, the treatment of the issues is only concerned with justice and civility as coincidental factors, not as their justification to be included for consideration.

·       And, with the above-mentioned consumer approach, the books express an individual perspective – how each identified person is affected – and little concern is expressed in terms of collectives or communal interests.

Overall, the textbooks are true to a natural rights view with its bias for science, objectivity, and utilization of a non-normative tone and language.

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[1] Elsewhere, he has critiqued the civics standards issued by the National Council for the Social Studies.  See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).

[2] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[3] Richard C. Remy, Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).

CONCERNS IN A REVIEW

[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 such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

A recurring claim this blog makes is that textbooks, more than any other factor, determine the curriculum of secondary courses.[1]  And in American government high school courses, two textbooks dominate that market.  They are Magruder’s American Government[2]and Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[3]  And just to round what seems relevant, the choice of such books is made by school district and state officials through an adoption process.

This blog has presented over a number of postings an informal report as to the content of those books and how well the books meet federalist concerns.  This and the following postings will review the main points of that report.  If the reader cares to pursue this topic, there is an online site that presents a complete version of the report and can be found at the URL, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSQxMfz-ILTNUq-qUXwCK-VjkQ55HWCY7lj6tCmAaaH53Z2B8jQfmhb_cfvaSbXr-4U6nQb1p4wdLJB/pub .

          In terms of this review, the focus is on the language used in these textbooks.  To make this analysis, this blog has chosen to look at the 2019 edition of Magruder’s and the 2010 edition of Glencoe’s.  By looking at a random selection of paragraphs from each book, one can glean the tone and language each uses to describe and explain the various elements of the US political system.

But before commencing with this review some points should be made.  The reader should be clear about the logic the writer is employing in taking the steps he is taking.  First, he begins with the belief that the natural rights view of governance and politics has taken hold in America, particularly in its political culture.  This blog has provided evidence to support this belief.

Second, as cultural beliefs tend to do, that view has a strong influence on how the various institutions of society see politics and that includes the educational institution.  That influence is most directly felt in the nation’s civics classrooms.  And as such, that influence affects which textbooks will be deemed acceptable.

Therefore, a hypothesis one can logically draw from this backdrop is that the content of those chosen textbooks will reflect the natural rights’ view of governance and politics.  Further, one can detect that bias in the tone and choice of terminology or language those books employ.  That, in short, explains why this review looks at the random choice of paragraphs extracted from these two textbooks.

More concretely, one can ask of these books:

·       Do they describe politics in an amoral fashion? 

·       Do they describe citizens as consumers of public services and ignore or avoid mentioning them as being federated to promote the common good? 

·       Are political interactions basically treated in isolated fashion in that only the immediate rewards and punishments are considered? 

·       Are issues of justice or civility ignored or at best assumed to be in place as the books review various competitive situations that politics entail? 

These questions reflect federalist attributes that advocates of federation theory favor.

And underlying these questions, an advocate of federation theory might ask about a nagging concern emanating from yet another construct, critical theory.  Advocates of critical theory advise people to look at more cynical motives.  No, not the motives of teachers, but of school officials found at school district offices, state departments of education, and the federal department of education.  Critical theorists generally claim that such key decisions as textbook choices are highly influenced by concerns over promoting pro-business messaging.

That is, officials will not leave such choices to chance or what is in current fashion but will ensure that a free market orientation will be advanced, not by direct promotion, but by such factors as tone and language.  To cite a leading critical theorist, Michael Apple, “They [education officials] see schools as connected to a marketplace.”[4]  Therefore, if one does find natural rights’ language and tone in those textbooks, one can see that as supporting this critical theory claim.

This writer is not a critical theorist.  But that does not preclude him from agreeing with some aspects of that view.  And, in terms of this claim, he tends to see that upper education officials do demand that the nation’s instructional biases be supportive of the economic powers of the day.  Effective in promoting that message is instructional content that assumes that the interests of students are furthered by participating in governmental interactions. 

Consequently, any employed materials, such as textbooks, will communicate how people succeed in gaining their political aims and goals which often reflect economic interests.  They aim to have students’ attention be focused on how political actors advance their interests.  But while advancing one’s interests is legitimate (assuming those interests don’t counter the common good), the nation’s constitutional makeup calls for more.  Summarizing what that means, two desired attributes come to mind:  social capital and civic humanism.

That being:

·       Social capital, at the societal level, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.[5]  And

·       Civic humanism, at the individual level, refers to a political being realizing his/her fulfilment through participation in public life and a concern for public good above selfish ends.[6] 

The messaging that would encourage this sort of society and citizen cannot be left to mild or vague messaging.  It has to be promoted head on with not an insistence on their acceptance – that wouldn’t work even if it were tried – but with appropriate questioning and problem-solving exercises in which students are called upon to pass judgment on situations challenging these valued qualities.

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[1] This might also be the case in elementary school but that’s beyond this writer’s knowledge.

[2] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[3] Richard C. Remy, Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).

[4] Michael W.  Apple, “Educational Restructuring and the Neo-liberal and Neo-conservative Agendas:  Interview with Michael Apple,”  Curriculo sem Frontieiras, 1, 1 (January/June, 2001), accessed May 25, 2020, http://www.curriculosemfronteiras.org/vol1iss1articles/appleeng.pdf . 

[5] Robert D.  Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[6] Isaac Kramnick,  “John Locke and Liberal Constitutionalism,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I:  The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction, ed. by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 97-114.