A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

ULTIMATE GOALS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

 

This posting continues a look at school reformers of the 1840s and beyond in the nineteenth century.  The purpose of this visit is to ask how parochial/traditional views over citizenship and education developed in America’s past.  The aim is to test the claim that that construct held dominance during the nation’s past from colonial years to the years just after World War II.  And if true, how did Americans experience that dominance?

          The last two postings gave the reader an introduction to the works of Horace Mann and Catherine Beecher.  Mann is noted for starting the nation’s first statewide educational system in Massachusetts and Beecher was a pioneer in promoting women in the teaching profession including her efforts in recruiting and training women to go out west and teach in frontier schools.  Both dealt with the strict tradition of Puritanical thought and its effect on how schooling was conducted.

          Generally, they worked toward bending the prevalent religious influence toward more secular leanings.  Specifically, they favored curricular content that emphasized communal deeds instead of instilling Protestant doctrine.  They

… tended to see schools as secular churches:  community centers where any child could be improved – even religiously “saved” – through education.  [They] believed it was more important to teach a child good deeds than good doctrine; to focus less on the details of literature or mathematics than to create faithful, decent, socially adept young men and women – people who could resist the mob rule of the French Revolution and the Ursuline convent arson.[1]

And women doing this work equated to missionary work of priest and monks and should be rewarded with social rewards over money or political power.

          But among the consequences of such a policy, a pedagogic calling suffered in that it began being viewed as a philanthropic pursuit instead of a professional career.  This led to issues in education.  They included:  as moral agents did this view of teachers interfere with the role of parents?  And, if based on Protestant views of morality, how were other religious traditions to be treated or respected?  This was particularly true concerning Catholics and Jews.

          A chief critic of these developments was a contemporary journalist, Orestes Brownson.  He complained of this religious bias toward WASP beliefs.  This converted Catholic also saw Mann’s deprioritizing of academic curricula to a more communal emphasis as impractical when it came to the interests of the working class.  They needed, in his eyes, vocational training and should be informed of labor rights.

          For good or ill, Mann and Beecher’s bias prevailed across the nation’s public schools.  That is, American education took on this more communal, faith-based education over academic rigor.  This writer, a product of 1950s-1960s Catholic parochial schools, can recall what he was led to believe:  that public schools just did not measure up academically to Catholic schools.

And he was exposed to the difference upon being moved from New York City to Miami, Florida back in 1958 and having to go to a public school for two and half months.  This was in the fourth grade and he found himself changing from being a failing student to being one of the brightest kids in the class.  His new classmates were being taught material that he had been exposed to years earlier especially in math.  He loved his new situation but was moved back to a Catholic school as the new school year started in the fall.  Oh well!

The question he asks today is, why this dichotomy?  Can one be taught and encouraged to be communal and academic at the same time?  Better still, can one use academics to advance communal learning?  Of course, this blog maintains that one can and one should see learning and education in these terms.



[1] Dana Goldstein, The Teacher Wars:  A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession (New York, NY:  Doubleday, 2014), 30.  The historical information in this posting is drawn from this source.  The arson reference is a fire Mann had to investigate earlier in his career.  The fire burnt down a Catholic convent.

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