This posting continues with this blogger’s
ideas concerning an ideal civics teacher preparation program that directly
addresses the current state of poor citizenry in the US. He argues that such a program should include
five elements. The last posting started
with element one and it is,
A
viable teacher preparation program needs to make clear that civic preparation
is not only a foundation of civics education or even social studies, but also of
all public education and of responsible private educational programs as well.
In supporting such a bold claim, that posting utilized
the ideas of prominent educator, R. Freeman Butts, and several prominent
historians, Allen
Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, and Samuel E. Morrison. They, in turn, cite the founding fathers and
how they considered the need for public education.
The
crux of the argument is that it is only the general need for a viable and
engaged citizenry – one necessary to maintain a republic – that justifies
taxpayers being called upon to foot the bill for such an expensive endeavor. For example, early on, there was the hesitancy
among the rich to contribute to such funding since they would not be sending
their children to such schools.
But even in the case of private
schools, the promotion of good citizenship should play a central role, since
even the rich or other segments using private schools are expected to play
their role in maintaining and even promoting the common good – that’s in
everyone’s best interest in the long run.
Some might argue that a disregard for this imbedded relationship is a major
cause of the nation’s current maladies.
There have been, through the years,
attempts to delineate or identify what schools should offer and what their aims
and goals should be. A review of these
offerings will indicate the relative position that civics education has enjoyed
through the years. Beginning with the Spencer
Report in 1859, in which Herbert Spencer attempted to answer the question,
“What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?” he listed five realms.
They are: (1) direct self-preservation, (2) indirect
self-preservation (obtaining food and shelter), (3) parenthood, (4)
citizenship, and (5) leisure.[1] Following this conceptual path, the National
Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education
issued in 1918 its famous Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education. These principles are (1) health, (2) command
of fundamental processes, (3) worthy home membership, (4) vocational education,
(5) civic education, (6) worthy use of leisure, and (7) ethical character.[2]
Through these publications, one
starts to sense a slight shift in emphasis.
While citizenship is still prominent, a more consumer orientation – one
in which the student and his/her parents are seen as consumers of this public
service – took hold. Then, in 1938, the
National Education Association (NEA) issued a report entitled The Purpose of
Education in American Democracy, which seemed to re-ignite an, albeit
modest, awareness of civics education.
This NEA report’s list of aims is (1)
self-realization, (2) human relationships, (3) economic efficiency, and (4)
civic responsibility.[3] In this case, the historical context of that
time seems to have played a role. One
can speculate that the level of interdependence which the Depression imposed on
people encouraged a more communal set of aims.
More recent efforts to list aims and goals for
education have maintained a lukewarm level of importance attributed to civics. One can denote a more subordinate concern for
the subject and a castigation of the field as being impractical and being
sacrificed to the more utilitarian expectations of education – those of
preparing students for the job market and other personal concerns.
That is, educational aims and goals express a
greater concern for the welfare of the individual students than for the health
of the society.[4] Education priorities have taken an even more
consumer orientation, leaving the more civic concerns of the founding fathers far
behind and mostly out of sight. This
blogger submits that that change is at the center of the nation’s
civic/political problem that is tearing apart the general health of the
republic.
On a more specific level, in the very field of
social studies, amid concern and debate about how central the teaching of the
social sciences and history disciplines should be in pre-college curriculums,
social studies began in 1916 with a strong emphasis on a civic focus. Social studies subjects were meant to assure
that American children were amply prepared to take on the responsibilities of citizenship. This was seen as particularly important in
the midst of the vast immigration that was taking place in the early twentieth
century.
A bit later, the disciplines of history and of the
social sciences were to be supporting components of such an effort.[5] This was, at that time, and is still
controversial among both members of those organizations and those who
nationally set the policies affecting social studies. The professional organizations representing
those academic fields that, it so happens, supported the birth and growth of
social studies, were and are still supportive of such an emphasis.
Many in these organizations, such as the
American Historical Association, wanted and still argue for a
discipline-centered approach for social studies, an argument they “won” without
being aware of it. Most actual offerings
in social studies are organized around textbooks that are often authored by
experts in the fields of the social sciences and history but then go through
the “neutering” process known as the textbook adoption process at state levels
(a process that has garnered the critical attention of Diane Ravitch[6]
among other commentators).
The sum total of this reaction by academics has
been misplaced. What historians, for
example, such as what the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. riled against, is basically
inaccurate. Social studies, as it was
first defined, is not what children and adolescents experience in America’s
schools. What they experience is
excessively structured material presented in textbooks written in horribly
boring style and content, which has little to do with any preparation for
citizenry in a meaningful way or enticement of students to pursue those
subjects at higher levels.
These presentations are full of platitudes about
the sacrifices of previous generations (which would be useful if couched in
realistic settings with vivid, dramatic descriptions of how those sacrifices
unfolded) or the abstract depictions of national institutions – such as the
presidency. For example, American
government is taught as if it were a mechanical engine with parts and certain
processes, devoid of the human quality that might engender any interest on the
part of the student.
The only substantive topic given emphasis in
the typical government textbook is that of individual rights. Per se, that would be good if not for how
exclusive that attention is and how clinical the language tends to be. A recent review of one of the popular textbooks
revealed three chapters dedicated to rights and the only reference to community
in the index referred to local community standards as they related to
censorship.
With that bit of criticism, this posting will stop describing this element. The next posting will review the significance of the comments that this and the last posting conveyed relevant to the overall goal, the elements of a teacher preparation program. Again, this first element of teacher preparation program is to instill in teachers a sense of how central civics is to what should be the purposes of a public-school education.
[1] Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (New
York, NY: Alden, 1885)
[2] Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary
Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bulletin 35
(Washington, DC: U. S. Office of
Education, 1918).
[3] Educational Policy Commission, The Purpose of
Education in American Democracy (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1938).
[4] See, for example, Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Committee on Research and Theory, Measuring and Attaining the
Goals of Education (Alexandria, VA:
ASCD, 1980) AND U. S. Department of Education, National Goals for
Education (Washington, DC: U. S. D. O.
E., 1990).
[5] R. Freeman Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational
Reform: Perspectives for the Public and
the Profession (Stanford, CA: Hoover
Institution Press, 1989).
[6] For a summary description of Ravitch’s critique see
Jay Mathews, “Why Don’t We Fix Our Textbooks?”, The Washington Post
(March 22, 2005), accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56501-2005Mar22.html .
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