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, October 12, 2021

LACKING WHAT’S NEEDED

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  The last posting finished describing and explaining the first of five elements.  This posting will begin by describing what the second element is.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

As this note points out, this blog continues with reviewing the second of five elements that a teacher preparation program should include.  That second element is,

 

Element Two:  A preparation program identifies both the challenge presented by the commodification of education and the popular culture that supports such commodification by describing it, explaining it, and evaluating it.

 

And as cultures tend to do, they promote some values and degrade others.  Understanding that dynamic in terms of what schools should be striving to accomplish needs to be part of what teacher preparation programs should address.

            There are those in education who fear recent developments – those pointed out by Daniel Bell and addressed in the last posting.  While this blogger has some reservations concerning Bell’s points, his overall message rings true.  With a popular culture that adopts an alluring commercial view, one hears, as legitimate prescriptions, commercial answers for the problems of education. 

In heeding such answers, is the nation bartering away its obligation to teach the young what should be taught?  When such policies as vouchers, other market mechanisms, and policies that heighten parental influence – as consumers – and limit the ability of school officials to run schools, do the more civic aims of education become compromised?

First, there is no doubt that parents need to have access to school officials to voice their concerns about the quality of the service that schools provide for their children.  They enjoy perspectives that are beneficial for school officials to hear and consider.  But the voice of a consumer is not what is needed.  What is needed is the voice of a partner in the endeavor to educate his/her son or daughter.  And that more communal role occurs, by definition, in truly federated arrangements.

Second, and here is the point at which this blogger’s experience kicks in, he believes, on a daily basis, that most parents do not respect good education per se.  What they want are credentials for their children.  They want the acquisition of those credentials to be as smooth, with the least number of hassles, as possible.

Yes, overall, they might buy more expensive housing to be able to send their children to what are perceived as better schools, but how do they measure better schools?  As the grind of daily living takes its toll, many parents simply do not want to be bothered with the on-going challenges associated with assuring that the education their children are getting is good. 

There is nothing in the popular culture that this blogger can detect that promises, encourages, or ensures that anything else is the case.  Oh, the economy may hold out rewards for those who have attained a superior education, but not as that education is taking place.  Instead, the popular culture seems to promote values, attitudes, and biases that are at best indifferent to the challenges of doing well in school if not “pushing” for a more immediate gratification frame of mind.

The popular culture also works in another counterproductive way.  Of course, students of college age are also products of that same culture.  In order to create a teacher education program that adopts this second element, college level programs need the assistance of appropriate messaging that would emanate from state government officials who support college professors as they conduct teacher preparation courses.  Such messaging should counter those counterproductive elements of the popular culture.

At the pre-college level, policies should be in place constraining schools from having to depend on the commercial interests that exploit the popular culture and its messages.  For example, this blogger taught at a high school some years ago that signed a contract with a soft drink giant to promote its drinks on campus.  The beverage they promoted was one high in caffeine.  Of course, the vending machines on campus made the drink readily available.  One can safely conclude that schools hinder the learning environment of their campuses by selling such a product.  While this practice may have become less likely of late, here it is cited as illustrating how a commercial entity might exert questionable influence.

When questioned, the principal justified the contract by pointing out that school supplies were going to be bought with the funds accrued from the deal.  In addition, the newspapers are full of stories about obesity of children a condition enabled by the lack of healthy food choices in the nation’s schools’ cafeterias.

Should schools have to depend on such deals to buy educational equipment and supplies or should the state provide these supplies without having to promote harmful products to the nation’s youth?  Is the nation bartering away its responsibilities as far as education and schooling are concerned?

And shouldn’t new teachers understand how pervasive the legitimacy of the popular culture is that supports this commercial view?  Of course, the answer given here is yes, but this blogger cannot express how difficult it is to even mention that message in public forums.  Yet, to be a viable civics education program, it must promote this messaging if it is to meet this particular challenge. 

In short, the public spirit that this blog promotes and that it wants civics education to support in the nation’s public schools sounds to a degree hollow and out of place in school settings that not only function in a popular culture of commercialism, but also have, to varying degrees, sold out to it.  In addition, even in education circles, this seems to be an incubating problem.  It’s under the surface and not being given the attention it deserves.

The popular culture which this posting addresses treats the dysfunctional aspects of the nation’s current society not as ones subject to reform, but as parts of a political and social backdrop untouchable by those who are involved.  Yes, they may lament this general condition, but little else.  One can look at current discussions and debates over civics education.  This blogger remembers before he retired, attending a Congressional Conference on civics education that was completely mute on these points.

He remembers that the assumptions of the discussions did not allow for the inclusion of these concerns and feels a bit awkward addressing them here.  Is it a state of affairs about which one cannot do anything to ameliorate the underlying factors causing these conditions?  Yes, critical theorists might speak to them, but does one have to adopt what this blogger considers such an extreme position to question this commercialization?

Without some meaningful recognition and commitment to change these conditions, the educational establishment and its classroom teachers have no hope of developing the type of civics education to which a partnered view would aspire.  Without a profound, transforming change, an educational system or even a local community might spend some money, make some noise and, as a fad, such effort will pass with little change. 

As things stand, any concerned teachers dubious of this undergirding condition are justified in being suspicious of any likelihood that things will change.  Addressing the obstacles to instituting changes in the nation’s polity, Matt Grossmann looks at how difficult it is to institute them into the American political system.  He writes,

 

Policymakers can and do collectively ignore public opinion and the direction of election results, sometimes by enacting contrary policy but most often by making no change at all.  The results of the policy process are determined by the interactions among policymakers themselves, and the public appears to have quite limited impact.[1]

 

Yet, Leslie R. Crutchfield writes of the potentials of “grass roots” politics and provides evidence of movements – such as the antismoking effort – being able to change policy.[2]  And these aspects of American politics should be addressed by teacher preparation programs.  Bottom line:  this should be addressed and those addressing the issue should be realistic, but believe that change can happen, if only through incremental advances at a time.  So, with that this blog is now ready to, and in the next posting will, share the third element.



[1] Matt Grossmann, Artist of the Possible (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 2014), 9.

[2] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).

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