[Note:
This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses
what a civics teacher preparation program should include. 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.”]
Just to be clear, the last posted entry of this
blog was a “digression,” that is, an interjected bit of information for readers
who have secured a book this blogger has had published, Toward a Federated
Nation. That book, through its
end/footnotes refers to supplemental chapters or essays augmenting, clarifying,
or otherwise further explaining an aspect of that book. It also does the same for an upcoming book
this blogger is planning to get published.
As
for the current path this blog has taken, this posting continues what the
series of postings has been addressing.
It continues reviewing a list of five elements this blogger believes a
teacher preparation program should include.
The blog is up to element four.
It is,
Element four:
A program that couches, primarily through civics education but radiating
throughout a utilized curriculum, an instructional approach in moral terms.
Perhaps the reader by now – if he/she has been
reading the various entries of this series – has decided where this blogger
stands in relation to the cultural wars.
Let him be clear; he profoundly respects and supports the constitutional
provisions for the separation of church and state. He fully supports the obstacles against
proselytizing in the nation’s public schools.
But that does not mean the nation should have a civics education that
pretends to be neutral on values and morals.
For
one thing, that is not what the nation has today. Under the guise of taking a hands-off posture
to value questions or positioning, current civics curricular strategies leave
it to individual students to determine what values they choose to adopt or develop. This blogger has called such a posture a
natural rights position. While ostensibly
neutral, in actuality, such a curricular stand is promoting capitalist values.
What determines “goodness” or “badness” revolves
around what sells on any given day or season.
Goodness is what is popularly considered good, and badness is what is popularly
cast as evil or immoral. But if an
educator believes such an approach is not only counterproductive, it is at some
level dictating the nation’s lack of morality or abundance of amorality. But what is one to do about this state of
affairs?
This blogger believes that public schools can
teach a more substantive moral position.
When advocating such a stance, the immediate concern one hears is whose
values and morals should be adopted?
This blogger believes an American answer to such a question – especially
when directed toward civic concerns – should be that of the founding fathers, expressed
in their profound wisdom by what they expressed in relation to the nation’s
founding documents.
To explain, one is assisted by categorizing
what those patriots produced in both the Declaration of Independence and
the US Constitution. So, for
example, the structure of the US Constitution makes it a compact. This structure comes from the covenants (a
form of a compact) that organized congregational churches in colonial times
and, in turn, originated from Judeo traditions.
Covenants are documents that contain solemn
pledges of unity in which the pledged parties swear to uphold the provisions of
the covenant, irrespective of what any of the parties might or might not
do. A covenant calls on God to witness
such unions. The broader category, the
compact, is such a pledge but does not call on God to be a witness.
As the political scientist, Donald Lutz,[1]
points out, an analysis of the founding documents from the time of the Mayflower
Compact (which is a covenant) point out that the founding framers of the
nation’s republic were very conscious of this meaning. That is why one treats the Constitution
with such solemnity.
A closer view, though, brings out a very
important development. The Declaration
of Independence is a covenant. The United
States Constitution is a compact.
There is no mention of a higher power in the Constitution. The only mention of religion, in effect,
limits its influence while protecting it from government interference. This blogger believes that the founding
fathers were admonishing their posterity with the words “to promote a more
perfect union” to create a moral foundation based on a secular morality.
Such a claim can be controversial. This secular morality is not meant to interfere
with the general sense of morality emanating from established religions but is
to be one which the civic public could count on no matter what the personal
moral beliefs of an individual might be.
While the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, establishes
the basis for the nation’s law, not the nation’s general sense of morality, in
doing so it also reflects who Americans are as a people, what their
constitution (with a small “c”) is, and their basic cultural beliefs are.
As this blogger, in his teaching days, tried to
convey to his high school students, a national constitution is the ideals of a
culture meeting the practical realities of a nation. Central to creating a more perfect union is
creating the structure, not only of government, but of a society that promotes
its own survival and advancement.
The criteria defining advancement are
determined by the posterity of the founding generation. Within that mandate, one can determine from
experience certain principles that need to be respected in order for survival
and advancement to proceed. These principles
can be expressed in terms of values.
They would include liberty, equality, justice, loyalty, a disposition to
work in communities, private property, honesty, and so forth.[2]
Civics education should be based on a definite
set of values not from those in power deciding what they should be, not from
religious theology, but from a non-ending study of what has led societies to survive
and advance. One reads of such a study
when one considers the references that the nation’s founding generation made in
its pamphlets and other written works.
In similar fashion, one should not be shy about
the nation’s moral commitment to the principles of the Constitution,
particularly to its invitation – or is it its expectation – for the nation to
engage in this moral process, which in part is very settled and in part is open
to debate and discussion. And with that
spirit, one can approach the day-to-day challenges civics teachers face and that
their preparation to be teachers should have prepared them to tackle – which is
the topic of the last element and fleshed out in the next and last posting of
this series.
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