This blog, in recent postings, has been citing a string of writers from
the waning years of the twentieth century.
This is due to this blogger’s current interest in how federalism and
related topics have been considered from roughly that time. Of great interest, perhaps due to the
upcoming “turn of the century,” was the notion of transformation and how the
world – especially the advanced nations – was going through meaningful change. One writer, the world historian, Leften
Stavros Stavriano, zeroed in on this theme.
He hinted that the
descriptive term, “axial period,” could possibly be applied to that time and
the years to follow into the twenty-first century. In 1992, he wrote, “As in the original axial
age [first millennium B.C.], basics are being challenged – governments, isms,
traditions, and leaders. In the course
of today’s axial age, one and all are now on trial.”[1] Does such a view reflect a “present bias,”
one that augments what is happening now?
The belief here is that profound changes are taking place and perhaps
what one has been experiencing is just a new normal.
For example, as the prior
postings hint, the nation’s economy is transforming, but American institutions
are not functionally transforming with it.
Of course, what is of interest here is the educational institution. The question is not whether schools are
teaching as effectively today as they did earlier – if one can describe
American schools as ever being effective – but are they sufficiently effective
for the challenges that the future holds?
In the opinion of many
responsible writers, current schools are not meeting these challenges.[2] But,
summarily, one can get an overall sense of this state of affairs in the
following quote from the Department of Education,
It’s
clear what it means to be prepared for tomorrow’s economy. Already, three-quarters of the
fastest-growing occupations require education beyond a high school diploma,
with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers prominent on the
list. However, our schools aren’t
preparing enough of our students for that reality. Today, the United States has one of the
highest high school dropout rates in the world.
Among students who do complete high school and go on to college, nearly
half require remedial courses, and nearly half never graduate.[3]
The irony is that to address these globally induced demands, one must
look to the nation’s most intimate of settings; one must address the demands of
communal institutions such as the family and the local school.
Prominent in these
concerns are the conditions of schools.
The challenges to schools promise to be more demanding under the
economic and social realities briefly outlined earlier in this blog. Whether schools are effective, the gap
between how effective they are and how effective they need to be is growing. To be more effective, schools need to be
perceived as more supportive yet demanding places. In addition, students must perceive that what
they are engaged in at school demands a certain level of duty.
Usually ignored in the
discussion of what is happening in schools have been the social contexts in
which schools find themselves and the environments they create within their
walls. No longer can schools count on a
type of community support that characterized most of their history[4]
and the sense of community they enjoyed among the nation’s work force. While America was not as communal as perhaps
other nations, it still enjoyed a far greater sense of community than it does
today. As Christopher Hurn noted toward
the end of twentieth century,
Between
the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, high schools became less solidary institutions
capable of inspiring loyalty and commitment.
At the beginning of this period most high schools held weekly assemblies
in which all students were expected to be present, maintained large numbers of
clubs and voluntary societies that met after school, and celebrated and feted
exceptional achievement in award and prize ceremonies. All these activities helped create a sense
that the school was a community to which one owed allegiance rather than simply
a place where students came to work … [I]t must be emphasized that there is virtually
no research about these trends against which they might be compared, they
suggest high schools lost a significant part of their previous ability to
sustain a sense of community and shared purpose among their students during the
period of declining test scores.[5]
To reach meaningful reform, the lack of
community life must be addressed.
It
must be addressed both regarding how schools are organized and how they manage
their curriculum content relating to social studies, particularly in the
teaching of government and politics at both middle and high school levels. This blog proposes that rebuilding of
community life, in some form, is essential to making schools the kind of
institution a federalist advocate expects them to be. In this, this blogger’s book, Toward a
Federated Nation (available through Amazon), offers a how-to presentation by
which civics teachers can move to assist in meeting this aim.
Of
course, this concern simply reflects a more general tension Americans face,
that being of individualism – especially as touted by the natural rights view –
versus community – as touted by federation theory. The next posting will attempt to answer the
question: what does the statement – the
United States is too individualistic – mean?
That posting will add more substance to the concept of individualism.
[Reminder:
The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings
of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:
The Blog Book, Volume I. To
gain access, he/she can click the following URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader
access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this
blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for
October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]
[1] L. S. Stavianos, Lifelines from Our Past: A New World History (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 198.
[2] For example, E. D. Hirsch, Cultural Literacy
(New York, NY: Vintage, 1987) AND Eric
Liu, “What Every American Should Know,” The Atlantic (July 3, 2015),
accessed November 14, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/07/what-every-american-should-know/397334/ AND Diane Ravitch, National Standards in American
Education: A Citizen’s Guide (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1995)
AND Grace Chen, “10 Major Challenges Facing Public Schools,” Public School
Review (November 5, 2020), accessed November 14, 2021, https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/10-major-challenges-facing-public-schools AND Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for the 21st
Century Capitalism (New York, NY:
Vintage Books, 1992) AND Sydney Johnson, “Robert Reich on Student
Brains, Civic and Restoring Pathways to the Middle Class,” EdSurge
(August 3, 2018), accessed November 14, 2021, https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-08-03-robert-reich-on-student-brains-civic-education-and-restoring-pathways-to-the-middle-class .
[3] “Progress in Our Schools,” Department of Education
(n.d.), accessed November 14, 2021, https://www.ed.gov/k-12reforms .
[4] A Pew report shares that while 57% of Americans
engage in community programs, only 9% participate in parent engagement
activities which consists of school related or youth program activities. See Aleksandra Sandstrom and Becka A. Alper,
“Americans with Higher Education and Income Are More Likely to Be Involved in
Community Groups,” Pew Research Center (February 22, 2019), accessed November
15, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/22/americans-with-higher-education-and-income-are-more-likely-to-be-involved-in-community-groups/ .
[5] Christopher J. Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of Schooling: An Introduction to the Sociology of Education (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1993), 254-255.
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