[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 with describing what the second element is. If not read, the reader is encouraged to check
out the previous postings of this series that began with the posting of
September 28, 2021, and is entitled “Prime Reason.”]
So, the argument in this series of postings has
been that prospective civics teachers should be encouraged to see the teaching
of their subject not only as the main component of social studies but of all
public (and this blogger would argue, of private) education. That claim constitutes the first of five
elements of an ideal teacher preparation program. It is now ready to go on to the second element,
but a bit of background information would help.
Education
for the masses cannot be just another consumer service (as the current trend
seems to be); it must be a collective (or better stated, a communal) endeavor
for the benefit of the collective/community if it is to encourage civic-minded
citizens to emerge. That outcome is what
justifies the expenditure of public funds to further the education of
individual students.
An effective teacher preparation program, one
that leads to a state certification, and this goes beyond perspective
civics/social studies teachers and includes all state certified teachers, needs
to instill this distinction between a commercial view and a collective/communal
view. The first occurs when students and
parents are considered consumers and the second when the ultimate beneficiary of
educational systems are the societies that they serve.
With
that line of thinking in place, one can proceed to the second element and it 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.
What follows speaks to an evaluation of such a
culture.
As the commercial view becomes ever more
intrusive into the activities of an advanced capitalist nation, the popular
culture is geared more toward immediate gratification. Such a development manifests itself in a
popular culture more and more characterized by sensationalism, short-term decision-making,
and shallow interests lacking in the concern for human problems.[1]
Daniel
Bell provides a related developmental pattern that rings true to this blogger. It begins by pointing out that capitalist
systems start, at least in western countries, with an ascetic spirit commonly
thought of as the Protestant ethic.
During the initial stage in which, for example, this ethic takes hold,
as in the US, not only is hard work promoted, but also a high sense of
frugality and a shunning of acquisitiveness became accepted wisdom.[2]
Capitalism
then proceeds to a stage that embraces modernism. During the second developmental stage, there
is a rejection of the past and instead, a commitment to endless change (at
times for its own sake) commonly on an ongoing basis, and an over reliance on
science ensues. All human concerns fall
subject to structural reduction, i.e., explanations made up of mechanistic
relationships between independent and dependent variables – what this blog has pointed
out as being called reductionism.
This
development did not totally replace the biases of the original Protestant based
bourgeoisie, but instead created a tension between the more fundamental
elements of society and its modern elements – such as when segments fight over
what some consider over-materialism. And
against this backdrop, a third phase springs up which in the US took place in about
the mid twentieth century mark.
This
third development rejects the formality and structure of the modernists and
through an emphasis on language rejects the authority of theories and texts.
On
the vulgar level, PoMo, as postmodernism is now [or is it, was] called, is the
creed of pastiche and parody, of the idea that anything goes, of the
enthronement of popular and low culture, and of exhibitionism – in body art,
performance art, the cross-dressing of a Madonna or the androgynous appearance
of a Michael Jackson, and the transgression of the blasphemous – all of which
is intended to, and does, shock “traditional” bourgeois morality and has given
rise to a political reaction and a set of cultural wars that has tended to
polarize the polity.[3]
Bell goes on to point out that accompanying
these tensions has been the divorce between morality and law.
Due
to a string of historical developments, religion lost its hold as ultimate
arbiter of moral questions. Law then
became a matter of process, not substance.
That lost substance, when heeded, played a vital role in integrating
society. All of these trends and
tensions, in the opinion of this blogger, have left the nation with a brand of
capitalism in which the market, as opposed to moral traditions or common folk
wisdom, determines legitimate pursuits.
Among those who have adopted a postmodern
perspective – which it now functions to provide the basis in how, among many
people, things are judged, includes just about anyone with a beef as in raiders
of the Capitol with Viking getups and other paraphernalia. At times, as on January 6th, such
expression can become quite serious in intent and in its consequences.
It
is not that the popular culture is that different (although this blogger
believes it is), but that what is important, among other important changes, is
the legitimacy that is ascribed to current assumptions, heedless passions, and
the icons that are a part of this newer perspective – and this, while originally
limited to the liberal end of the political spectrum during Bell’s day, has
today infected the right as well.
One can interpret and include the broad
rejection of science among many in the “red” states as witnessed during this
current pandemic. And these are not
messages lost on the nation’s youth that one confronts in classrooms. If consumption of products indicates
anything, when these cultural messages are found represented in those products,
then they are being readily accepted by those young people.
To be clear, this blogger, in terms of
economics, unlike Bell, is a believer in capitalism. He sees the socialist approaches to economic
concerns as based on unrealistic assumptions regarding human nature. He wishes that reality were different, and he
finds much to admire in Marx’s writings, but overall, unfettered Marxist
proscriptions have led to disastrous results in many countries.
But as with any other ideology, an adoption of capitalism
that is not accompanied by effective checks will also lead to catastrophic
results. For example, two periods of
near limitless capitalism, the 1920s and 1980s, led to dramatic economic
calamities: the Great Depression and the
Great Recession. For the most part, the
New Deal reforms – a reaction to the first of these – during the 1930s can be
judged to be such checks on pure capitalism.
And something that cannot be stressed enough is
that a public school system run by the state in the name of the state is
another such check. As pointed out by a
respectable source, the Oregon Supreme Court in the 1950s, stated:
Education
is a function or duty not regarded as a local matter. It is a governmental obligation of the
state. Few of our administrative
agencies are creatures of the organic law [meaning constitutional law]. But, as to schools, the constitution mandates
the legislature to provide by law “for the establishment of a uniform, and
general system of Common Schools …” It
is a sovereign power and cannot be bartered away.[4]
And with that sobering note, this posting will
end. The next posting will have more to
convey concerning this second element.
[1] Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of
Capitalism (New York, NY: Basic
Books, 1996). While Bell, deceased
sociologist of some repute is known as a Marxist leaning economic observer, a
liberal political observer, and a conservative social observer, the cited
sentiment could have come from Karl Marx’s writings. This blog has addressed these attributes of
an advanced capitalist-based culture and has cited other experts.
[2] For a descriptive account of this phase, see Daniel
Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whig Party (Chicago,
IL: The University of Chicago Press,
1979) especially his chapter on “The Evangelicals.”
[3] Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 284.
[4] Monaghan v. School District No. 1, 211 Ore.
360, 315 P. 2nd 797 (1957), emphasis added.
