JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, XX

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

Citizen Teacher Information

          Given the general notion that the parochial/traditional federalist construct is an approach to governance and politics that emphasizes traditional values of the nation, it would seem reasonable that people who are conservative would be most favorable to this construct.  Using the term conservative, though, is a bit confusing.  There are distinctive types of conservatives as the term is currently used.

          There are traditional conservatives, libertarians, neoconservatives, new rightists, nationalists (another term for Trump-ists), etc.  In these postings, conservative simply means one who favors traditional societal values and beliefs.  Since not all data sources which one can cite are clear in defining conservativism, its use should be used with qualifications.  And given that qualifier, here are the results of a relatively recent (2017) survey of teacher political allegiances:

 

·      Very liberal, 5%, liberal, 24%, moderate, 43%, conservative, 23%, very conservative, 4%

·      Party membership:  41% Democrat, 30% independent, 27% Republican, 1% third party

·      In 2016 voted 50% for Hillary Clinton, 29% for Donald Trump, 13% for third-party, 8% didn’t vote

 

And a few key findings were:

 

·      By and large, educators aren’t fans of school choice—even if they voted for Trump, who made it a signature issue. A plurality of all those surveyed—45 percent—"fully oppose” charter schools, while another 26 percent “somewhat oppose” them. And 58 percent don’t support using government funds to help students cover the cost of private school, while 19 percent said they “somewhat oppose” vouchers.

·      Forty-four percent of educators said they see the impact of immigration on schools as “mixed,” while another 38 percent said it is a “good thing.” Only 8 percent see it as a “bad thing.”

·      Seventy percent give Republicans a “D” or an “F” for their handling of K-12 policy. Forty five percent give Democrats a “D” or “F” for the same thing. Each party gets an “A” from only 1 percent of respondents.[2]

 

In terms of party affiliation, this group of Americans does not vary greatly from the general population.  While this slight lean toward the left, it still can be characterized as a sample that is not so averse to American traditional values given the combined percentages of moderate, conservative, and very conservative (70%).

            Teachers engage in political affairs much more than the general national population.  The above findings, assuming they, the teachers surveyed, report accurately, eight percent did not vote – which was over 40% of all eligible voters in 2016 – and this suggests that this group of citizens is more actively engaged in politics than the general population.[3] 

Assuming this is reflective of how active they are, it mirrors earlier research from the 1990s which indicates teachers being more active than other citizens at a 5 to 1 ratio.  That research considered the following types of activities as qualifying as political:  letter writing, making monetary contributions, and attending political meetings.[4]  Add to these activities, some consider belonging to a union being another example of political engagement and, while current trends indicate a dropping number in such membership, 70% still do belong.[5]

All of these characteristics point to a teacher subpopulation holding values and attitudes that are more communal and supportive of interaction in the political arena than is the case in the general population.  These values and attitudes are akin to parochial/traditional federalism.  As this argument of the dialectic debate between federalism and natural rights, it defines those value orientations as reflecting the ideas and ideals of the founding fathers and before that, to the colonial origins of this nation.

Again, to quote Leming in 1991:

 

… [Teachers] are less accepting of economic inequality as a necessary result of our economic system … it is reasonable to expect that social studies teachers would have little difficulty supporting and transmitting community values to children … [S]ocial studies teachers assume a role in schools as agents in the socialization of youth into community values.[6]

         

What the data and research amply demonstrate is that social studies teachers, as a group, have the predisposition to accept curricular changes that entail parochial federalism as the core construct in the teaching of American government and civics at the secondary level.  Such a change from the prevailing natural rights construct would not be too expensive or foreign from what teachers already know.  The difference would be more of an emphasis and a different way of looking at the definition and application of rights (from natural rights to federal rights[7]).

With the next posting, this blog will visit the next commonplace of curriculum development, that being the milieu.  But first, here is a reminder.

 

[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 by this blogger by merely clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022).  The reader is reminded that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Alyson Klein, “Survey:  Educators’ Political Leanings, Who They Voted For, Where They Stand on Key Issues,” Education Week (December 12, 2017), accessed June 5, 2022, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/survey-educators-political-leanings-who-they-voted-for-where-they-stand-on-key-issues/2017/12 .

[3] A modest review of the literature did not offer much information as to the level of political engagement by teachers.  The bulk of it focuses on whether teachers should be political in the classroom.

[4] James S. Leming, “Teacher Characteristics and Social Studies Education,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, ed. James P. Shaver (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 222-236.

[5] Liana Loewus, “Participation in Teachers’ Unions Is Down, and Likely to Tumble Further,” Education Week (October 12, 2017), accessed June 5, 2022, https://www.edweek.org/leadership/participation-in-teachers-unions-is-down-and-likely-to-tumble-further/2017/10#:~:text=About%2070%20percent%20of%20teachers,according%20to%20new%20federal%20data.

[6] Leming, “Teacher Characteristics and Social Studies Education,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, 231.

[7] As this blog has pointed out many times:  natural rights are the legal guarantee one can do what one wants to do as long as one does not interfere with others having the same rights, and federal rights are the legal guarantee one can do what one should do including the freedom to do so despite one’s passions.