An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
This blog just finished a review of essentialist educational thought
concerning American schooling and reported that despite that approach’s
attempts at becoming more sophisticated, its application has been mostly
limited to dispensing information. That
has been primarily in the form of lecturing and the use of media – film and film
strips – to enhance the information that the students’ textbooks present.
In terms of sophisticated
efforts by essentialists, the blog pointed out the work of Robert Gagne – a
behavioral education psychologist – with his five conditions of learning and
nine instructional events. Perhaps his
work should be required in teacher preparation programs across the country.
With that review, the
blog will now address, as it did with parochial federalist curriculum, the
commonplaces of curricular development – learners, subject matter, teachers,
and milieu – as they apply to essentialist educational efforts. With a general view of how essentialists go
about developing the subject materials and activities they favor, readers will
acquire a better insight into how natural rights biases affect civics
education.
Students or Learners
Interested parties might ask: what is known about the nature of students in
relation to the principles of the natural rights/essentialist perspective? This promotion of that perspective contains
evidence regarding that nature and, in turn, can be utilized to support that
construct’s implementation in America’s civics classrooms.
Some of the issues to be addressed pertain to the
individual interests of students, to the affected parties who deal with those
students’ long-term interests, and to the conditions that students confront
within the wider society. What follows
will focus on various areas of concern:
student interests, student problems, and student educational
requisites.
It
will answer the following questions: what
personal, social, economic, political, and pedagogic interests are benefited by
using the natural rights construct in the teaching of government and politics
at the secondary level? This will not be
an in depth inquiry into these
issues (each can be the topic of extensive study), but a general review which
sufficiently helps justify the adoption of the natural rights construct.
Personal Student Interests
At the individual level,
when attending secondary schools, students can be generally described as being
in the adolescent period of their lives.
Within American culture, profound changes take place in this stage of
life. This state of affairs is not
necessarily apparent, in all its complications, to the adults with which the
youths must deal. In the area of maturation,
various writers have addressed the prevalence of competitiveness during the adolescent
years that young people experience.[2]
This aspect is highlighted here because it
affects how predisposed young people are to accepting the capitalist nature of the
American economy. For example, there are
times in which their numbers have grown more rapidly within the general
population than the number of economic opportunities, particularly for those
who are vying for employment at lower skilled levels. This has led to an inordinate number of
youths becoming discouraged by their prospects.[3]
At a premium, more so
than in the past, are good grades, sports awards, and other demonstrations of
achievement. The youngsters often begin
to feel pressure from parental demands in these areas of concern. These demands are offset by feelings of guilt
on the part of parents when they are motivated to befriend their offspring. This has led to confusing interactions among
family members due to unclear parental roles.[4]
Within such a pressured environment,
knowledge of the causes of such conditions would help young people deal with
the demands they feel. Schools, for
example in modern America, are often complex institutions. The systems approach not only explains the
manner in which governments are managed, but also other social institutions such
as schools – thus the compatibility of the model.[5]
In short, a systems
approach to the study of government and politics could shed light on the
structures of those schools and how they govern morally – assuming they do – and,
in terms of political interactions, how these structures make demands on
students. Such concerns as roles and
expectations could be placed within a logical whole. That whole, in turn, could be analyzed and
the position of the student and significant others could be placed mentally within
that system.
With that, the interests
of different participants in the youths’ lives could be identified. The policies emanating from those people,
which often can seem to young people as arbitrary and capricious, could begin
to make sense as those students are exposed to a more contextualized whole by
which to identify and measure the various levels of power and influence among
those other participants.
That is, the position of
students and significant others – fellow students, teachers, administrators,
and staff members – could be meaningfully placed within that system. The interests of different participants in
young people’s environments can not only be identified but also talked about
and understood within the system.
By doing so, a better comprehension can potentially
emerge and those realities can even be seen in a more legitimate light. In addition, the systems approach and the
natural rights agenda are aimed to instill the cultural knowledge that would
help those youngsters mature into productive and competitively prepared
individuals. This is serious business
that cannot be left to curricular attempts which rely on methods such as
inquiry and discovery.[6]
Such other strategies leave students with
possible erroneous beliefs about the world with which they deal or will deal in
the future. This concern with the lack
of definitiveness that one can ascribe to inquiry or discovery methods can be
noted in the literature back to the early 1980s.
While [Willian
C.] Bagley [leading essentialist] decried the deemphasis on the “exact and
exacting studies” and the “disparagement of system and sequence in learning,”
contemporary critics of the curricular innovations of the 1960s have charged
the “discovery method” or “inquiry method” is inefficient and causes students
to “reinvent the wheel” rather than master the funded knowledge of the past in
an orderly way. Contemporary critics
argue that the process and method of learning has been overemphasized to the
detriment of content. While the
innovators of the 1960s promised that they would teach children how to think,
the critics of the 1970s and 1980s have argued that, in order to think,
students must have something to think about.
Like Bagley, they argue that the curriculum should have a content that
is logically or chronologically structured.[7]
Therefore, the personal
interests of students, especially during adolescent years, are best served by
providing them with fundamental, practical knowledge and fundamental skills
(such as being able to read and comprehend information regarding the political
realities of the polity). In that way
those students, as adults, will be able to adequately define their interests
and act in a functional manner.
This posting will end
with this more practical message. Next,
the blog will address the social interests of students. But it will start with one last reemphasis
that this philosophical view, essentialism, highlights. That is, the posting will begin with expressing
a basic call or an expectation that one has of schools, especially public
schools (in that taxpayer funds are involved).
That will be that those schools are meant to
functionally prepare students to meet the challenges of adulthood. So, the next posting, before addressing
social interests, will add one more essentialist concern involving student
interests and the role that schools, even in their civics offerings, are called
upon to meet.
[1] This presentation continues
with this posting. The reader is informed 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 the natural rights view might present. This
is done to present a dialectic position of that construct. This series of postings begins with “Judging
Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.
[2] This characteristic varies during different times and
in various places or nations. In the 1980s,
David Breskin wrote of heightened levels of it during that time. See David Breskin, “Teen Suicide,” Rolling
Stone (November 8, 1984), 26-37. More
recently, levels seem lower in Korea.
See You-Kyung Lee and Eunjin Seo, “Cooperative and Competitive Attitudes
During Adolescence and Their Social and Academic Outcomes,” Journal of Youth
Adolescence, 51, 4 (April 2022), 792-804.
[3] For example, Sam Quinones gives a compelling argument
of how the loss of manufacturing jobs in America has been instrumental in the
initial and continued popularity of opiates.
See Sam Quinones, Dreamland:
The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).
[4] “Parenting:
The Teen Years,” American Psychological Association (2011), accessed
September 22, 2022, https://www.apa.org/topics/parenting/teens.
[5] Daniel Katz and Robert Louis Kahn, The Social
Psychology of Organizations (New York, NY:
John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1966).
[6] Even proponents of inquiry or discovery methods share
in concerns over the viability of those methods. See, for example, Cassie Quigley, Jeff C.
Marshall, Cynthia C. M. Deaton, Michelle P. Cook, and Michael Padilla, “Challenges
to Inquiry Teaching and Suggestions for How to Meet Them,” Social Educator,
20, 1 (Spring 2011), accessed September 22, 2022, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ940939.pdf.
[7] Gerald L. Gutek, Basic Education: A Historical Perspective (Bloomington,
IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational
Foundation, 1981), 16. William Bagley
passed away in the 1946.
