JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXIV

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

By way of background, this posting continues a dialectic argument that counters the prevalence of the parochial/federalism construct as the main view of governance and politics – that prevalence held in the US until the end of World War II.  To gain a historical appreciation, in those years after the war the nation shifted to the natural rights view – a highly individualist view of governance and politics – that encouraged a set of values, theories, and preferences that has, more than any other view, guided the way Americans see how they should behave politically.

          Among those adopted views was a preference for a political systems model, adoption of a transactional approach to politics, and a diminution of communal sentiments and values that were central to the parochial/federalist view.  The newer view did favor higher degrees of equality – as defined by the natural rights view[2] – which led to such developments as the civil rights movement among African Americans.  It also affected how educators have run the nation’s schools, including those schools’ curricula.

          In that vein, this blog has presented the natural rights view of how education should be run, and how it should develop its approaches to instruction, especially in terms of content.  To assist that effort, this blog has utilized Joseph Schwab’s commonplaces of curriculum.[3]  It is now ready to report on the last of those commonplaces, the milieu.

The Milieu

          The milieu is defined as the general social environment of the classroom and the school site.  For the purposes of this dialectic argument, the milieu is seen as being affected by the following factors:  the expectations of schools, the youth culture found at school sites, and the socio-economic status of schools’ student bodies.[4]  Christopher Hurn places a great deal of emphasis on these factors in his description of the sociological make-ups of American contemporary schools.

          Specifically, this argument will provide answers to the following questions:

 

·      How do current expectations of schools affect the implementation of a natural rights construct?

·      How does the socio-economic status of individual school populations affect the implementations of a natural rights construct?

·      How does the youth culture of a school affect the implementations of a natural rights construct?

 

Expectations of Schools

          The expectations of schools are derived from the prevailing social-cultural values of the American people.  The logical assumptions people seem to share is expecting that their schools support, in the school’s civics’ curriculum, the values they hold toward government.  Salem Middle School in Lithonia, Georgia offers a typical list of general expectations and one can readily see their civic quality.  Here is their general comment followed by a list of expectations:

 

The expectations, rules, procedures and consequences of [a teacher’s] classroom are intended to keep the classroom environment safe, orderly, and productive.  Please respect the rules so that we can maximize learning time together.  The rules are not hard to follow, nor are any of them “out of the ordinary.”  They are simply expected behaviors for high school students in this classroom.  If you have any questions about any of these rules, or why they are in place, you have the right to find out – please ask me as soon as possible.  There should never be a rule that does not have a purpose!

Thank you for your cooperation!

CLASS EXPECTATIONS

1.    Respect yourself, the teacher & others …

2.    Put forth your best effort at all times …

3.    Be prepared for class each day …

4.    Follow directions when given …

5.    Pay attention, participate and ask questions …

6.    Preserve a positive learning environment …

7.    Take responsibility for your actions …[5]

 

Each of these expectations are followed by further clarification; so, for example, number 6 has three further statements, the first being “Student actions that interfere with teaching or learning in the classroom will NOT be tolerated.”[6]

          This example is included for a couple of reasons.  One, as already mentioned, readers can detect a civic orientation to these directions.  Elsewhere, this blogger has pointed out that under the natural rights view, public school instruction avoids the promotion of values with one exception.  That exception has to do with school governance.  Misbehaviors will “NOT be tolerated.”  That is, good behavior is valued.

          Two, one can detect the natural rights’ bias for transactions.  Students are to behave and participate in classroom efforts; in exchange, it is understood that they will be educated.  Or stated another way, there is no concern for a common good; all goods are stated in terms of personal advantage.  And three, as transactional exchanges go, all references are directed at individual interests – not the communal welfare of the class or the school.

          John Goodlad addresses these biases.  That is, he developed a series of goals for the typical American schools by analyzing curricular documents from a sampling of districts.  He identifies this list of goals:

 

·      Develop knowledge of the basic workings of the government …

·      Develop a willingness to participate in the political life of the nation and community …

·      Develop a commitment to the values of liberty, government by consent of the governed, representational government, and one’s responsibility for the welfare of all …

·      Develop an understanding of the interrelationships among complex organizations and agencies in a modern society and learn to act in accordance with it.[7]

 

 

This listing was formulated in 1984 and represents a remnant of a federal leaning.  How?  By, at least, giving communal factors some mention (notice “welfare of all” and “understanding interrelationships” which can be interpreted as being federal).  But “interrelationships” can also refer to a systems approach for dealing with organizations such as schools as holistic/interrelated entities consisting of parts, including staffs, clientele, and/or serviced people.

          But, as ironically put by the online site, “Partners,” it states that:

Americans usually view every person as [a] self-sufficient individual, and this idea is important to understanding the American value system. Everyone is their [sic] own person, not a representative of a family, community, or any other group.

You may view this as rather selfish and egotistical, or as a welcomed freedom from the restraints of family, community, social class, etc. Yet, this self-centered attitude prevails in American culture—placing the most importance on the individual, not the group.

Likewise, U.S. Americans do not like to think of themselves as being dependent upon others or as others being dependent upon them. This can affect the boundaries placed on personal relationships, which starts with friendships.[8]

 

This last quote captures what it means to adopt the natural rights view.

Beyond that, though, Goodlad’s listing above reflects a basic support for the political system model in the study of the US government and its associated values as defined by natural rights advocates.  And with these initial observations regarding [9]the milieu, this posting ends.  The next posting will continue to describe this individualism and how it affects policy preferences and schooling.

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[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] Natural rights advocates define equality as individuals having equal standing before the law.  They do not include in their definition any notion of equality regarding specific living conditions such as meeting minimum economic welfare standards.

[3] Joseph Schwab presents his conception of the commonplaces of curriculum development – they are subject matter, students, teachers, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[4] These factors are identified by Christopher Hurn.  See Christopher J. Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of Schooling:  An Introduction to the Sociology of Education (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 1993).

[5] Ashley Owens, “Ms. Owens’s Classroom Expectations, Rules, Procedures and Consequences, Salem Middle School (n.d.), accessed October 19, 2022, https://salemms.dekalb.k12.ga.us/ClassroomExpectationsRulesProceduresandConsequences.aspx.

[6] Ibid.

[7] John I. Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill, 1984), 53.

[8] “Individualism,” Partners (n.d.), accessed October 19, 2022, https://pips.partners.org/life-in-the-united-states/american-culture/individualism.aspx#:~:text=Americans%20usually%20view%20every%20person,community%2C%20or%20any%20other%20group.  This “Partners” refers to an online site sponsored by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

 

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXIII

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

The last posting looked at teacher effectiveness.  Joseph Schwab, through his theorizing, devised a set of commonplaces that focuses on the factors that affect the way curricula are designed and implemented.[2]  Teacher is one of those commonplaces and can be analyzed by looking at teacher effectiveness.  This posting looks at another attribute, that being teacher knowledge.  Of course, the topics of effectiveness and knowledge, when applied to teachers, are highly related.

Teacher Knowledge

          As Lee S. Shulman, some years ago argued,

 

To teach all students according to today’s standards, teachers need to understand subject matter deeply and flexibly so they can help students create useful cognitive maps, relate one idea to another, and address misconceptions. Teachers need to see how ideas connect across fields and to everyday life. This kind of understanding provides a foundation for pedagogical content knowledge that enables teachers to make ideas accessible to others.[3]

 

Therefore, these teachers must keep up with the latest developments in their disciplines.  Also of importance is for teachers to have a working knowledge of the history and philosophy of their individual disciplines – which means for civics teachers becoming knowledgeable of vying philosophies and theoretical traditions that are prominent in the various social sciences.

          This – extensive knowledge of a teachers’ subject matter – can be a point of concern for a variety of reasons.  Those reasons extend from noting incorrect information – due to more recent discoveries – to looking more closely at some topic or issue.  As one might intuitively surmise, knowledge affects the quality of teaching in any subject including civics.

          Commenting on mathematics teachers, Margaret Walshaw claims,

 

[Knowledge] plays a critical role in extending and challenging students’ conceptual ideas.  Sound subject knowledge enables teachers to mediate between the mathematical tasks, the artifacts, the talk, and the actions surrounding teaching / learning encounters.  Teachers with limited subject knowledge have been shown to focus on a narrow conceptual field rather than on forging wider connections between the facts, concepts, structures, and practices of mathematics.[4]

 

To further this sentiment, Suzanne Wilson, et al. noted that teachers with high degrees of knowledge more often questioned textbook authority in the class, efficiently pointed out students’ misconceptions, readily related subject matter content to other concerns and other disciplines, organized class activities effectively, and meaningfully interpreted students’ remarks and positions.[5]

          Meanwhile those teachers who were not so knowledgeable were more often inaccurate, superficial, and inappropriate in their comments.  Therefore, knowledgeable teachers are preferrable for a variety of reasons.  Unfortunately, in either controlling course content or in the knowledge base one would want for   teachers, certain shortcomings exist.

          In teaching civics, teachers have little say as to what perspective or approach the content will be determined.  Those decisions are left to district curricular designers and, more importantly, developers of textbooks.  This blogger, from his teaching experience of thirty years, agrees with this claim:

 

The textbook determines the components and method of learning.  It controls the contents, the method and the procedures of learning.  Students learn what is presented in the textbook, in other words the way the textbook presents materials is the way the students learn it.[6]

 

          Most teachers do not feel they have a say in those determinations.  Teachers pride themselves in being able to teach what is given them.  This attitude came through clearly in a four-year ethnographic study of a working-class elementary school[7] and at the high school level.[8]  More recent attention has become somewhat viral as concerns over an array of issues have reflected the polarized political environment that prevails today.[9]  What the long-term effects of these developments will have are yet to be known.

          But beyond these more current concerns, what one can still ascertain is that with higher levels of knowledge, teachers can make the viable choices as to what is important content and what is not.  Teachers, irrespective of the textbook used, have great influence in determining how students will come to understand the content of a particular subject.  This influence in turn is, as stated above, dependent on the knowledge and understanding that individual teachers have.

          And in no area is this factor more important than in how teachers treat the textbooks they are assigned.

 

A textbook is only as good as the teacher who uses it.  And it’s important to remember that a textbook is just one tool, perhaps a very important tool, in your teaching arsenal.  Sometimes, teachers over-rely on textbooks and don’t consider other aids or other materials for the classroom.  Some teachers reject a textbook approach to learning because the textbook is outdated or insufficiently covers a topic or subject area.

          As a teacher, you’ll need to make many decisions, and one of those is how you want to use the textbook.  As good as they appear on the surface, textbooks do have limitations.[10]

 

And yet textbooks continue to have the pervasive role. 

This blogger, in his book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics,[11] has continued a long list of scholarly works that have looked at civics books and evaluated their effects on civics education.  Generally, they point out that while relying on a political systems model, they are varying only in their incorporation of current issues or the utilization of inquiry methods – which are utilized, if at all, to a very limited level.  Therefore, the use of the natural rights perspective with the emphasis on political systems seems to be a prudent course to take.

          This blog will next address the milieu, the last of Schwab’s commonplaces of curriculum development.

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[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] Joseph Schwab presents his conception of the commonplaces of curriculum development – they are subject matter, students, teachers, and milieu.  See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] “Teacher’s In-Depth Content Knowledge,” University of Northern Iowa (n.d.), accessed October 12, 2022, https://intime.uni.edu/teachers-depth-content-knowledge.

[4] Margaret Walshaw, “Teacher Knowledge as Fundamental to Effective Teaching Practice,” Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 15 (May 6, 2012), 181-185, accessed October 16, 2022, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10857-012-9217-0#:~:text=It%20plays%20a%20critical%20role,actions%20surrounding%20teaching%2Flearning%20encounters.

[5] Suzanne Wilson, Lee S. Wilson, Anna E. Richert, “‘150 Different Ways of Knowing:’ Representations of Knowledge in Teaching,” in Exploring Teachers’ Thinking, edited by James Calderhead (London, England:  Cassell Education, 1987), 104-124.

[6] “Role of Textbook in Language Teaching and Learning,” School Education (n.d.), accessed October 16, 2022, https://www.rajeevelt.com/role-of-textbook-language-teaching-learning-educationist/rajeev-ranjan/.  An insight that equally pertains to social studies.

[7] Jane J. White, “What Works for Teachers:  A Review of Ethnographic Research Studies  as They Inform Issues on Social Studies Curriculum and Instruction,” in Review of Research in Social Studies Education:  1976-1983, edited by William B. Stanley (Washington, DC:  National Council of the Social Studies, 1985), 215-307.

[8] Stephen J. Thornton, “Teacher As Curricular-Instructional Gatekeepers in Social Studies,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Co., 1991), 237-248.

[9] Nicole Daniels, “What Role Should Textbooks Play in Education?” The New York Times, January 14, 2020, accessed October 16, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/learning/what-role-should-textbooks-play-in-education.html.

[10] “Textbooks:  Advantages and Disadvantages,” Teacher Vision (November 15, 2019), accessed October 12, 2022, https://www.teachervision.com/curriculum-planning/textbooks-advantages-disadvantages.

[11] Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022) AND, for example, Syukron Saputra, “Analysis of Civics Textbooks in Framework of the 21^st Century Learning, Advances in Social Sciences and Humanities Research,” 636, 2022, accessed October 16, 2022, file:///C:/Users/gravi/Downloads/125969102.pdf.