JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXVI

 

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

As this blog makes its way through the natural rights view, currently reporting on its influence on civics education, the blog turns to the next aspect, schools’ sociological-economic bases.  This aspect is part of the commonplace of curriculum development, the milieu of school settings.  The notion of commonplaces is the product of Joseph Schwab.[2]

          If one keeps in mind that the main benefits of following a natural rights perspective in the teaching of American government and civics is that one, students are made aware of their rights and, two, they are presented with a realistic view of the nation’s political system, certain advantages can be realized.  Such educating leads students to viably, as adults, compete in the political fray.  As such, its use can be a positive force in the nation’s quest for equity.

          But the reality is that there are hitches with this quest.  Here is how a financial writer sees the state of variance among the various state systems in the US:

 

For the majority of U.S. families, public education is the only option.  But the quality of public school systems varies widely from state to state and is often a question of funding.  Public elementary and secondary education money usually flows from three sources:  the federal, state and local government.  According to the U.S. Department of Education, states contribute nearly as much as local governments, while the federal government supplies the smallest share.  Some researchers have found that more resources – or taxes paid by residents – typically result in better school-system performance.[3]

 

And this concern is not new.  Here is what David Berliner and Bruce Biddle reported in 1995:

Some Americans like to pretend that public education in this country is of one piece and that it provides equal opportunities for all … And yet, huge differences persist in the levels of support given to public schools in this country – differences that are far greater than those found in other advanced countries.  Funding levels are also closely tied to community affluence, which means that America’s wealthy suburbs have some of the world’s best schools, while appallingly bad schools appear in our urban ghettos.  Thus, instead of funding an educational system that provides equal opportunity[,] America operates a system of public education that discriminates against poor students because the schools they attend are badly underfunded.[4]

 

With the instruction of these realities to American students, which would be derived from an honest implementation of the natural rights perspective, certain results are possible.  That is, students who are from lower income environments can come to understand the politics that lead to their schools losing the “public education funding race.”

          The conditions of poorer schools are deteriorating and even an equalization of funding, at this time, will not lead to equal conditions.  While well-funded schools enjoy attractive and well-apportioned physical facilities with well trained teachers, small classes, and students who are being brought up in supportive environments, schools in the poorer areas of the nation exhibit quite different circumstances.  These latter schools are often squalid, crowded, and riddled with crime and violence.

          Teachers in these schools are continually looking to find a way out of them as they have to deal with inordinate numbers of students who are impoverished and “at risk.”[5]  Equal funding would only stop the gap from further widening.  For true equality, huge investments in these poorer areas need to be spent in order for these schools to catch up.  And central to this problem area has been the reliance on property taxes to fund schools.

          An American University online site addresses this source of inequality.  It reports the following:

 

The financing systems of public schools in the US ensure that community wealth disparities carry over into education. By relying largely on property taxes to fund schools, which can vary widely between wealthy and poor areas, districts create funding gaps from the word go. Affluent areas end up with well-funded schools and low-income areas end up with poorly funded schools. District sizes also distort funding levels. Predominantly white districts are typically smaller, yet still receive 23 billion more than districts that are predominantly  students of color, according to a recent EdBuild study. This results from the tendency to draw district lines around small affluent islands of well-funded schools within larger poorer areas that serve mostly students of color.[6]

 

          While teaching the natural rights perspective will not in itself do much to ameliorate the depressing conditions of the poorer schools, its message, if responsibly conveyed and heeded, is a positive one that can at least provide the information that could lead to understanding and, hopefully, to viable political effort by those so afflicted by the inequitable realities of poverty in America.

          In conjunction with other efforts, the use of the natural rights perspective could have a large positive impact on the conditions facing the nation’s poorer schools.  And this one factor – the economic inequality one finds among America’s school populations – proves to be a structurally imbedded factor that hinders those school systems in attaining their full potential.  And with that note, this blog will turn next to youth culture as the last topic this “judgment” of the natural rights influence on American education addresses.

[Note:  As regular and ongoing readers of this blog might know, this blogger takes a break every four hundred postings.  He did so after 400, 800, and now will do so after 1200 postings.  As of his counting, this posting is number 1199.  That leaves one more posting before the next break.  He anticipates the break will last at least two months, maybe three.  He has other projects, e.g., finishing his preparation of the re-edited collection of the blog’s second hundred postings.  He looks forward to the break and of getting back from it to resume producing this blog’s postings.]

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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] Adam McCann, “States with the Best & Worst School Systems,” WalletHub (July 25, 2022), accessed October 26, 2022, https://wallethub.com/edu/e/states-with-the-best-schools/5335.

[4] David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The Manufactured Crisis:  Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools (Reading, MA:  Addison-Wesley Company, Inc., 1995), 264.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “Inequality in Public School Funding:  Key Issues & Solutions for Closing the Gap,” American University/School of Education (September 10, 2020), accessed October 26, 2022, https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/inequality-in-public-school-funding.

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XXV

 

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

This posting continues a report on the expectation of schools that people share as an element of the commonplace, the milieu, in curriculum development.[2]  Central to this milieu in twenty-first century America is the importance these Americans ascribe to individualism which effectively sways the expectations they have of civics instruction. 

Anil Ananthaswamy comments on how individualism stacks up against other concerns.  This researcher writes,

 

There’s actually a lot of agreement on the things that are considered to be most essential such as respecting America’s political institutions and laws and believing in individualism.  There’s also considerable agreement on things that are considered less essential, such as the language one speaks, or whether someone was born in the US or has European ancestry.[3]

 

Seymour M. Lipset provides an extensive study of this American character trait.  He writes that Americans are exceptionally supportive of individualism and anti-statism.  Using comparative data, he demonstrates how, compared to the other modern industrial nations, the US ranks lower in taxes in such state-sponsored programs as welfare.[4]  More recent studies continue to support these claims.[5]

In short, Americans are highly suspicious of governmental efforts to solve maladies and prefer private-for-profit approaches to dealing with communal concerns.  Even public schools, some would argue, should shift to private-school arrangements.[6]  In turn, these biases are not isolated but are associated with many other views and concerns.

For example, Americans have a very pragmatic view of education.  Some have called this pragmatism as being anti-intellectual.  Americans are wary of schools attempting to introduce academic subject matter that they – the public – do not understand.  This was exemplified all the way back to the nation’s reaction to Sputnik in the late 1950s and 1960s and the reforms that ensued which were unintelligible to the public in general.  Those reforms enjoyed a short longevity and were mostly dismissed within a decade.[7]

Americans believe education should be purposeful, for the most part, toward practical career goals.  While this has resulted in different approaches used in schools over this century, a consistent antagonism toward highly academic bias has pervaded American campuses.  Robert Maranto and Jonathan Wai share an interesting overview of American education.  In their abstract introducing their study, they write,

 

Rooted in early 20th century progressivism and scientific management, Educational Leadership theory envisions professionally run schools as “Taylorist” factories with teaching and leadership largely standardized, prioritizing compliance over cognitive ability among educators. Further, the roots of modern education theory do not see the intelligence of students as largely malleable. Hence, prioritizing intelligence is viewed as elitist.[8]

 

          The natural rights perspective matches closely to this seemingly consistent desire of the American public.  For one, it treats government as a neutral institution.  This blends with the anti-statist position of most Americans.  While the systems approach recognizes the necessity of some government presence, it does not advocate any particular form for that presence nor for it to be extensive.

          It leaves those types of decisions to the political interplay of the American public through the expression of demands and supports, mostly voting behavior.  The instructional approach it favors does address from whence existing political pressures originate, but it does so in order for the student to gather explanations of the conditions that exist without projecting political biases for policy alternatives.

          The natural rights perspective, with its reliance on political systems, is a fairly straightforward construct avoiding difficult incursions into philosophic arguments of political theory.  The natural rights perspective most closely meets the expectations of American parents, i.e., that it should teach their youngsters what constitutes the government structure and give them a straightforward explanation of why the government is organized the way it is.

          In doing so, it definitely avoids such messaging as was associated with federalist notions of communal, cooperative, and collaborative aims or goals that government should pursue.  In its stead, one finds language that describes – and to a certain extent promotes – a transactional national stage in which the various parties go about competing for political favor from either government or other private parties.

          This completes this blog’s review of Americans’ expectations of their schools’ civics instruction.  Still to be covered are schools’ economic base and youth culture.  With that, this blog will complete its report on the commonplaces of curriculum development as seen through the “eyes” of the natural rights construct.

 [Note:  As regular and ongoing readers of this blog might know, this blogger takes a break every four hundred postings.  He did so after 400, 800, and now will do so after 1200 postings.  As of his counting, this posting is number 1198.  That leaves two more postings before the next break.  He anticipates the break will last, at least, two months, maybe three.  He has other projects, e.g., finishing his preparation of the re-edited collection of the blog’s second hundred postings.  He looks forward to the break and getting back from it to resume producing this blog’s postings.]

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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] Anil Ananthaswamy, “American Individualism and Our Collective Crisis,” Knowable Magazine, December 1, 2020, accessed October 23, 2022, https://knowablemagazine.org/article/society/2020/american-individualism-and-our-collective-crisis.

[4] Seymour M. Lipset, American Exceptionalism:  A Double-Edged Sword (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996).

[5] See for example, “How Do US Taxes Compare Internationally?,” Briefing Book, The Tax Policy Center, 2018, accessed October 23, 2022, https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally AND Robert Rector, “Poverty and the Social Welfare State in the United States and Other Nations,” The Heritage Foundation, September 16, 2015, accessed October 23, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/poverty-and-the-social-welfare-state-the-united-states-and-other-nations#:~:text=As%20a%20share%20of%20GDP,5%5D%20Ibid.%2C%20p..

[6] For example, see “Top Benefits of Private School vs. Public School,” Hotchkiss (n.d.), accessed October 23, 2022, https://www.hotchkiss.org/top-benefits-of-private-school.

[7] For a short, but interesting, history, see Dave Roos, “How the Cold War Space Race Led to US Students Doing Tons of Homework,” History [Channel], August 13, 2019, accessed October 23, 2022, https://www.history.com/news/homework-cold-war-sputnik#:~:text=The%20response%20from%20the%20U.S.,science%2C%20mathematics%20and%20foreign%20languages.

[8] Robert Maranto and Jonathan Wai, “Why Intelligence Is Missing from American Education Policy and Practice, and What Can Be Done about It,” Journal of Intelligence, 8, 1 (March 2020), accessed October 23, 2022, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151121/.  “Taylorist” refers to the work of Frederick Taylor on how production facilities, such as factories, should be run.  Central to his view was the incorporation of mechanical and engineering principles to the management of labor and other production elements.