A Crucial Element of Democracy

This is a blog by Robert Gutierrez ...
While often taken for granted, civics education plays a crucial role in a democracy like ours. This Blog is dedicated to enticing its readers into taking an active role in the formulation of the civics curriculum found in their local schools. In order to do this, the Blog is offering a newer way to look at civics education, a newer construct - liberated federalism or federation theory. Daniel Elazar defines federalism as "the mode of political organization that unites separate polities within an overarching political system by distributing power among general and constituent governments in a manner designed to protect the existence and authority of both." It depends on its citizens acting in certain ways which Elazar calls federalism's processes. Federation theory, as applied to civics curriculum, has a set of aims. They are:
*Teach a view of government as a supra federated institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.
*Teach the philosophical basis of government's role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both levels of individuals and associations of political and social intercourse.
*Convey the need of government to engender levels of support promoting a general sense of obligation and duty toward agreed upon goals and processes aimed at advancing the common betterment.
*Establish and justify a political morality which includes a process to assess whether that morality meets the needs of changing times while holding true to federalist values.
*Emphasize the integrity of the individual both in terms of liberty and equity in which each citizen is a member of a compacted arrangement and whose role is legally, politically, and socially congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.
*Find a balance between a respect for national expertise and an encouragement of local, unsophisticated participation in policy decision-making and implementation.
Your input, as to the content of this Blog, is encouraged through this Blog directly or the Blog's email address: gravitascivics@gmail.com .
NOTE: This blog has led to the publication of a book. The title of that book is TOWARD A FEDERATED NATION: IMPLEMENTING NATIONAL CIVICS STANDARDS and it is available through Amazon in both ebook and paperback versions.

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

SUMMARIZING AN ARGUMENT FOR LIBERATED FEDERALISM, III

 

This blog has been about answering a question.  That is:  does a federalist perspective, in the form of liberated federalism, provide a legitimate and viable construct for the study of governance and politics in both middle schools (civics) and high schools (U.S. government)?  Federalism, in its more theoretical plain, is concerned with a lot more than structural arrangement among entities such as the US’ central and state governments.  In fact, it offers a whole way of viewing governance and politics.

It is an approach that reflects a congregational style in which the individual entities making up a polity take on a partnership role with the other entities in the arrangement.  With that, each entity has understood duties, responsibilities, and obligations – not necessarily mandated by law – aimed at initiating or sustaining the interests of the federated union.  In short, each is to behave in ways that support those interests even if it means sacrificing self-interests.

To answer the above central question, there are subsidiary questions.  As this and those postings that immediately follow are summary entries, these questions suggested themselves from the concerns of the analysis this blog has presented. They are:  How have the constructs guiding the teaching of American government and civics – since the beginning of the nation – evolved?  What have been the salient consequences of that development?  To what state should the development of a construct lead?  And how can the desirable state come about?

The first two questions reflect the historical aspects of the analysis this blog has, since late 2021, been presenting.  That is an analysis of American governance and politics emanating from the central mental constructs that have guided those activities from the origin of the nation.  That history was summarized through the blog’s postings since that first one of this series, “Dealing with Ideals,” which was posted on December 14, 2021.[1]  It, the historical account, described and explained the evolution of the parochial/traditional federalist perspective and how it morphed into the natural rights perspective.

Included, though, were descriptions of political science theories or models that are associated with each historical period.  The theory of federalism, with a strong component of republican thought, was described utilizing the ideas of Daniel Elazar, Gordon Wood, and Donald Lutz, among others.  Their contributions helped present the general tenets of the federalist/republican view.[2]

When the analysis turned to the natural rights view, the blog shifted in its reliance on political science contributions, to the political systems model – mostly from the work of David Easton – and the structural-functional approach – the work of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell.  The two models were reviewed as basic disciplinary constructs which have served, under the natural rights era, as foundation for the current teaching of civics in the nation’s schools.

Challenging this dominant view, since the 1960s, has been the Marxian view, critical theory.  That view has softened the Marx influence with what has generally been the ideas of postmodernism.  Here, writings of Paulo Freire, Cleo Cherryholmes, Henry Giroux, and Michael Apple were utilized.  The central message of this approach has been to further a view of equality that it, the construct, holds as a trump value and advocates achieving equal results. 

In essence, it argues that levels of wealth and income should drastically approach equality across the workforce; that there should not be a “have,” as opposed to a “have not,” class of people.  Since no modern society has come close to this ideal, its actual realization – what that would look like – is a mystery.  Consequently, most content inspired by this approach seems to be lodged in describing how unequal or exploitive conditions are, especially in capitalist nations such as the US.

The synthesis, the adoption of liberated federalism to guide civics, contains the compromised position between natural rights and critical theory.  It advocates the re-emergence of federalism as the dominant view but is especially sensitive to the liberty and equality issues that natural rights and critical theory views stress in either their dominance or in their challenge. 

Here, the ideas of Philip Selznick, Amitai Etzioni, and Robert Bellah were central, as well as the cited writers of the federalist view.  As such, ideas and ideals of these contributors had a profound influence in the development of the proposed model, the liberated federalism model.  Stated as a simple assertion:  civics education should be guided by the liberated federalist mental construct.



[1] Interested readers who wish to look up the postings that present the dialectic argument from its beginning, see Robert Gutierrez, “Dealing with Ideals,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics,” December 14, 2021, accessed November 14, 2023, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2021_12_12_archive.html.

[2] These writers should not be considered advocates of parochial/traditional federalism, but of the more generic view of federalism or its ideals.

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