“STUDENT” AS A COMMONPLACE, V

 

This posting continues this blog’s review of William Schubert’s commonplaces of curriculum development by describing the commonplace, the student, and its concerns.  After providing accounts of other concerns – personal, social, and economic student interests – this posting will turn its attention to political student interests. 

Previously this blog has placed an emphasis on the idea that American individual political interests are foremost defined in terms of individual rights.  Regarding the natural rights perspective, which is prominent today, the whole approach places emphasis on the premise that individuals’ worth is established by their ability to make choices and act upon them.  This is what the natural rights perspective holds in highest priority. 

To those who advocate this natural rights position, the centrality of rights takes on a moral status.  That moral stand holds that human beings should conduct themselves to maximize the range or scope of everyone’s liberty.  Liberty, or freedom, is defined as the ability to control one’s life according to the dictates of one’s own judgments.  Any activity that diminishes that freedom for oneself or others is seen as being immoral.  This principle is what Jeffrey Reiman calls individual sovereignty.[1]

          In an earlier description of the liberated federalism model, as opposed to natural rights, this blog addressed the concept of constitutional integrity.  This other construct veers away from the natural rights’ almost radical view of individual prerogatives.  According to Philip Selznick, whose writings are more aligned with federalist thought, all persons have the same claims of equality of treatment as an expression of their intrinsic worth.[2] 

So, the liberated federalism perspective puts a high regard on individual rights as a component of the federalist view,[3] but counters a view that glorifies the nation’s individualism and the rights attached to it.[4]  Liberated federalism, in other words, adds a strong concern for communal needs beyond the individual, but maintains a strong commitment to what constitutes the rights and integrity of the individual.

          Despite this emphasis on the individual in the nation’s professed political ideology, Americans have become highly dependent on government services.[5]  Since it is incongruent with the individualism of the nation, the collective feeling is one of resenting this dependence.  The incongruence encourages an even higher demand for governmental neutrality.  Choices in resulting public programs are made through certain curious practices such as cost-benefit analysis which attempts to dehumanize the factors that go into governmental decision-making. 

Cost-benefit analysis places dollars and cents measures to preferences, but in doing so, shuns overarching moral principles and disregards the interests of the generations yet to be born.[6]  Economists write of using marginal analysis (what engenders the most benefit for the least cost at the margin) to determine rational decision-making factors, again with the effect of dehumanizing those human factors. 

Decision-making, as is called for in the liberated federalism perspective, should consider human commitments and moral assumptions.  These factors should be supported by social policy, but they are intangible and not subject to the calculations of marginal or cost-benefit analyses.  Students’ interests in all this are about how they are introduced to the appropriate role of government to meet not only the needs of individuals, but also the welfare of the commonwealth.

          The political interest of students includes becoming aware of the social practices that exist.  They should also be made aware that there are other moral standards that do not necessarily see such analyses as cost-benefit, as immoral or counterproductive, but merely deficient.  The liberated federalism perspective does not hold that these analyzing practices cease, but that in using marginal analysis or cost-benefit analysis, the practitioners or the consumers of such studies should be aware of their shortcomings.

          With this basic introduction to what affects student political interests, the next posting will address the more personal factors that students have in relation to the vying influences they face in their civics coursework.

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[1] Jeffrey J. Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate, edited by Cornelius F. Delaney (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994).

[2] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1992).

[3] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33, 2 (March 1, 1991).

[4] Matthew M. F. Miller, “The Radical Individualism Raging throughout America,” Shondaland (November 20, 2020), accessed September 27, 2023, https://www.shondaland.com/act/news-politics/a34729330/the-radical-individualism-raging-throughout-america/ AND Jean M. Twenge, Generations:  The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents – and What They Mean for America’s Future (New York, NY:  Atria Books, 2023).

[5] Matthew Spalding, “Why the U.S. Has a Culture of Dependency,” CNN (September 21, 2012), accessed September 27, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/spalding-welfare-state-dependency/index.html#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20the%20Wall%20Street,some%20type%20of%20government%20benefit.

[6] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).

“STUDENT” AS A COMMONPLACE, IV

 

By way of reviewing William Schubert’s commonplaces of curriculum development, this blog to date, in describing the commonplace, the student, has addressed students’ personal and social interests.  This posting looks at students’ economic interests.  This is a moving target since the economy regularly changes.  But if one picks a particular time – one that has come and gone – readers can see what happened and gain a sense of how a particular approach or view of curriculum affects this area of concern.

          So, in this blog’s effort to describe and explain how liberated federalism, an approach to civics education, affects students’ interests, this posting addresses the economic interests of students of another time.  In this posting, that time is (was) the years leading up to the 2008 economic meltdown that the US and the world market economies experienced.  That resulted from the highly irresponsible behavior in the housing market and almost resulted in a world depression.

As it was, it did lead to a recession that just fell short of being a depression.  Of interest here are the years preceding that downturn.  And with that backdrop, this posting utilizes some of the ideas this blog shared with its treatment of the parochial/traditional federalist view.  That treatment outlined the reasons why a federalist approach would be useful for the economic interests of students, and they are not diminished in the liberated federalist approach, the approach currently being highlighted. 

To summarize that argument, it was pointed out that the general prosperity that the United States economy had been enjoying was the product of the productivity gains made by the nation’s producers.  That productivity advancement was basically the result of the downsizing among the nation’s larger corporations, which had allowed prices to become more globally competitive. 

But this has been accomplished at a price, especially in the years leading up to the ’08 recession.  Despite improvements, the average standard of living had been declining in this nation since 1973.[1]  The same downsizing that caused extensive layoffs, though, was opening opportunities for smaller, service-based businesses to spring up.  These operations provided employment for many displaced workers, but at substantially lower wages. 

Michael Sandel pointed out that an early, in part, politically motivated aim of Americans was to own their own businesses.[2]  Besides the financial motivations, Americans saw owning one’s own business (the aim was mostly limited to white males) as providing greater control in their lives.  At that time, from 1973-2008, that very spirit could, and to a great degree, did become popular again.

The republican based notions of being that sort of independent participant in the make-up of a community was and is congruent with the notion that within the proposed model, liberated federalism, an individual has or should have constitutional integrity.  Any quality that adds to individuals being in control of their lives adds to the integrity of those participants.  In addition, a heightened economic interest, caused by ownership of a business, increases the concerns within individuals for the welfare of the community where such businesses are situated. 

Any businesses are advanced by positive conditions in their immediate environments.  In return, the polity which governs those communities and businesses is also helped by the increased attention that business owners express toward the welfare of the community as demonstrated by their own actions.  In addition, students who are exposed to this federalist/republican way of thought might be encouraged to advance their interests in a more entrepreneurial climate. 

Short of such a direct ambition, the liberated federalist model provides students with an ideal that is a morally based tool by which to analyze the actions of businesses in their political activities (politically being used in its most extensive meaning).  As businesses engage in socially effective ways, students who are taught about government under the construct proposed in this account will be encouraged and prepared to ask penetrating questions of those political actions and actors.  This is in their economic, as well as political interests.

While the economy today has veered away from the conditions of 2008 and the years following that meltdown, one can appreciate the challenges average Americans faced at that time.  Whether or not this move toward owning small businesses was viable or prudent, one can still ascertain how federalist thought can affect the way people see their options and opportunities.  To generalize, one can easily appreciate how strong ties to one’s local social/political realities can be of benefit to the economic interests one might have.

A liberated federalist model looks back and gives readers a responsible review of how that model’s approach can potentially address the economic interests of students.  Next, this blog will directly address the political interests of students.

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[1] Robert Reich, The Work of Nations:  Preparing Ourselves for the 21^st-Century Capitalism (New York, NY:  Vintage Books, 1992).

[2] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent:  America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).