HOPEFUL TREND

I'm a city boy. I presently live in a town with fewer than two hundred thousand inhabitants, but before moving here, other than my college years, I lived in cities of over 200,000. I was born in New York City and lived there for the first ten years of my life. My folks moved me to Miami, but I made frequent trips to New York since many of the years after that move, one or both of my parents needed to move back and so I would visit quite a bit. Of course, Miami grew enormously through the years. It's a significantly different city today than the town I first moved to in the late fifties. There are great things about living in a big city and there are challenges. I currently choose not to live in Miami because of those challenges but, as was the case with New York, I do cherish my frequent trips down there. I will continue to make them. But the question remains, why not live there? It happens that many are deciding to do just that; that is, to live in big cities. Big cities have their restaurants, their entertainment (especially the theater in New York), their museums, their architecture, their people-watching. But there is also the traffic, the disagreeable interactions with hurried and gruff people, and the indifference one encounters all too often.

The media has been reporting that a lot of young people are choosing to live in cities as opposed to the suburbs. Perhaps the attraction is the more cosmopolitan lifestyle that movies and TV shows glamorize. One supposes they are seeking their vision of happiness. Among certain scholars – social researchers – the focus has been directed to that elusive dependent variable we call happiness. In a recently published book, the journalist, Charles Montgomery, reports on the work of these academics. Leading the way have been behavioral economists. Since many of them have a background in psychology, these researchers have delved into studying everyday decisions. I will admit that I haven't read Montgomery's book, Happy City, but according to a New York Times' review,¹ the book points out that most people are not very good at making decisions that result in maximizing their well-being. I would argue that people set out to make decisions that do maximize their well-being, but they get sidetracked by influences that in retrospect lead to irrational choices. The review offers this example: a young couple, upon seeing a beautiful four/two or two and a half house in the suburbs with the big yard in the pleasant neighborhood, fall in love with an image of the ideal American family lifestyle the house promises them. They lose sight that the house can be a one or two hour drive from work – which means the round trip is twice that, or put another way, leaving the house before daylight and coming home exhausted and frustrated with the long commute. “Montgomery cites studies reporting that the farther people have to commute, the less happy they are, not just with the driving but with the quality of their lives altogether.”

The purpose of the book is not only to sell shorter commutes, but also to report on studies that have identified those elements that could be designed into city environments to increase levels of happiness; for example, and I do relate to this, the presence of greenery interspersed throughout urban areas. I was gratified the review made a point of stating that they were not recommending more Central Parks – a la New York – but smaller patches that do not take a special trip to a faraway place in order to see and visit. These would be patches that one would encounter in normal movement within all parts of the city. I know that when I lived in New York, a real ballgame on a real diamond called for a walk of what I would now consider about three miles. Hence, stick ball, stoop ball, and a host of games on the street in front of my apartment building were our mode of play. Safe? No way, but despite the occasional broken window, it was a great way to spend a summer day.

The book also features the importance of casual friendships that neighborhoods offer. In a city block, in the course of just normally walking around, the activity lends itself to making these kinds of encounters – the same people over and over again, day in and day out. While you wouldn't go on vacations or have dinners with these people, they were the cast of characters that made up the backdrop of one's life. They made you feel like you belong to something; that was, you belong to a viable neighborhood. They also reported to your parents when you were up to no good. Now I know a lot of what I am describing is my personal recollections of what I experienced in those years I lived in New York. But with the type of study Montgomery is reporting, perhaps city planners can pick up on these types of features and begin to include those physical elements that would create these types of communal qualities. Work of psychologists and social psychologists indicate that we absorb the emotional metaphors that our experiences suggest.² Apparently, it is just this type of planning we are seeing in many, if not most, of our cities today. This is a counter-development to what was fashionable at the end of the last century. Those designs were characterized by blank walls in downtown areas. Ironically, that trend countered the more people-friendly environs of an earlier time: today, more so, “public spaces, built for conviviality and conversation, [serve as] an antidote to the empty, windswept plazas that became staples of life in the center of New York and other major cities in the 1960s and 1970s.”³ Happily, the more communal options are being put in place in many of our urban areas.

For civics teachers, there is no more a civic issue than this: what will our local environments be like? It is surely a federalist issue. This area of concern offers us an issue where the average citizen can have meaningful input. This is a local concern and therefore one that, while attracting the concern of vested interests – just considering the value of urban real estate – a participating electorate can put direct pressure on city officials to do the communal thing. It seems that currently, on this front, the communal forces are winning across the land.

1Ehrenhalt, A. (2014). Greener pastures. The New York Times, Book Review section, January 5, p. 25.

2Schnall, S. (2013). A sense of cleanliness. In J. Brockman (Ed.) Thinking: The new science of decision-making, problem solving, and prediction, (pp. 215-224).

3Op cit., Ehrenhalt, p. 5.

FEDERATED “WAR ZONE”

Let me play teacher. For homework, you are to Google “Promise Zones.” You will find an entry: President Obama's announcement of establishing five “Promise Zones” in which the federal government is organizing local people and groups to provide assistance to low income people in five different localities around the country. You are to view the President's presentation. The purpose is to hear about a program that I would argue is based on federal ideals and principles. Why do I say this? Because the Promise Zones get local business people, government people, and non-profit people to develop and implement a plan to meet the comprehensive needs of a low income population. These parties, in effect, federate with each other to accomplish ambitious goals. They want to help these people turn their lives around – that is, people who find themselves in poverty or near poverty. The federal government provides initial funding which can be substantial and organizing services to get the thing going. At least that's my understanding of how it works.

In the last posting, I mentioned that in our national political world, we have undue influence by large corporations. I also mentioned that these corporations are overly populated by self-centered actors who are advancing only their personal ambitions. Of course, this does not refer to all those who work and even lead these corporations. There are those who view their involvement in corporate activities as an associational effort; that is, they define their roles as ones in which they are federated to their fellow workers to accomplish corporate goals and they, in turn, see their corporate roles as ones in which they see themselves as partners with their colleagues. Yes, they compete for advancement within the corporate structure, but they do not do so in such a way as to hinder the health of the corporation. In addition, they perform their duties and support those corporate policies that bolster the communities in which their businesses function. Business personnel who engage in such efforts, like the one the President announced, reflect a federalist approach to corporate action. Unfortunately, my view of corporate activity today does not reflect many examples of this type of approach.

The President's announcement was given on the day after the fiftieth anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson's State of the Union message in which the late president announced his initiative, the War on Poverty. While quite a few programs we associate with LBJ's initiative are still with us, we can't say that we, as a nation, have been fully engaged in this “war” during the last fifty years. Yes, we have cut the rate of poverty by more than half, but quite a few historical developments since 1964 have sidestepped our efforts to eradicate poverty. There was the Vietnam War and its costs, the administrations of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and those of the two Bushes which, to varying degrees, were hostile to the War on Poverty programs. All of these historical developments have put major obstacles in the way of our poverty fighting agenda.

With his announcement, and the President put it in this context, the Obama administration is picking up the mantle, at least in terms of goals, of the War on Poverty. One item that President Obama included in his remarks was that the Promise Zones would be subject to demanding reviews and evaluations. They, the efforts, have to work in order to survive. The old adage of “if only one child is helped, the effort is well worth it,” does not cut it. Many more than one child has to be helped. The President provided the Harlem Children's Zone as the model for his additional, proposed zones. It serves as an example of what the federal government considers a worthwhile investment. The following is an excerpt from an Atlantic Monthly article regarding the Harlem project:

The Zone, … first began as a one-block pilot program in the 1990s … . Now [in 2012] spread over 90 blocks in Harlem, it takes an intensive and comprehensive approach to child development. At its most basic, the idea is to support children in the neighborhood from the minute they're born until they leave for college. That means parenting classes, intensive kindergartens, high-quality schools called Promise Academies with robust after-school programs, even help with college applications.

In Harlem, it's been a wild success. In 2009, all third graders at the HCZ's Promise Academy tested at or above their grade level in math, outperforming their peers in the city and throughout the state. Over 84 percent of Promise Academy II students at or above grade level in city-mandated English tests, topped the average test scores among all other black students in New York City. And in 2008, 93 percent of Promise Academy High ninth graders passed the statewide Algebra Regents exam.¹

While there has been some concern over how well the Harlem program has been evaluated, the program's costs, by most accounts, have been well worth the investment.

From this short description, we can get a sense of how comprehensive this type of efforts needs to be. It obviously needs the input of many parties – many confederates – some from business, some from government, and some from non-profit organizations. They need to give the effort their skills, time, and, yes, money. And this call for involvement and coordination includes a strong leader. Those were, in the Harlem case, integral elements in their success. And the level of commitment needs to be broad and deep. There needs to be among the participants a compact, an agreement which has an almost sacred quality. Without that, I would surmise, success will be elusive at best. Those involved must feel that failure is not an option.

President Obama's initial plan upon taking office was to pursue these types of programs. Unfortunately, the immediate effects of the severe recession which has plagued the years of the Obama Administration have demanded that the federal government aim its efforts toward providing direct assistance – straight money outlays to a population facing the economic deprivations related to the recession.² Perhaps due to an improving economy, the President's announcement on January 9 indicates he is now ready to pursue this Promise Zone approach. He named five zones for funding. Let's see if these federal arrangements actually develop and achieve the hoped for levels of success.

 

1Erickson, A. (2012). Why hasn't the Harlem Children's Zone been replicated even without Obama's help? The Atlantic Cities, August 16. See http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/08/why-hasnt-harlem-childrens-zone-been-replicated-even-without-obamas-help/2968/ .

2Ibid.

WHAT'S YOUR SQUARE?

Perhaps in reading this blog, you might detect a certain political, partisan bent. Believe it or not, that is not the intent. As the introduction of this blog indicates, main goals of the blog are to present, explain, and promote a certain construct. This is a construct that can serve as a guide in the choice of content in our nation's civics classrooms. That construct I have entitled the liberated federalist construct. In terms of that construct's standards of good governance, the main problem today, the condition that hinders our ability to put in place the most prudent public policy, is our adherence to extreme individualism. I am not claiming it's individualism, but extreme individualism. This state of affairs is fed by our adoption of another construct as our main guide to not only civics content, but also to our general view of governance and social relations. That construct is the natural rights construct. If you can accept these general premises, it follows that a blog dedicated to these goals and believing views of our current conditions as I have just described them would dedicate a great deal of space to presenting them and argue for changes that shift our policies from extremely individualistic ones to those that are more collective in nature. Again, it is not extreme collectivism, but a collective posture that resembles that which earlier generations of Americans believed to be best.

“You can't go home, again” is a refrain you might be thinking. And, in its truest sense, that might be true. In any event, I have made a distinction between what I have named traditional federalism and liberated federalism. As the names indicate, the traditional form of this construct, the one that prevailed earlier in our history, is probably the one that is no longer attainable and not advisable to adopt. But I do believe a more “liberal” version of the construct is both attainable and advisable. In order to approach a more federalist view, though, be it traditional or liberated, one needs to overcome those forces that have entrenched our more individualistic posture. That is the overarching power structure that exists in the nation. And here is where a perceivable partisan bias might come through in my postings. I judge the prevailing politics of the nation to be overly influenced – is the term controlled? – by the corporate entities that reign over our economic system. Between the money, property, income, wealth, and lobbying access, the corporatist faction has a near stranglehold over our public decision-making. Consequently, when I prepare to post, I am usually thinking of some resulting abuse or other and my thoughts lead to reporting and opining over a more collective response. While corporations are collectives, they are run by highly charged individuals who view economics as a compilation of individual decisions and actions. The typical corporation is not an association of federated cohorts, but organizations of individual operatives all seeking their personal interests and benefits. Collectivist responses to prevailing conditions probably sound and have the feel of progressive argument. Yet that is not accurate.

So, to clear the air a bit, may I suggest the following conception. Let us say that in terms of this blog, one might be served by viewing our politics not merely as one that can be analyzed by the continuum from progressive to conservative, but also by another continuum, one from collectivism to individualism. And one should keep in mind that, in terms of American politics, the relevant expanse of that second continuum is relatively limited, although as of late, our politics has included factions espousing a more extreme individualism, as in libertarianism. Let us attempt to give this backdrop a more visual description.

If, on a sheet of paper, one were to juxtapose the two continua as perpendicular axises with the collective-individual axis running up and down and the progressive-conservative axis running left to right (how appropriate), then four quadrants are formed. The top left quadrant, the progressive/collective quadrant, would have a list of policy areas favored by those who are both progressive and collective in their orientation. This might include welfare – programs such as the Great Society – national health programs (especially one that is a single-payer type), and housing for the indigent. In the top right quadrant, the conservative/collective quadrant, policies promoting neighborhoods, religion (especially congregational religion), family, and the like might be found there. In the lower left quadrant, the progressive/individualist quadrant, one finds policies that would include civil rights, free speech, and decriminalizing drug use. And the last quadrant, the lower right one, would contain conservative/individualist policies: gun ownership rights, entrepreneurial rights, free trade, and anti-labor union policies. I feel this grid of four quadrants would be a useful tool for teachers to help students view not only how issues are seen and judged, but also help in determining how political alliances are or are potentially formed by the adherents of the different quadrants.

What is also interesting is to consider how dissonance is generated by politically active people over such issues as recognizing the rights of gay and lesbian couples to get married. Where does such an issue fall? Usually that issue falls in the progressive/individualist quadrant, but I have heard language that would shift the perception of the issue to the more conservative/collective quadrant. Different questions can be entertained by the use of the grid. For example, how does the electorate, in terms of numbers, fall? Is there a shift in the general electorate among the quadrants? How do the demographics affect how people will populate the grid in the future? On and on.

But to get to my original concern: if this blog has an apparent progressive bent, it is due primarily to how I see the most fundamental problems of today's political landscape. Again, I see that challenge from the strength of corporate entities to be the most influential and fundamental detriment to our good governance. Their interests reflect the positions of the conservative/individualist quadrant. In most direct opposition would be the positions reflected by the progressive/collectivist quadrant. That's just the way it is.

POTENTIAL SHIFT

Since last I wrote this blog, the political punditry is all aglitter with the fact that former president, Bill Clinton, administered the oath of office to the incoming mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. What could it all mean? With Hillary Clinton sitting just a few feet away, does all this mean that the Clintons are moving to the left since the new mayor ran on a platform of progressive promises? Is this just another sign that Hillary will run for president and is this the Clintons' way of shoring up the Democratic base support? Who knows, and at this point of the presidential cycle, who should really care that much? What I found more interesting were President Clinton's remarks in introducing the new mayor. He spoke of the collective nature of New York society – you can consider that the American society – and that we cannot ignore what all that means in terms of governmental policy.

Clinton's presidency was noted for its push back from extreme liberal politics.¹ His administration was no enemy of Wall Street and its interests. But what we have to remember were the times when Clinton ran for office, back in 1992. At that time, one can say the nation was still – I would call – staggering out of the eighties, an apogee of natural rights thinking. That was the age of Ronald Reagan, a president who projected an image of extreme individualism, anti-government sentiment, and pro-business policy. The reality was not so extreme, but the language was right there, and I do mean “right.” Here comes an attractive and vibrantly young Democrat who spoke of a compromise, not of big government, but of “the end of the era of big government.” Again, we are talking language, not substance. Big government continued – perhaps the pace of growth slowed – with the basic structure of the New Deal arrangement surviving quite well. Yes, there was to be the Gingrich Revolution of 1994 that was to preserve and advance the Reagan agenda. But ultimately, that was stymied by the closing down of the government and, in the end, the “revolution” made little difference. It gave the Democrats the talking point about how they administered the last balanced budget. But I digress.

My point here is that our politics cannot stray too far from a finely limited range between being overly individualistic to being overly collective. Our individualism is baked into our cultural makeup (of course, an individualism that was defined within a federalist philosophic context) and the realities of modern life – its industrial, post industrial, and corporatism – that espouses the notion that individuals can make it on their own ludicrous. This tension makes up, at least, ninety percent of our politics and it is unavoidable. Hence, this condition makes the question of whether Clinton is moving to the left somewhat marginal. Yes, it might help determine who gets elected and, consequently, it will make a difference in what specific policies are advanced, but the overall makeup of our politics, our political parties, and the like will remain pretty much the same.

Why? Because in the philosophic battle between natural rights advocates – read conservatives – and those who favor a marginally more proactive collective approach to governing – read, in common parlance, liberals – disagree on a very limited notion. That is, to what extent should government operate within the following concern: should government take on a set of values, a claim for the good, or should government take a neutral position on values and instead make a claim for the right (as in the rights of people)? Those who favor the latter believe that each of us should be left to our own devices to determine what should be the good. This is the basis of individualism in our politics. Society is too diverse, according to this position, for any one source of values. Therefore, government is best established and run if it stays out of the business of determining and promoting a “good” life. Whereas our “leftist” political language states that that position is all right for the most part, but there are limited areas in which the issues are too important, too central to survival, to simply let independent forces determine what transpires. These limited areas can be summed up as issues of security, safety, health, and education. Especially important are those situations in which the private sector – here the reference is the markets – fall short in providing essential goods and services. Of course, the shortfall in health services is the fundamental justification for the Affordable Care Act. In those areas, not only does the government have the authority to address the good, but an obligation. The same goes for nutrition, housing, defense of the nation, police and fire protection, and education. Most of these, under our federalist make up, have been the obligation of local governmental entities, but when the local government either won't or can't meet the needs, then we have the central government meeting or helping to meet these needs.

A true believer on either side of this divide will not be convinced by whatever I write here. But for those who question why we fight over what oftentimes seems so obvious and so practical to fix or even address, here is something about which to think. While one side says it is for individual decisions concerning the good, that in itself is a statement about the good. That side is saying: it is good to have people decide what they believe the good to be. And they admit that this is the one domain in which they concede that the collective is taking a value position. But what happens when we commit ourselves to just that value and reject any other collective claim for the good? We did that during the Industrial Revolution – big time – and we did it during the Reagan era – not so big time. Results: we have upsurges in poverty, the skewing of income and wealth to the upper class; some claim we have exploitation of the working segments of the population, vast deficiencies in education among the poor, increased incidents of discrimination, and the general decline of large segments of the population. De Blasio claimed that the current mal-distribution of income in New York City is threatening to unravel the whole social fabric of the city (probably a bit of hyperbole, but reflecting some elements of truth). We are still feeling the effects of the Reagan era and those are the consequences of policies that advanced the politics of extreme individualism.

The new mayor has a lot to do, but the one area I hope he does succeed in is running the city in a practical manner, because all of his efforts to promote equality will be for naught if the basic city services are not provided for in a reasonably efficient matter. For the sake of shifting the politics of New York and of the nation to a more, but not extreme, collective direction, here's wishing the new mayor all the luck in the world.

1Here I am using the term, liberal politics, as it is used in the media, not in its philosophic sense.

WE ARE ALL TARGETS

For some time now, I have been planning to post some ideas concerning cybersecurity. Specifically, I am interested in the security of private computer systems, especially those of large corporations. Of course, the related situation initiated by Joseph Snowden, formerly of the NSA, attracted much concern as it became known that his former employer, a public intelligence agency, has been gathering information about our private communications. This incident caused an uproar as many were accusing the federal government of going overboard in its attempts to tap into any communication by Americans with foreign terrorist groups. I was not going to write about public agencies and their security concerns, but about private firms and their computer operations: how secure are they? This is important to all of us since much of our private information is recorded by these businesses especially in relation to our attaining credit and other financial matters.

My plans were disrupted by the recent breach of security that affected Target's system – that's Target as in the chain of merchandising stores. This breach jeopardized the credit and debit accounts of millions of consumers who used one of these payment options at the chain of over 1,700 outlets across the nation. If you used a credit or debit card at a Target store from November 27 to December 15, there is a possibility that unauthorized use of your account could have been used to acquire merchandise from Target outlets. The news reports covering the breach have pointed out that the problem could have been avoided if Target, in this case, and American corporations, in general, would have put in place security measures that have long been used in Europe. Mainly, the use of security chips which are imbedded into the cards would increase the security of this mode of payment many times over. Yet US corporations have shied away from implementing this and other measures due to the costs of initiating their use.

I became aware of this lack of action on the part of US businesses by reading an article by Amitai Etzioni.¹ In this article, the sociologist points out several deficiencies associated with cybersecurity. His goal was to highlight how private and public entities are intertwined and that a pattern of speech that treats these domains as separate and distinct, as much of the propaganda from the Tea Party and other conservative voices assumes, is really passe and counter to what is real. A more accurate understanding includes many points of intersection in terms of interests, structures, processes, and uses of products that bind more closely the activities of government and business operations. The Target incident just illustrates how acting as if there exists clear lines of demarcation opened the retailer to this monumental vulnerability to undetermined costs in terms of loss and potential lawsuits.

A look at Etzioni's argument is still useful. For example, one area in which the two realms, the public and the private, interact extensively concerns the military. There, both private and military entities share the cybersecurity technology. This includes software and hardware. The security products are produced by private companies and much of it in overseas production facilities such as in China. The security of these components is highly reliant on the efforts of private corporations. And this includes the components in those systems used by our military.

Security is not limited to the concerns of the military or other government departments and agencies (think Social Security, publicly run or supported health facilities, education records, and the like), but also private business concerns as well. Etzioni reports, for example, that the level of crime in areas of finance via the use of computers has grown significantly. One would think that private concerns would be highly worried over such crime and be highly motivated to address it in order to at least ameliorate its effects if not eliminate it altogether. Despite the crime, the fact is that computer systems are not so structured as to lend themselves to security enhancing options. That is, fixing the problem or even lessening it would be very costly. To date, the costs due to crimes such as bank thefts and spying between businesses are not high enough to match the costs involved in installing appropriate security technologies and protocols. Also, incidences of thefts or other fraudulent behaviors often do not come to light so quickly. It usually takes years before knowledge of such crimes becomes evident. This lag delays any acknowledgment that security investments are paying off. And any time payoffs are not recognized in the short term, they are not registered as gains on the quarterly bottom line report, whereas the costs associated with security investments are reported. All this negatively affects stock prices. In other words, taking on costs to meet problems that are hidden is not a recipe for a CEO's job security.

But doesn't all this mean that costs, be they recognized or not, go up and, therefore, in concentrated markets – ones in which there is little competition – are simply added to the prices of whatever products are affected? Or, put another way, doesn't this mean the consumers of any affected product have to pay more for those related goods and services? Yes, it does and that further means consumers have an interest in seeing that affected businesses become more efficient and less wasteful of funds that are going to crooks. If private entities can't or won't do what's necessary, then government has a role in addressing the concern – and adding to the existing interaction between both realms.

I don't need to reproduce Etzioni's report. You get the gist of his concern. The point here is that we are talking about national and even global entities. A lot of our present debate is how big a government we need, how big it can be and still be constitutional, and how big it can be without undermining the democratic quality of our governance. These are legitimate questions posed by conservatives. Traditional federalists have all along been sounding the alarm about the centralization of power due to the growth of our central government. Yet one needs to be realistic about the actual conditions that are out there. Bigness in the private sector is not imaginary. We no longer just have national businesses; we have transnational corporations. By necessity, our national government has to come to terms with that bigness. It has to regulate those entities to fulfill our need for safety and security. These technological advances that have opened us up to these security problems are just one of many areas in which our interests as private citizens are exposed to the potential threats represented by what happened to Target. I am sure that retailers and other types of businesses are reviewing their security policies and rethinking their opposition to regulation by government over these matters. Liberated federalism, if it is to be viable, has to amend its insistence on small government; yes, be reluctant to handing over more power to Washington and be protective of local governmental prerogatives, but be sensible when the issues become national and even global, and understand the potential dangers to our safety, security, health, education, and morals by large scale predators. Bad guys no longer need to wear hoods and brandish guns to do their harm. Their damage can be quite effectively accomplished by clicking on a machine.

1Etzioni, A. (2013). The bankruptcy of liberalism and conservatism. Political Science Quarterly, 128 (1), pp. 39-65.

GULPING POWER

In this holiday season – I've always been partial to this week between Christmas and New Year's – let me offer a short posting. I want to address a controversy that The New York Times refers to as Bloomberg's nanny state. That venerable paper asks whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg's efforts to dictate a healthier life style among New Yorkers was ultimately good for them or just overly intrusive. What I find interesting is the question: upon what authority did the mayor and his Board of Health act? Were his policies, in this area, constitutional? Can government, at any level, tell us how big a soda I can buy? Can hizzoner really tell us we can't have a big gulp?

Okay, I know, the ban is not presently being enforced since the New York Supreme Court ruled the city did not have the legal authority to impose the restriction. But the City is appealing that decision. And yes, with the new administration coming into power, who knows what the future of the policy will be? But that still makes me wonder what in the law led Bloomberg to think he and his Board of Health had the authority in the first place? After all, the court's decision against the ban was based on a determination that the legal restriction per se was not beyond the limits of government, but that the particular ban was determined by a body of the executive department of government, not its legislative department. The policy was initially passed by the City's Board of Health, not the State Legislature or even its city council. As such, the policy violates the “separation of power” principle. The court did not question the City's power to issue such a regulation. Therefore, the question remains: on what basis does New York have this authority?

During the holiday season, students are particularly aware of consuming festive foods and drinks. Perhaps it is even a more appropriate time to teach about a state's police powers, and this case in New York seems particularly well-suited to bring the lesson home. Let me quote from the court's decision on the matter:

There is no reasonable opposition to the long established proposition that a legislative body may vest in an administrative body certain authority. However, as stated in [the former case,] Boreali:

“A legislative grant of authority must be construed, whenever possible, so that it is no broader than that which the separation of power doctrine permits … Even under the broadest and most open ended of statutory mandates, an administrative agency may not use its authority as a license to correct whatever social evils it perceives” And “While the separation of powers doctrine give the Legislative considerable leeway in delegating its regulatory powers, enactments conferring authority on administrative agencies In broad or general terms must be interpreted in light of the limitations that the constitution imposes [NY const. Art 111 …]

In this quote we have a clear acknowledgment that the state does have the power, the police power, to pass legislation to promote health – as it does to also promote safety, education, and morals – of the state. The state's foundational compact, its constitution, spells out the limits of such powers. This is within our constitutional conception and when such public figures, who claim to be devotees of our constitutional system, then mock a state's prerogative to exercise that power, one questions either the sincerity of the devotion or the level of understanding that figure possesses about how our system works. Who might that be? Sarah Palin comes to mind.

My point is that our constitutional foundation is not a marker for libertarian ideals. Our history of individuality vs. collectivity, in terms of our public policy, has been an active and vibrant tension in which, until relatively recently, has sided in favor of collectivity. This case of New York City trying to ban soft drink size is an interesting and relevant case by which to demonstrate this tension. I recommend that teachers get the New York Supreme Court decision¹ so that students can see what all is at stake and of concern not only to the courts, but to bureaucratic officials who deal with these types of issues.

1See http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/sodaruling0311.pdf .

WHICH CONTROVERSIES?

A question every teacher should ask, on a recurring basis, is: what is worth teaching? Unfortunately, in my experience most teachers don't ask this question at all. What is chosen is just what is next in the course's textbook. As I was training to become a teacher, my teacher preparation instruction encouraged me to think about introducing controversial issues into my social studies teaching strategy. The use of controversial issues or problems makes most sense under the general rubric of inquiry teaching. I was taught that inquiry was central to good teaching. It would engage students in the content I would be presenting. The use of controversial issues was but one way to introduce that content; its use would have the backdrop of a problem area people were concerned with and in which students could find contemporary materials. Such issues as civil rights, the Vietnam War, poverty, labor relations, the economy, and the like, would enhance the interest of students. I'm not arguing with this contention; success, though, depends on many factors and introducing a controversial issue or problem will not guarantee it. But issues should be considered for their intrinsic value and not merely as a way to garner student interest. I will agree that their use is better than just presenting what happens to be next in the textbook.

I will go even further: the use of controversial issues and problems needs to be part of any responsible approach to social studies. This includes civics and government. But how should controversial issues be chosen? In the political environment of today, for example, should the issue of gun control be included; should the issue of pornography be chosen; should abortion be chosen? Should the fact that wealth and income, which is heavily skewed to the upper classes, be chosen? What criterion(a) should be applied when trying to choose the issues? I think these are very important questions. I believe this to be true because how one answers them will give whatever is taught a particular bias. That is, by asking one set of questions, what students will delve into will be quite different from what other students will address if given a different set of questions.

During the history of this blog, I have introduced three different mental constructs that have been used in guiding educators as to what content will be studied in social studies courses. These constructs are the natural rights construct, the critical theory construct, and the liberated federalist construct. From the explanations I have shared, one can deduce a particular criterion for each construct – a criterion that can be used in choosing controversial issues. Before I identify each respective criterion, though, let me be a bit more clear as to what constitutes a controversial issue or problem. A controversial issue or problem is a situation or condition in which two or more parties are vying for, to some degree, mutually exclusive aims or goals. The competition for those aims or goals has the added attribute that at least one of the parties, if not all, is vying for some end or for putting into operation a strategy that is considered illegitimate by some party(ies) or faction(s). That is, the competition has an aspect to it that is considered unsavory by some portion of the population. For example, one such issue is whether workers should be able to establish a labor union while the owners of the affected businesses engage in actions to deny the workers their goal. Perhaps in the studied situation, the business owners or the labor leaders rely on strong-arm techniques or intimidation to advance their respective goal. The class can ask: in this conflict, what can the portrayed characters do? What should they do? But before any of this inquiry can take place, the initial issue has to be chosen and presented.

Let me state that the above labor question might be the focus of an inquiry under any of the three constructs I listed above. But the angle taken will vary according to the construct the educator is utilizing in making his/her choice. Perhaps after reviewing the following criteria, this variance will become self-evident.

In terms of an overall goal, the natural rights construct guides social studies instruction in leading the individual student to determine what his or her values are in relation to a particular content. This is true even when that content introduces a controversial issue. This does not, in itself, help in determining the issues to be included in instruction. But if the goal is to have students identify their own position, there needs to be some conscious relevance for the the students being taught. This consideration has a built in bias: problems or issues should be those that demonstrably affect a significant number of people or one in which a significant number of people are expressing a concern over the issue or problem. This type of selection leads to a sort of “popularity” list of problems. It limits a class's attention to conditions of which they are already aware. Usually, in order to get this attention, problem areas are probably identifiable to or affect at least ten percent of the population. Lesser known problems or problems that affect fewer numbers are ignored no matter how important they are. Importance of an issue can be one of growing intensity or one that is uncomfortable to address at a given time. Ten years ago, the prohibition of gay marriage fell into such a category. Therefore, the use of the natural rights construct introduces two detrimental qualities: the issues are “popular” or “hot” and the resulting curriculum develops a non-cohesive quality as attention jumps from one issue to another with no unifying, theoretical perspective. As such, students are left with a hodgepodge of images with little take away as to what constitutes a moral perspective on social issues.

Advancing to the next construct, the critical theory construct focuses on issues in which a perceived exploitation is occurring. In this case, a working understanding of what constitutes exploitation is essential in deciding the conditions that warrant study in a classroom. While a particular teacher might search or devise a suitable definition, at least by that teacher's, school administration's, or school district's acceptable standard, a standard needs to be adopted. For the sake of discussion, let me suggest the definition by Johan Galtung: exploitation exists when the income and wealth levels of an advantaged group(s) are growing at a faster rate or decreasing at a slower rate than that of other groups. In that case, the other groups are being exploited.¹ With this perspective, classroom materials will be channeled toward looking at cases or conditions – or imputed cases – in which there is “exploitation” among members of different classes. While many of the issues that face a society in a given time can be analyzed using this perspective, not all of them can. For example, one would be hard pressed to see whether a nativity scene should be displayed in front of a city hall as illustrative of the exploitation of the lower classes, between the haves vs. have nots. Yet this issue involving the freedom of religion is important and should be able to be studied without getting into the idea whether religion is or is not merely an opiate for the exploited classes.

The last construct is the federalist one. Here, controversial issues are defined as conditions that in one way or another offend federalist values. Let me quote from a previous posting:

The proposed code [of liberated federalism] not only holds a particular value as a trump value, but also presents a hierarchy of values. There are three levels of values: trump value, key instrumental values, and operational values. Here is a list of these values:

• Trump Value: Societal welfare (as experienced through societal survival and/or advancement)
• Key Instrumental Values: constitutional integrity (liberty), equality, communal democracy, democratic pluralism and diversity, compacted arrangements, critical and transparent deliberation, collective problem-solving, earned trust, loyalty, patriotism, expertise
• Operational Values (partial listing): political engagement, due process, legitimate authority, privacy, universality of human rights, tolerance, non-violence, teamwork, consideration of others, economic sufficiency, security, localism

As can be noted, lower level values are logically derived from higher level values. These values, other than the trump value, are not presented as a definitive set of values, but the code is fairly tied into the trump and instrumental values as central to its theoretical base – federalist theory.

Simply stated, a controversial issue, under this construct, is one in which the necessary illegitimacy involves action in opposition to one or more of these values. For example, in my last posting, I wrote about the practice of gerrymandering and how that practice, in effect, made the votes cast by millions not count. Here, the values include the constitutional integrity of those voters, a key value identified by the construct.

In all, I consider the federalist view or set of values the most productive basis by which controversial issues or problems should be chosen. Once the construct functions in this way, the instruction that is to follow does not dictate to students how they should arrange their values. It does not demand a verbal commitment by students to support a federalist value(s). Instead, the values function to guide a teacher in the choice of questions he or she should ask of students as they study and inquire into the chosen condition or situation.

1Galtung, J. (1971). A structural theory of imperialism. Journal of Peace Research, 8, pp. 81-117.