JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, III

 

As of the last posting, this blog was highlighting the role that three mental domains have on decision making, i.e., the domains of the real, ideal, and physiological.  That view of decision making invites a more nuanced and complex basis by which to analyze that mental process.  That is, it is the product of more than immediate perceptions and recognized personal interests, where one engages in considerations that can be and often are quite complex. 

For instance, the choice to act in a certain way might not take place immediately before the act is done and, when the time comes, a change of heart might occur.  This might be a rare occurrence and it would usually be due to some kind of interference, such as a quick change in the situation, how one sees the situation, or an unexpected physical accident of some kind. 

What is important to the assumptions of the liberated federalism construct – what all this concern over decision making is about – is that decisions which result and reflect some ideal domain concern are as important in understanding political behavior as is the decision to act from what people see are the factual elements of a situation.[1]  As with many important aspects of life, political considerations usually carry complicating elements.

          Affecting people in that sort of situation includes several areas of concern.  For example, there has been a growing concern with morality associated with the decisions made by leaders.  First, these decisions will be highly influenced by the environment in which people find themselves.[2]  The natural rights perspective has a notion that individuals are predisposed to make these decisions based on their own analyses of the issues involved and how they affect the decision maker.  As it stands, this is a highly impractical position when the analysis is limited to those factors.

          Why?  For various reasons including the condition that before people understand the importance of making decisions along the lines of political values or social goals, they are inundated with value and goal messages with which they have grown up – their socialization.  These messaging experiences are usually presented by legitimate figures of authority (parents or teachers, for example) and, for the most part, accepted by individuals as “the way things are or should be” and often such “lessons” have staying power.[3]

          But beyond that, to think people are going to put in the time and effort to think of all the relevant factors they need to, in order to arrive at a coherent, logical, and usable decisions or, more generally, develop perspectives of politics or of social reality, irrespective of their immediate interests, is truly unrealistic.  A lot of the aforementioned messaging is stored in a mostly unconscious level of thinking.

Therefore, if the adult world, as presented by parents and teachers, does not provide a set of ideals and an overall construct of political realities (of sufficient complexity), other sources will do so to some extent.  Other sources could possibly include peer groups, in terms of political identification,[4] and mass media.[5]  Of course today there is the influence of social media which is often based on misinformation and salacious content.

          While these sources would not explicitly provide a construct about politics, they influence how people form their basic beliefs, views of reality, and their ideals that people form or accept concerning governance and politics.  That view today, as readily seen on the nightly news reports, would be an anti-intellectual, shallow, and inviable one[6] among significant if not the majority of citizens.  It would be a far cry from the federalist republicanism that characterized the beginnings of the nation.[7]

          Taking a closer look at the ideal domain and how it influences decisions, it contains those messages and desires in the form of values and goals.  They become conscious to people in the form of motivations.[8]  One can deduce from the evidence so far presented that individuals are apt to struggle within themselves as to what is the preferred priority among different desires, especially if conditions make certain optional decisions as mutually exclusive and the options represent different or even opposing desires.

          Choice might mean delaying, postponing, or canceling the quest for certain desires and delaying or eliminating choices that would offer more utility as judged by individuals, or which means fewer negative consequences as measured by standards established in the ideal domain.  Individuals might find real turmoil over deciding between or among challenging desires.  If decisions are made separately from pending realities, and there is a lack of urgency in relation to desired outcomes, then the situations allow more reflective thought.  As such, “thinking ahead” can be very beneficial.

          In less agitated circumstances – say during a classroom discussion – the choices may establish, in high priority areas of concern, more lasting commitments.  These commitments might, in turn, formulate or help develop for individuals the elements of an ideology.  Choices might reflect coherent ideal systems of values and goals.  If these choices are professed strongly by individuals, they, the choices, will be considered seriously in future action decisions.  Here, one can consider this opportunity as experienced in schools as one of schools’ main positive effects.

          These reflected choices can be affected by the socialization processes mentioned above, that people are exposed to, especially during their early years.  These are the years when one is taught the appropriate mores of one’s group.  This process is seen as inevitable.  The question is what set of values and goals people will be exposed to. And a second concern is what opportunities and encouragements they will receive in later life that prompt them to question these basic teachings, for active and engaged citizens should always be disposed to question their beliefs.

          And with that bit of reflection about what goes into decision making, especially those sessions involving decisions relating to governance or politics, that covers what this blogger wished to point out in relation to how federalist ideals and ideas should be treated in civics education.  Therefore, so much for decision making (for now); the next posting will review the main source of content for civics education, that being the discipline of political science.

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[1] For readers who did not read the last posting, the reference here is that decision making is very likely to be affected by assumptions the decider makes.  Those assumptions are readily made due to mental states the decider harbors.  To analyze this process, this blog has identified the three domains of thought which potentially come to bear on any decisions made.  Those domains are the real, the ideal, and the physiological.  For more information, see the last posting, “Judging Liberated Federalism, II.”

[2] Work on this concern for moral leadership has been growing since the early 1990s.  See for example “Moral Leadership:  Meaning, Characteristics and Examples,” Harappa, November 2, 2021, accessed June 14, 2023, https://harappa.education/harappa-diaries/moral-leadership/#:~:text=Maximize%20Growth-,What%20Is%20Moral%20Leadership%3F,ethical%20system%20and%20moral%20purpose. AND more in terms to the initial scholarship in this concept, Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership:  Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1992).

[3] “Influences on Moral Development,” Lumen/Adolescent Psychology (n.d.), accessed June 14, 2023, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/adolescent/chapter/influences-on-moral-development/#:~:text=Moral%20development%20is%20strongly%20influenced,%2C%20emotions%2C%20and%20even%20neurodevelopment. AND C. S. Sunai, “Influence of the Home on Social Studies,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, edited by James P. Shaver (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 290-299.

[4] Camila F. S. Campos, Shaun Hargreaves Heap, Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon, “The Political Influence of Peer Groups:  Experimental Evidence in the Classroom,” Oxford Economic Papers, 69, 4 (October 2017), accessed June 14, 2023, https://academic.oup.com/oep/article/69/4/963/2737463.

[5] Daniel Bergan, Alan Gerber, Dean Karlan, “Effect of Media on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions in the United States,” Innovations for Poverty Action (n.d.), accessed June 14, 2023, https://poverty-action.org/node/6406/pdf.

[6] “Public Highly Critical of State of Political Discourse in the U.S.” Pew Research Center (June 19, 2019), accessed June 14, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/06/19/public-highly-critical-of-state-of-political-discourse-in-the-u-s/.

[7] Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787 (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1998).

[8] Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership.

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, II

 

In terms of the construct, liberated federalism, the first item of interest to this blogger is the assumptions regarding decision making – that would be decision making in the realm of governance and politics.  And in this vein, the duality mentioned in the last posting between forces that either focus political concerns or studies at local communal levels or at national levels will be highlighted shortly in an upcoming posting.  

But before addressing this duality directly, however, some contextualizing needs to be done.  Specifically, factors of decision-making processes need to be fleshed out.  While this posting will only skim the surface of this topic, one might find the path it paves a bit challenging – hopefully readers will enjoy the scenery.

This synthesis of views – which this blog is currently addressing – between natural rights and critical theory is not totally divorced from the nation’s earlier view, parochial federalism, with its more local orientation.  That orientation stands in contrast with a more nationalistic orientation that the natural rights view assumes, and which is prominent today.  Of note, the natural rights view relies heavily on assumptions posed by behavioral sciences and, with that, an important link to decision making becomes relevant. 

Within that behavioral mode of thought, it is worth noting that most decisions that people make are made to advance one’s interests on the margin and the assumption held here is that reality is more complex and that decisions are based on several cognitive domains not adequately addressed by behaviorist analysis.  Therefore, this aspect of natural rights is judged to be wanting. 

While it is beyond the purpose of this account to present a comprehensive model for decision making, the process of making decisions is seen as one in which individuals weigh several motivating factors at any given time.[1]  And so, before explaining the assumptions entailed here with this synthesis, the importance of decision making should be established and somewhat explained.

In terms of considering mental constructs that pertain to guiding how citizens view governance and politics, the question of how and why people decide to act politically as they do seems to be of central importance.  Decision making is a precursor to all actions excluding actions that are classified as reflex reactions.  That is, before people act, they decide to act, i.e., they are motivated to individually act in a certain fashion.  In turn, people’s motivations vary in terms of intensity and direction.[2] 

Therefore, to get a clear understanding of why people act the way they do, one needs to have an explanation of why they have decided to act in a particular fashion; why they have generated the motivation to act in the ways they do.  What follows is how this blogger has broken down this process – part relies heavily on psychological works of well-regarded scholars and part on self-reflection.

To assume people are merely responding to the conditions facing them in such ways as to marginally advance their interests, as crude behaviorists do, leads one to miscalculate various aspects of those decisions.  That is, it might very well underestimate how these actors weigh the values before them or the priorities these actors place on those values, not to mention the personal histories of similar situations people bring to that point in time.[3]  Granted, a lot of this happens at the subconscious level, but it happens, nonetheless.

Those who study these decision-making sessions write about these miscalculations by those who engage in the politics of various challenging situations; for example, the politics of ethnically diverse nations and how “irrational” behaviors there can and at times are judged to be.  Usually, such studies look at segments of those nations’ populations and have often judged them to be chaotic. 

In those cases, which are often like other sorts of decision-making episodes in challenging situations, the chaos originates not from what the minds read to be the facts of the situations in question.  Instead, people misread how their values are engaged and/or miscalculate the strength of their or of others’ values as they pertain to the situations at hand.

And this description of what is going on is not just the opinion of unsophisticated parties but of experts who find it excessively difficult to predict the behaviors of those populations.  What is called for are closer views and understandings both of what mental processes go into decision making and of what such decisions potentially consider; that can be, as hinted above, a large array of complicated notions, beliefs, habits, desires, fears, and complicated memories. 

It turns out, therefore, that there are numerous factors that go into these acts of deciding to act.  One, as the behaviorists argue, are the conditions of the present situation, or at least, what is perceived from the current situation or from extrinsic factors.[4]  For purposes of identification in this discussion, this set of cognitive elements can be called the real domain.  The real domain is constituted by the theories or paradigms one holds about reality, one’s memories, and one’s current perceptions. 

These elements make themselves usually known in a holistic way in that individuals attempt to create congruence among their substantive components.  Usually upon reflection, often in response to a relevant question, people think in terms of individual elements.  Short of that, the sum of these elements constitutes a holistic picture of what is.

Components or elements that do not “fit” substantively; they offend the logical wholeness of the rest and cause internal discomfort known as dissonance.[5]  In this domain there are the recognitions of all the relevant values and goals people have in life as matters of fact.  These elements – while in themselves belonging to the ideal domain (to be explained below) – add vibrance to any dissonance one might feel in each situation.  It can intensify dissonance and when it is experienced, individuals seek and usually arrive at some accommodation so that the dissonance is lessened.

How?  For one, individuals can abandon their related values or goals or rationalize the perceived inconsistencies in question if the situations allow.  Another option is that they can neglect the inconsistencies, or the affected values or goals can be diminished, if only for the time being, in importance.  This last possibility is often an important attribute of that other domain, the aforementioned ideal domain – that is, those beliefs individuals hold concerning what should or should not be.[6] 

In that other ideal mental domain, people harbor those values and goals in some order of priority which is to some degree (usually when they are fairly high in intensity or in relation to other values and goals) are readily recognized and felt by the individuals in question.[7]

Priority listings are supported by emotions and feelings, which in turn are motivating forces within the perceived mental purviews of individuals.  The substantive elements of the ideal domain are products of decisions themselves.  But unlike the decisions to act, these decisions are made without the consequences of such decisions immediately present.  One can, in a moment of reflection, decide to hold in high regard the desire to do some activity but when the opportunity arises, one can think better of that initial decision.

Ideal decision making is done upon reflection of past experiences, socialized lessons, and formed habits.  Most of the literature discusses the formulation of such ideals as those which are formed because of past rewards and punishments.  Some have commented on the role communal settings have played in the formation of ideals and often take on moralistic status and can be described as duties and obligations. 

And usually, the elements of ideals conform with the way they were developed or attained.  For example, technical values are generally acquired in technical environments; loving values tend to be attained in loving relationships.  The substance of the values and goals not only tend to be congruent with each other, but also with their formulation.

That is, they create patterns of dealing with the entailed emotions, the allegiance to sets of mores – this harkens to that delightful book, Habits of the Heart, by Robert Bellah, et al.[8] – and from the first domain, the real domain, their supportive beliefs – the “habits of the mind.”  All this is sensed not as individual components, but with a comfortable, repeatable wholeness within one’s consciousness – “this is just the way I see things,” or “this is just the way I feel about it.”

Another set of motivations or influences on the decision-making process is the physiological factors.  Here, the elements of this set of factors are not intentional on the part of people.  The elements include the genetic makeup of individuals, the changes, through aging, in the chemical compositions of people, and the social reactions to behaviors that such genetic and chemical compositions encourage. 

These factors or motivations are not chosen by individuals but are the product of given conditions that are present in either affected situations that people confront or exist more or less chronically in their biological makeups.[9]  Of course the other factor that affects this domain is accidental occurrences that have negative physical consequences – from a slip and fall to wartime injuries.  People so afflicted may have had life changing experiences that have affected how they see their worlds, which include mental effects on their real and ideal domains.

So, this account will stop here and simply state that decision making sessions are influenced by what occupies people’s minds in the form of what they “see” as the real (either in the present situations or from what they recollect from their past), what they believe should or should not be – their ideal beliefs – and what the mind recognizes are the physiological conditions or limitations that people’s bodies are experiencing. In the next posting, this account will venture into the time space in which decisions are made.

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[1] For a lighthearted description of this claim, see “Critical Thinking and Decision-Making:  Why Is It So Hard to Make Decisions?” GCF Global (n.d.), accessed June 10, 2023, https://edu.gcfglobal.org/en/problem-solving-and-decision-making/why-is-it-so-hard-to-make-decisions/1/# AND for a more professional account (involving business related decisions) see Vassundhara Sawhney, “Why Do We Try to Dodge Difficult Decisions?” Ascend (August 19, 2021), accessed June 10, 2023, https://hbr.org/2021/08/why-do-we-try-to-dodge-difficult-decisions AND for a more scholarly account, a bit dated, Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).

[2] Robert Slavin, Educational Psychology:  Theory and Practice (London, England:  Pearson, 2022).

[3] This has been studied from various perspectives.  For example, how others influence people’s decision making, see Vanessa K. Bohn, M. Mhdi Roghanizad, and Amy Z. Xu, “Underestimating Our Influence over Others’ Unethical Behavior and Decisions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 40, 3, accessed June 10, 2023, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167213511825 AND for a more standard account, see Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Pandaemonium:  Ethnicity in International Politics, (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1993).

[4] Slavin, Educational Psychology.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Robert L. Solso, Cognitive Psychology (8^th Edition), (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2007).

[8] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1985/2007).

[9] For example, Bruce Goldman, “Two Minds:  The Cognitive Differences between Men and Women,” Stanford Medicine Magazine (May 22, 2017) accessed June 10, 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=recent+review+of+moir+and+jessel+brain+sex&aqs=chrome..69i57.20198j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1 AND Anne Moir and David Jessel, Brain Sex:  The Real Difference between Men and Women (New York, NY:  Dell Publishing, 1989).

JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM, I

 

This posting begins this blogger’s account of the liberated federalist construct.  These upcoming postings are termed to be judgments.  Usually, this blogger prefaced these “judging” postings for the other constructs (e.g., the natural rights construct) with an editorial message that what was presented in the posting was done so in terms of how an advocate of the construct under consideration would argue for that construct.  In the case of liberated federalism, this blogger happens to be an advocate; hence the message is not needed. 

So, with this posting, this blog begins its “judging” of liberated federalism by addressing the first of the upcoming divisional categories (identified in the last posting), that of subject matter.  In terms of this category, the liberated federalist approach would argue the following:

 

·       It teaches the view of government as a supra federalist institution of society in which collective interests of the commonwealth are protected and advanced.

·       It teaches the philosophical basis of government’s role as guardian of the grand partnership of citizens at both the individual and associational levels of social and political intercourse.

·       It conveys the needs of government to engender levels of support that promote a general sense of obligation and duty toward goals and processes aimed at advancing the agreed upon proposals which are aimed at the betterment of the commonwealth.

·       It establishes and justifies a political morality, including a process to assess that morality in relation to the changing times.

·       It emphasizes the integrity of the individual in liberty and equity within a compact-al arrangement and congruent with the spirit of the Bill of Rights.

·       It points out a preference for local unsophisticated decision-making to detached professional expertise, but with an appreciation for national resources, national federalist values, and legitimate national interests (including appropriate expertise when the conditions demand it).  This is a highly nuanced claim.

 

By accomplishing these objectives, the liberated federalist argument believes that the subject matter of government and civics will be presented in such a way that advances good citizenship and social capital.

          The above elements reflect dualities or balances between forces that either focus political studies at local communal levels or at national levels.  This synthesis – recall that this is a synthesis between the dominant view of natural rights and its main challenging view, critical theory – in which liberated federalism is both concerned with the dignity of the individual and with the troubling arguments that critical theorists present about exploitive relationships within the nation.

          It is also sensitive to the dichotomy of parochial federalist ideals – concerning localism – and the realities of national forces that originally were introduced with industrialization in the 1800s and have only intensified in the ensuing years. 

The argument here is not to reestablish parochial federalism as a guiding construct regarding the nation’s governance and politics, but to incorporate the concerns for individualism and communalism to the degree that a federalist approach can accommodate the current cultural proclivities concerning individuals’ and communal needs while still being of use to educators and others in today’s world – all of this will be explained.

          What is presented in the following postings will be a true synthesis of not only two opposing constructs – natural rights and critical theory – but of the American tradition regarding its governance and politics.  And this effort begins with this posting and, more substantially, with the next posting which will highlight the subject matter  by addressing assumptions regarding decision-making, central to the subject of civics education.

A PROTOCOL FOR JUDGING LIBERATED FEDERALISM

 

In the upcoming postings, this blog will describe and explain the mental construct, liberated federalism.  It will do so from the perspective of an advocate – which happens to be true in the case of this blogger.  The last posting gave a hint as to how this reporting will be organized by sharing the main categorical divisions the text will employ to present this judgment of the construct; that is, the commonplaces of curriculum offered by Joseph Schwab and reported by William Schubert.[1]  They are subject matter, learner, teacher, and milieu.

          Each of these divisional categories will be introduced and generally explained and then further divided into subcategories.  In the case of subject matter, the subcategories are assumptions regarding decision-making, the discipline of political science, elements of a liberated federalist model, viability of the liberated federalism construct, and applied methodology.

          The category, student, will be divided into the following subcategories:  personal student interests, social student interests, economic student interests, and pedagogic student interests.  The category, teacher, will be divided into the subcategories, teacher receptiveness and factors of receptiveness.  And the category, milieu, will be divided into subcategories, expectations of schools, schools’ socio-economic base, and youth culture.

          Each of these subcategories is identified from the process of applying, through analysis, Aristotle’s categories of causation as also suggested by Schwab.[2]  Throughout these organizational divisions, Aristotle’s categories of causation will be used to engender specific questions of inquiry.  They include the state of affairs, interactions, situational insights, and the capacity to act morally.

          Each of these can be described as follows:

 

·       The state of affairs refers to the actual conditions found at school sites as opposed to abstracted or hypothesized relationships between or among factors or variables.  Of particular concern will be dilemmas caused by adherence to one construct as opposed to any other.  Here, a “picture” of sorts will be presented – at least that is the aim.

·       Interactions refers to social encounters affected by respective constructs – in this case liberated federalism.

·       Situational insights are interpretations of encounters gleaned from analysis(es) of practice.

·       Capacity to act morally will be assessments of practices as judged according to good citizenship and social capital as defined by liberated federalism.

 

These categories will be used freely to suggest questions for the analysis of the purposes this review highlights.

          And by way of further introducing this construct – in using everyday language – the following summary is offered.  Whereas natural rights – the prevailing construct in America today – with the emphasis being on individually defined liberty (“I do what I want to do”) – and critical theory, the most vibrant challenge to natural rights – with the emphasis being on righting the wrongs befalling the perceived oppressed classes of people – liberated federalism focuses on the general welfare of society through the engagement of its citizens.

          In doing so, various aspects of governance and politics will be highlighted.  They include local political action, dignity of the individual, duties and responsibilities of individual citizens, and communal potential assets that need to be discovered, enhanced, and encouraged.  Hopefully, readers will find this line of thought to be legitimate and potentially a positive force.  Surely, the belief here is that it should be seriously considered as a guide to how the nation approaches civics education.

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[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[2] Ibid.

FROM NATURAL RIGHTS TO LIBERATED FEDERALISM

 

[Note:  To be more accurate, this posting should be entitled, "From Natural Rights (Via Critical Theory) to Liberated Federalism."]

It’s time for this blog to make its final turn in reviewing what this blogger judges to be the nation’s dialectic struggles through its years of existence.  That would be the succession of foundational constructs that guide Americans in how they think and feel about their governance and politics.  At a general level, that has been a progression from parochial/traditional federalism to natural rights (which is being challenged today by critical theory) and to hopefully, in the future, liberated federalism.

By way of these influences, the two constructs that have been dominant in American political culture – parochial federalism and natural rights – one was prominent from the beginning of the nation to the outbreak of World War II and the other from that latter period to the present.  There have been other views that have had various levels of influence, but in terms of being the “taken for granted” view, those two views have had that distinction at different times. 

This blog has dedicated a good number of postings to describing and critiquing each of these views, including the view that currently most vibrantly challenges the natural rights view, that being critical theory.  The upcoming effort will be, in parallel fashion, presenting a proposed synthesis between the current thesis, natural rights, and the current antithesis, critical theory.  This newer view revisits – to a degree – what initiated this nation, but not in the form to which the founders believed and ascribed. 

That is, instead of parochial federalism, this blog promotes liberated federalism and with this posting begins its argument for instituting it as the next prominent view.  In other words, the synthesis of the dialectic analysis presented in this blog is that the liberated federalism perspective should replace natural rights for it best amalgams the ideas of natural rights and critical theory. 

In that vein, for example, it should be the foundational construct upon which the teaching of American government and civics in the nation’s secondary schools be based.  Generally, among the reasons for this argument will be that this perspective legitimately and viably promotes the interests of good citizenship and social capital.[1]

This perspective demonstrates its functional qualities in various ways.  That includes its potential treatment and handling of the subject matter of government and civics, its expectations of teachers and students, and its influences on the milieu of the instructional setting at the school site.  By way of review, this upcoming analysis will be guided by the subsidiary questions this blog employed in describing and explaining the other constructs it has addressed as to how they relate to the commonplaces of curriculum. 

These commonplaces were developed by William Schubert and include the subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.[2]  While upon reflection these seem to be intuitively appropriate topics, here they are defined as follows: 

 

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum. 

·       And milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.

 

Each of these commonplaces will have its own elements and concerns.  They will serve as the divisional categories for this presentation of liberated federalism.

The overall concerns identified above lead to subsidiary questions.  They include queries concerning those issues associated with instituting a liberated federalist view in a society that sustains the natural rights view as dominant.  These views, in many ways, are at odds not only with how governments should be described and explained and on how politics should be conducted, but on how people should behave within the existing governance, especially in their political interactions with others.

          With that, therefore, the following subsidiary questions are offered:

 

1.     How can the construct guide and evolve in the teaching of American government and civics?

2.     What are the anticipated salient consequences of that development?

3.     To what social/political arrangements should the development of this construct lead?

4.     And how can desirable social arrangements – a la the precepts of the construct – come about?

 

In addition, these questions steer one’s attention to how Americans should proceed into the upcoming years. 

Through a description of the historical development – the dialectic process – of the effects of the two current opposing perspectives – natural rights and critical theory – a clear comparison will be attempted.  This analysis will be guided by the above subsidiary questions as they relate to the cited commonplaces of curriculum.  The next posting will share the protocol this blog will follow in describing and explaining the liberated federalist perspective.

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[1] As defined by Robert Putnam.  See Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2000).  Reminder:  social capital, as a societal quality, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY, VI

 

This posting will be the last dedicated to critiquing critical theory.  Overall, this blogger believes that this construct and its accompanying critical pedagogy have contributed a number of positive effects to the field of civics education and social studies in general.  Mostly, those contributions have been in relation to its focus on the needs of the disadvantaged, particularly considering how the advantaged have used their resources to further their economic interests, often at the expense of the lower classes.

            Demonstrating this last claim, there are ample cases in which the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and big business in general can take advantage of their ability to hire top rated attorneys.  This representation, in turn, can protect them against lawsuits and other legal efforts to compensate harm that average people might suffer at the hands of these entities.[1] 

Along with favoring these “big shots” in tort litigation, they favor contractual agreements and other provisions of the law that hinder regular people’s rights to gain access to the courts or, if access is achieved, have favorable decisions rendered.  This type of information is what would be highlighted in a critical education curriculum. 

Not only would this alleged unjust behavior be shared with students, but critical leaning lessons would analyze what individuals and communities can do about righting these wrongs.  And if done according to instructional strategies that that construct promulgates, it would be done in an open discussion format.

This would not only enhance the knowledge of students but also be useful in developing their intellectual capabilities.  And lest one forgets, such instruction helps the communal interests of those less advantaged students since part of the lesson is to teach and encourage students to actively engage in political action – praxis – which targets those who can authoritatively right the wrongs of any exploitive conditions.

But this blogger does see that the approach suffers from certain shortcomings.  For one, the construct is situated upon an array of assumptions that its adherents apply to the debate over curricular issues including its instructional methodology.  For example, he once debated a critical pedagogue over whether the US Constitution is a slave document or not.

Admittedly, it was mostly a semantic argument, but words are important.  To give readers the summary substance of that argument, the critical pedagogue claimed that by permitting slavery to not only exist but flourish and, by doing so, it promoted the enslavement of African descendants.   This blogger argued that the Constitution did accommodate slavery – in some very meaningful ways – but it did not mandate it and, with the structure and values it promoted, it helped establish the stage for its eventual demise.

Irrespective of how readers judge this back and forth – if it were limited to two people having a disagreement, no big deal.  But if there is a corps of teachers believing the nation’s constitution is an exploitive legal document, this can be a very hurtful assumption or belief.  Such conclusions can logically lead to de-legitimizing arguments or claims being presented to unsophisticated populations of students and some might reasonably consider that dangerous.

Hopefully, readers do not believe this type of concern links this blogger with the rhetoric and policies of Governor Ron DeSantis and his favoring the disallowing of leftist or critical content in Florida classrooms.  This blogger believes that true liberty is not achieved through educational censorship, but through the inclusion of as many messages as is reasonably possible. 

This blogger’s concern with critical pedagogy is that through its questioning – how they, the questions, are reflective of their ideological beliefs – steer their approach toward those ideological beliefs and do stack the deck against truly open inquiry.  Of course, with such unfettered bias in how the material is presented or under what context it stands, the accusation of indoctrination seems justified.

He is not trying to overstate the case, but he feels, having known critical pedagogues, that in some cases – i.e., in terms of some educators – the net effect will be to unduly promote a political agenda which happens to undermine the legitimacy of the nation’s political system.  That would be bad enough, but when couched in the language of an issue-centered curriculum, the influence would be tacit and even more insidious.

How?  This approach, critical pedagogy – has a definite political agenda backing its efforts.  It highly relies on Marxist biases.  While many do not consider themselves Marxists – and often with good and honest reasons – it is in danger of precluding the legitimate concerns and constructive contributions conservatives add to the related debates.  In other words, the approach is too committed to leftist positions as expressed in the information they tend to provide or in the questioning they employ.

If the reader wishes to read more of what critical pedagogues have to say, let this blogger suggest some names. He believes these writers and their works would be a good start in delving into critical literature. This list includes, of course, Paulo Freire, but also Michael Apple, Henry Giroux, Jonathan Kozol, Ivan Illich, John Holt, Peter McLaren, bell hooks, and Ira Shor (who actually bases his writings on his own classroom experiences). And there are many others.

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[1] See for example, Michelle Conlin, Dan Levine, and Lisa Giron, “Special Report:  Why Big Business Can Count on Courts to Keep Its Deadly Secrets,” Reuters (December 19, 2019), accessed May 27, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist-specialre/special-report-why-big-business-can-count-on-courts-to-keep-its-deadly-secrets-idUSKBN1YN1GF.