INSTITUTIONAL EQUALITY

What leads to what: liberty to equality or equality to liberty? Perhaps, despite the claims of some, there is no developmental relationship between the two. We do believe in both and at times these societal qualities work at cross purposes. They are not mutually exclusive; you can design a society with both – we claim to have done so. But a lot of our political discourse can be boiled down to whether or not we will advance the one for the other. Should we have better schools, for example, to advance equality? If we go about trying to improve our schools, we soon find ourselves spending more money on them and that generally means soliciting more taxes from our citizens. Collecting those taxes can be seen as limiting taxpayer liberty – they have less money to do what they want to do. Right wing thought argues that liberty leads to equality. By allowing people to make their own decisions about the economic opportunities they find in front of them, enough will decide to invest money and time to start businesses and make innovations that will expand economic activity and provide others with jobs. Expanding economies enhance equality because they create meaningful opportunities. These, in turn, allow many to seek the American dream.

On the surface, all this true. But in a more basic way, I believe the more meaningful relation between the two is one in which equality leads to liberty. But before we can really determine what's primary, of course, each of these terms need to be defined within the context in which they are being considered. Liberty seems to be the more easily defined: the state in which a person can basically do what he/she wants to do. Historically, there have been many different views of liberty and freedom, but for the purposes here I am using this more popular sense of liberty. Equality has a more illusive meaning. Does it mean a state in which everyone has the same goods and access to the same services? Does it mean equal condition; that is, equal standing before the law? Does it mean equal opportunity? Or does it mean we all enjoy equal standing in terms of fame, reputation, privileges, or some other desired quality? Most Americans, I think, believe that equality refers to equal condition, at minimum, and, for many, it also includes equal opportunity. Let's go with those two attributes.

Now, if we begin with a condition in which neither liberty nor equality exists, what needs to be established first in order to end up with both? This condition is not that hard to imagine since most of human history has resembled this state of affairs: no or very limited liberty and no or limited equality. Most societies have been situational arrangements in which either a strong military type runs the government for his own interests (I don't know of any such system with a woman in charge) or one in which an aristocratic or plutocratic class runs things for its own interests. There have been some cases where a bureaucracy was in charge. In any of these cases, though, liberty cannot just break out and become the mode of political interaction. Liberty needs the appropriate institutions to be set up so as to establish the necessary laws and constitutional structures that create the appropriate social and legal and cultural expectations which allow for people to act as they wish. And how does that happen? On some level, enough people or at least leaders need to have a view of their fellows as being entitled to rights on an equal basis – they believe that these non elites should be able to define and act in ways that advance their lives as they see fit. And that is equality at a foundational level.

Of course, as the necessary processes proceed and those institutions are established over time things get more complicated and formal. I was watching this past Thursday on TV the dedication of the George W. Bush presidential library and museum. There, for the occasion, were all the living past and present presidents. They all had nice things to say about President Bush. Was this important? To a degree, it was. Why? Because it displayed how a support institution – like the ones I alluded to above – gets established. The event helped further entrench our system of government and governance. And at its heart, it is a ceremony that treats all past presidents equally, whether he served one or two terms or whether he is held in high or not so high esteem. A sense of equality prevailed among these past and present leaders and the ceremony further legitimizes the presidency – an essential center of power within our system. Was the event enough by itself to overcome those forces that undermine the levels of legitimacy from which our system suffers – those forces of extreme partisanship that have stymied our government from meeting many of our nation's needs? Of course not, but the development of these institutions is slow going and it takes many such events to be developed and updated. It is an ongoing process.

NOT KNOWING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Early on in the history of this blog, I made the point that our efforts in civics education have been less than optimal; that while I was not placing the blame on any one set of professionals, parents, or community members, our secondary students were not learning enough civic content, civic content acquisition skills, citizen participatory skills, or acquiring healthy participatory dispositions. These have been the areas that civics education leaders have identified as appropriate pedagogic aims for a civics curriculum. In a series of postings, I introduced research that supports these conclusions although some of the cited works found that American students might compare somewhat favorably in regard to some of these concerns. Yet, my overall conclusion was that American efforts could and should be much better than what they are. Kathleen Hall Jamieson reflects this general finding:

In the past decade, low levels of youth voting and non-proficient student performance on a widely respected civics assessment test have elicited efforts to increase the amount and quality of time spent teaching civic education and have ignited a movement to create common standards in the social studies.¹

This current evaluation of our civics instruction further validates concerns over our lack of success in this subject area.

And what are the consequences of such shortcomings; are they important? A look at a current policy area gives us a hint. Recent polling regarding gun safety gives us pause about how informed citizens are about gun safety. While Americans consistently claim that we need better enforcement of our gun laws, they have little knowledge of what those laws are. And this lack of knowledge has political ramifications.

Joel Benenson and Katie Connolly² report survey research results on the lack of knowledge most Americans have over an issue that has dominated a lot of air time on TV and space on other media. Given the recent shooting incidents, I believe it is safe to say that the overwhelming number of Americans have given thought to the controversy over whether our government should enact stricter laws concerning the availability of certain types of weapons, specifically assault rifles and their accompanying magazines, particularly of higher-capacity. I would like to summarize some of their findings:

• A large percentage of American respondents expressed the belief that there are laws requiring background checks on all gun purchases and that they also ban high-capacity magazines. Neither claim is true.
• A majority of respondents believe that it is illegal to sell a gun to a person on the terrorist watch list. Not true; it's legal to do so.
• Significant numbers of Americans believe that federal law requires reporting large quantities of purchased amounts of ammunition. It doesn't.
• Significant numbers of Americans don't know whether it is legal or illegal to purchase ammunition over the Internet. It's legal.

This level of misinformation or lack of knowledge among Americans makes it easier for those organized to stop any effort to change our gun laws. Americans want many of the changes that are being proposed by gun safety advocates.³ But if many to most Americans incorrectly believe that the laws already provide for those sanctions and limitations, their voice is to varying degrees either muted or confused. Hence, the ability to succeed in making the needed changes in law become much more difficult. Ignorance is consequential. The rate at which Americans are being killed by guns and rifles is alarming. Something needs to be done and a misinformed citizenry doesn't help. 

 

1Jamieson, K. H. (2013). The challenges facing civic education. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring, 142 (2), p. 65.

2Benenson, J. and Connolly, K. (2013). Don't know much about gun laws. New York Times, April 7, Sunday Review Section, p. 6.

3Ibid.

STROKING THE BOSS?

Much of this blog has been dedicated to promoting and explaining ideals. The message has been, in a few words, that we need to encourage our students in civics and government classes to consider an ideal polity – one based on federalist principles of communal governance. But how about the real; shouldn't our students be exposed to the realities of politics? This concern was brought to the fore for me with the recent action in the Senate where background checks for gun sales at gun shows was voted down. This action took place despite the fact that polling indicates over eighty percent of the electorate support this change in our nation's law. Therefore, there seems to be a political reality that simply does not become evident when one focuses on ideals, even if those ideals are of the democratic-republican variety.

I have pointed out and extensively described and explained what I see as the prominent view of governance among our people today. To that view I have given the name, the natural rights construct. In philosophical writings, it is known as classical liberalism – a name that might confuse someone who is not familiar with that literature.¹ Its central principles are that the individual should be allowed to determine the values, aims, and goals for him or herself, should be reasonably allowed to pursue those values, aims, and goals, and that that person should not stand in the way of anyone else doing likewise. The prominence of this view has resulted in a general reality of how we go about our governance and politics. It is a general mode of behavior noted for its individualism. I have, in the past, cited ample expert reporting and opining that supports this conclusion.²

With this posting, I want to introduce a series of postings that will appear from time to time in the future; the series will report on relatively specific beliefs of how to best manage one's interests given the prevalence of the natural rights perspective. That is, if one were to seek out advice on how to succeed in our real, natural rights, world, what would that advice be? I don't present this advice as wisdom or as anything I believe a good citizen should heed. Instead, I present these bits of advice as legitimate topics for classroom discussion in a civics or government class. One advantage of introducing these messages in class is to point out that politics and governance do not refer only to formal government activities and structures. There are politics and governance in any organized effort and much of what will be presented as wisdom is intended, by those who offer it, to “teach” people who work in the private sector how to advance within a business hierarchy.

As of now, I will be relying on the writings of Robert Greene and his book, The 48 Laws of Power. I must commend Mr. Greene on his honesty. Most writers who write in this vein are usually somewhat circumspect. Mr. Greene is unabashedly promoting a very self-centered view of how one should proceed within the real arenas of competition among workers of an organization. I believe this first posting will give you a good sense of Greene's view of reality.

Law number one is: don't go too far in demonstrating your talents to your superior less you instill in him or her a sense of inferiority, insecurity, and/or fear. It is better to make your superior seem to be more talented and brilliant than he or she is. In class, a teacher can present this law as a “springboard” (jargon for a discussion starter) and then have a series of questions that are generated by federalist thinking.

I'm sure a teacher can think of a variety of questions by which to analyze the implications of this “law.” I will present two types of questions.

The first set of questions would be about the evidence that exists to either support or negate this law – in other words, the “law” should be presented as a hypothesis. Greene, in his book, of course, cites several historical cases that support the “law.” Let me share the first one. He tells the story of Nicolas Fouquet of France, King Louis XIV's initial finance minister. In order to solidify his position in the King's government, he threw an extravagant party – and by extravagant you will have to take my word for it since there is not enough space here to describe how otherworldly this affair was – to honor the young king. The party had the opposite effect and before long the now insecure king had Fouquet imprisoned to spend the rest of his days (twenty years worth) behind bars. This is only the first case Greene offers and he goes on to provide several others.

In addition to these cases, students can do an Internet search on how successful business leaders treat talented employees. My limited review of that literature seems to indicate that instead of punishing talent, business leaders seem to be in competition to find and retain talent. But this is a good area of reality that students would benefit from researching.

My second concern or set of questions regarding this “law” has to do with what would happen if one were to follow it; how would an organization be affected if this view were widely held by the employees of a particular business? Would this strategy help or hurt a business if its employees are as focused on their own individual fates as this law assumes employees to be? Should employees be about presenting false messages to stroke egos and to calm insecurities? If not, what would be a better frame of mind and mode of behavior for a business leader to promote and reward? If yes, is the real world so cynical? So two-faced? In other words, if reality within a particular business is counterproductive to accomplishing organizational goals, what can businesses do to offset these real challenges?

In general, organizational theory has shifted from a purely systemic approach to a more communal one. That is not to say that there has been a complete abandonment of a concern for the real needs and ambitions of individuals within organizations. As for students, civics instruction can serve as a platform by which to introduce and analyze the conditions that characterize organizational realities. Are federalist ideas and ideals, as explained in this blog, useful in such a study? Are they useful in promoting the disposition among the younger generation that would be helpful to organizations of the future in setting their cultures toward productive ends? The use of federalism theory in guiding the content of such a lesson strategy is based on the belief that the answer to this last question is yes.

1One might see it as a form of what we currently call liberalism or left of center politics. 

 

2See for example Lipset, S. M. (1996). American exceptionalism: A double-edged sword. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.

EXPRESSED INTEREST BY ALL PROVIDES BALANCE

In past postings – somewhat early in the history of this blog – I shared with you Gordon S. Wood's historical account of a prevailing political view at the time of the founding of our republic. What I highlighted was the support for an approach to governance that its backers called the commonwealth view. They were known as commonwealthmen and I associated federalist ideas and ideals with their beliefs.¹ While prevalent among the politically opinionated populous, it was not the only outlook and surely did not hold sway among the elite political actors of the day. I still hold that federalist principles provided the backdrop to the overall political discourse of that time. But Richard Hofstadter² points out that among the founding fathers who attended the Constitutional Convention, the more prominent view took on a suspicious attitude toward the common man and I would suggest that a lot of what was believed by the commonwealthmen was seen by these leaders as naive and unrealistic. He describes the general sense these founders held was that the human being is a selfish being who pursues his/her interests with insatiable passion. They also saw the developments between the Revolution and 1787, the year of the Constitutional Convention, as proof positive of their biases.

The state governments that were set up during the time of the Revolution and afterwards gave the common people too much power and they proceeded to abuse that power. At least, that's how many in the elite class saw what was going on within the states. These developments encouraged them to pursue a new constitutional arrangement. Hofstadter writes:

As the Revolution took away the restraining hand of the British government, old colonial grievances of farmers, debtors, and squatters against merchants, investors, and large landholders had flared up anew; the lower order took advantage of new democratic constitutions in several states, and the possessing class were frightened.³

And the founding fathers belonged to the “possessing class.” As such, they were very conscious of the issues that reflected the opposing class interests of the time.

Yet they wrote a constitution that reflected an understanding that they could not dismiss the “lower order.” They appreciated that, one, humans are going to be passionate about their interests no matter at what point in the economic spectrum they find themselves; two, whichever class is given the advantage – be they the rich, the poor, or those in between – they will use their power to advance their interests; and three, the only hope there is of avoiding oppression is to make sure that each class is included in the power structure that results from their efforts of devising a workable constitution. This they did, in the constitution they wrote, with a bias favoring the elites. What they didn't foresee was the cultural bent among the populous that would develop the political institutions which would in the future overcome this bias and shift the system toward a more democratic one.

Some of the institutional practices and processes that characterized this shift have included expanding the franchise, the election of senators, explosion of communication facilities, maintenance of state prerogatives over local concerns, home rule within the political distribution of state power, one man – one vote, constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech and free press, and the general cultural bias that supports individual citizens in pursuing their interests. This latter development sometimes gets subdued. Actually, it's subdued most of the time. But the recent actions, the response to the tragic events at Sandy Hook elementary school, demonstrate that popular involvement can and does have an impact on how political issues are determined. While the final determination concerning gun safety is still an open question, one cannot deny that the level of popular involvement has drawn the attention of policy makers on either side of the issues involved. Civics instruction needs to generate or at least encourage a more active role among the citizenry as an on-going factor in the determination of our public policy.

Of course, an active role reflects a self-interested strategy by those who take part. But there is a more patriotic function. What happens most of the time is that only those with concentrated interest become involved. The parents and others in Connecticut who have involved themselves with this gun issue understandably have done so after the tragic events of December, 2012. They feel a concentrated interest. The National Rifle Association has had and will continue to have a concentrated interest in this area. Unfortunately, most of us have a diffused interest. Gun safety, if we think about it at all, is one of a multitude of concerns of more or less equal intensity. The question remains whether the level of tragedy Sandy Hook created is strong enough to center this concern for enough of us so as to lead toward action. Does the tragedy motivate those who were not directly affected by the shooting to contact policy makers – members of Congress – to make the desired changes? More generally, when average citizens choose to ignore any involvement, the result is that a political vacuum is created and is filled by the vested interests of the various issue areas. Financial interest groups are highly involved in financial politics, industrial interest groups in industrial politics, medical interest groups in medical politics, and so on and so on. And given the concern expressed by the founding fathers, one cannot be surprised by the recurring nature of our public policy being skewed in favor of those interests and too often at the expense of the commonwealth.

1Wood, G. S. (1998). The creation of the American republic 1776-1787. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. This seminal work was originally published in 1969.

2Hofstadter, R. (1948). The American political tradition. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

3Ibid., p. 4.

QUESTIONS BY WHICH TO STUDY RIGHTS

A while ago, I tried to make a distinction between liberty and autonomy. Both are related to the idea and ideal of rights. Both have to do with being able to do what one wants to do whether because of desires, obligations, associations, physiological needs and/or physiological proclivities. Liberty refers to the absence of power over one's life. The power can be legitimate or illegitimate. Autonomy refers to one's ability to choose what one's course of action will be. The main difference is that liberty, along with referring to human freedom, can describe the level of freedom of any organism, where- as in the case of autonomy, only humans can make life-directing decisions. A pet dog that escapes his/her home can be said to have won liberty, if not safety. But only humans can meaningfully choose and, therefore, only they can enjoy autonomy. Of course, autonomy can be restricted, delayed, or deprived. But if we, at all, can see ourselves seeking, through our choices, those conditions that determine the quality of our lives and how innate that desire is, then we can understand how sad, or even depressing, the deprivation of that ability can be. We can then visualize or feel that we are born with a right to be autonomous – to decide in which ways we can attain our desires. The sense we derive from this state of affairs is that we have a natural right to be autonomous. The natural reactive state of being deprived of what we want is frustration; the natural reactive state of being deprived of the ability to decide what we should do in order to get what we want is hopelessness. In either case, the lack of autonomy leads to a level of discontent.

As a matter of fact, an issue over autonomy arises only when our autonomy, through no action or choice of our own, is limited. So how does this happen? Richard Dagger¹ offers understandable language by which to analyze this area of concern. He first distinguishes between two sorts of rights: special and general rights. General rights are rights we all have because they either enhance or protect our autonomy. For example, we all have the right to participate in economic activity – to be able to work, to exchange for goods and services, to save for future eventualities, and so on – because without this right we would suffer from want for the things that make life possible and meaningful. Hence, in its most basic sense, our autonomy will neither be enhanced nor protected without this general right. On the other hand, special rights are those rights we acquire through agreements with others as when we enter a contractual relation. Here, though, we usually are called upon to relinquish some autonomy or liberty in exchange for the autonomy or liberty we are seeking in the agreement. The agreement is an exchange. General rights are held against all others while special rights are against a specific other party(ies) – that is, the other party(ies) identified in the agreement. Some rights are easily categorized as being either general or special. Some are not. The example I give above illustrates the type that is not so easily categorized: the right to work might be general, but in a particular case, work is attained by an arrangement with another party.

Dagger goes on to provide a four question test by which to determine what type of right a particular putative right² is. By so doing, he gives us a set of concerns deserving of our consideration and he provides questions a civics teacher might introduce in his or her lessons.

Before sharing the test he devised, let me address why determining what type of right a particular putative right is is important. I feel the essence of the concern has to do with the definitional distinction I laid out above. General rights are not rights we accept by choice; they are simply part of the legal-constitutional arrangement in which we find ourselves or is proposed by some political faction. Special rights, on the other hand, are rights we choose to acquire or relinquish through an exchange with others. Even though part of the arrangement usually calls on us to surrender some autonomy, the fact that we choose to be a party to such an agreement is an expression of our autonomy. And all this reflects the questions on Dagger's list: Does the right protect an individual's autonomy? Does the right promote an individual's autonomy? Does the right infringe or violate the rights of others? And can the right be realized? By analyzing the state of a given proposed right, as reflected by the answers to these questions, we discover the content of that “right” and better define what it is.

For example, by answering the question does the right promote an individual's autonomy, we can analyze the issue of whether citizens have a right to health care regardless of whether they can afford either the care or the related insurance coverage. On the one hand, we can readily see that illness can seriously interfere with a person's autonomy. On the other hand, the taxes that are needed to fund universal health care will also restrain people's autonomy. Of course, this leads to calculations and meaningful classroom discussions. It also makes related information more functional to students who might be concerned with their own autonomy. That's just another way of saying that the use of Dagger's questions assists teachers in making their resulting lessons more relevant.

1Dagger, R. (1997). Civic virtue: Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism. New York, NY: Oxford.

2Putative right is a right someone claims to exist.

NEUTRALITY AND SPEECH

A recurring theme of this blog has been the history of American political thought and how it has shifted from one prominent view to another – from what I have called the traditional federalist perspective to the natural rights construct. Nothing illustrates this more than the shifts in thinking by our jurists as expressed through their court decisions. Of course, leading this change are the constitutional decisions the US Supreme Court has rendered concerning our basic rights. A number of postings ago, I reported on how court decisions concerning religious freedom reflected this shift. This posting will look at the jurisprudence concerning speech.

Michael J. Sandel¹ provides us with a short account of that history. He points out that, just as with religion, the overall view of the courts has been toward prohibiting the government from restricting speech and inhibiting government's ability to promote its version of the good. Government might find constitutional reasons to regulate the expression of speech – in regard to time, place, and/or manner – but such regulation, generally, must not be based on the content; that is, the state is to be neutral in any obstacles that it might inflict upon the exercise of speech.

As with all of the rights contained in the Bill of Rights, before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the federal government did not have any authority to protect citizens from any affronts to those rights by the state governments. As far as federal courts were concerned, states, such as New York or South Carolina, could restrict speech, for example, as much as they wanted. The US constitutional guarantee in the First Amendment was to protect citizens against efforts by the central government. And even with the one prominent situation in which the central government tried to control speech – the enactment of the Sedition Act of 1798² – the law was never challenged before the Supreme Court. The main challenge to that law came from two state sponsored resolutions – the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions – authored by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. These founding fathers' main complaint was not that the law offended the individual rights of free speech or freedom of the press, but that the law interfered with the states' right to restrict speech and the press in the ways the law provided. So much for any concern for individual rights among these founders. I will add that the courts' concern for these rights didn't even cause a ripple in the nation's federal jurisprudence until after World War I.

The first serious judicial concern over legislative efforts to check free speech came about as a result of the World War I laws, the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917. An initial standard the court formulated in the cases that emanated from the adjudication of individuals who were found guilty of breaking these laws was the “clear and present danger” standard. That is, a person's right to free expression could only be held unlawful if the speech presented a situation in which the speech would incite people to engage in disruptive and dangerous activities in an immediate time frame. The speech, in addition, had to have subversive content. And to demonstrate the lack of judicial concern for these rights, it took until the late 1920s before the court overturned any of the convictions in these “subversive” cases.

The reluctance of the courts during the era of traditional federalist thought to find favor with those who argued for free speech can be demonstrated with a later developed standard: the “two-level theory of free speech” standard. In a unanimous decision in the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire case, the court identified a level of speech that did not have the protection of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court decided in 1942 that speech found to be lewd and obscene, profane, libelous, and/or insulting (“fighting” words) – that is, speech that was in and of itself injurious or incited immediate disruption – could be constitutionally restrained by law. What seemed to be valued over individual freedom in this decision was order and morality, not the principle of free speech. The courts continued in this direction of limiting constitutionally protected speech through the 1950s by adding commercial speech, racial defamation speech, and obscenity as not being constitutionally protected.

One of the main criticisms of such rulings was that this two-level approach placed the courts in a position to make very subjective decisions. Trying to determine what speech was profane, for example, called on judges to apply their personal sensitivities. These criticisms increased in number and stridency until the court abandoned the two-level approach in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. In this case, the court held against a libel decision by ruling that any misrepresentation of the facts that was defamatory had to be shown to be motivated by malice in order to be judged libelous and not constitutionally protected. On another front concerning free speech, Stanley v. Georgia held in 1969 that an individual had the right to receive obscene materials. This general trend in which the courts extended protections for speech – in printed or verbal forms – continued through the 1980s. The court established, with each decision, the principle that government needed to be neutral in its perspective of what the good is in determining what speech was acceptable or not.

Sandel goes on to describe how the court has striven to establish ever more neutrality standards by which to judge the constitutionality of federal and local laws. No area probably has been given more interest than political expression such as the burning of the American flag as a form political protest, or what is considered “hate speech.” But as we keep the overall trend in mind, what I am emphasizing in this posting is that the trend has promoted a view of governance which is neutral and, in turn, enables, if not encourages, the individual to determine what values he or she will strive to adopt – the essential position of the natural rights construct.

With the adoption of neutrality standards, the natural rights perspective has been given a strong legal foundation. We are left free from any collective sense of what the good should be. To what extent? The courts have ruled against laws that prohibit the exhibition of obscene movies at drive-in theaters where the images were visible from nearby public streets. Maybe I am expressing old-fashioned sensitivities, but to say such images do not express our cultural sense of what is immoral, I believe, is a definite change in our collective sense of what government should be allowed to control. In a future posting, I will revisit this topic; the courts have wavered some on this level of neutrality principle. But overall, I will claim that the natural rights construct is well established by and within our jurisprudence.

1Sandel, M. J. (1996). Democracy's discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

2A law that made libelous speech against the federal government illegal.

STUDENTS INQUIRING INTO MORAL QUESTIONS

I have, in this blog, argued that a civics curriculum should adopt a naturalist approach to value/moral content – that, by doing so, civics instruction can avoid blatant promulgation of a definite political agenda. In other words, such instruction can be said to not indoctrinate students to particular politically biased content. Understandably, parents and citizens, in general, should be concerned with a public school curriculum that attempts to foster a particular brand of politics. But this approach is not without its perils.

Complete neutrality is beyond possibility. I write this due not to our innate biases as educators. Yes, that is a factor, but the extent of the problem is more fundamental. When one goes about designing an organized set of ideas by which to write a curriculum, decisions have to be made. Two central areas of decisions have to do with the curriculum designer's views on learning and on content. My focus here is the effect that decisions have on content. As currently practiced, most teachers simply adjust to the content perspective offered by the textbook they are handed. This book in turn is chosen – the term is adopted – through a fairly sophisticated process which in our country is run by the state government and the local school districts. Many interested parties provide input from the community. In terms of civics, as I have pointed out many times, the mostly unquestioned consensus is to adopt texts that are guided in their selection of content by a perspective I have called the natural rights construct. That construct heavily supports a strongly based commitment to individualism at the expense of communal biases. I have tried to document how this current choice became prominent about sixty years ago when, in the post World War II years, the nation abandoned the traditional federalist view that had been prominent since the beginning of the nation.

I have argued that we should now abandon this self-serving individualist view for a more updated version of federalist thought – the liberated federalism construct. As part of this other proposed view, resulting classroom materials should be based on a set of values whose aim is to strengthen communal ties, but which includes an element promoting a strong, participating individual. That view of individualism does not short-shrift the person's self interests, but situates them within the context of equality and communal necessities which in turn advance societal well-being.

I have also argued that when it comes to values education, a curriculum should count on a consequentialist, as opposed to a precept, view of values. That is, the good should be defined by the consequences of action, not by some preconceived claim of goodness and evil. By counting on consequences, one is more strongly directed to implement an instructional strategy that has students conduct moral inquiries.

With what questions should such inquiry be concerned? Let me review some concerns that are suggested by Philip Selznick.¹ First, what personal qualities are useful, if not needed, to carry out such inquiries? Here the concern is the dispositions of individuals, associations, and communities. What is needed to carry out a values inquiry is a desire for the genuine, stable, and enduring as opposed to the superficial and intolerant. Second, what is the functional balance in a given moral challenge between the particular elements of the situation under analysis and its representative quality of universal moral concerns? While each situation has particular factors affecting moral choice, it, by necessity, has recognizable moral deficiencies so judged by universal standards. Such standards are reflective of conditions that undermine communal well-being. History tells us that dishonesty, vented anger, abuse, and the like are the types of behaviors that lead to fractured social structures. Third, what insights do related fields – social science, history, moral philosophy – tell us about what is moral or what is the least evil in the situation studied? For example:

A social science of moral ordering draws on a rich tradition of philosophical thought, from which it gains a steady focus on the core values at stake in moral experience, especially responsibility, autonomy, integrity, reason, fairness, equality; and on recurrent perplexities and tensions, for example, those affecting the determination of obligation and self-interest, formal and substantive justice, moral and social equality.²

Fourth, how does the situation provide us the opportunity to advance and balance our views concerning the real and the ideal? We need to abandon any attempt to disengage our beliefs and emotions from either reality or idealism – both are essential for promoting self or communal well-being. While there is a distinction between the two, to claim we are concerned with one without the other or that we favor one over the other is foolish and narrow-minded.

But as one goes through these questions, one needs to hold fast to the notion that what one is calling on students to do is to inquire. Built into the questions a teacher would ask is the question of whether or not the inquiry itself is legitimate. The initial questions need to be justified and open to critical review. In a word, nothing is taken for granted or as reflecting an intolerance of intellectual curiosity.

1Selznick, P. (1992). The moral commonwealth: Social theory and the promise of community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

 

2Ibid., quotation on p. 37, emphasis in the original.