CHANGE IN SUBSTANCE ONLY

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

In previous postings, this blog describes the efforts social studies leadership undertook through what was called the New Social Studies.  By way of a quick reminder, that initiative was timed shortly after the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik, the first man made orbital satellite.  Generally, the reaction took many forms including one in which various American institutions promoted a significant push in the nation’s schools to emphasize science. 

In the social studies – including civics courses – that materialized in what was called the New Social Studies.  There, not only was the scientific method highlighted but the various subjects became more objectified and lacking in normative concerns.  This mirrored shifts in various social science disciplines like political science and its adoption of the political systems model (also described in previous postings).

          The leadership in social studies aimed its efforts at convincing teachers to implement an instructional strategy known as inquiry, which in turn heavily relied on the scientific method.  Overall, that leadership failed at getting teachers to adopt scientific modes of study to their teaching.  But that does not mean the effort totally failed.

          In terms of what this current series of postings aims to accomplish, the reader should take into account two areas in which the national concern for science did have large impacts.  One area was how the various social sciences changed.  In political science, this development coincided with what Harold Lasswell started in the 1930s.  That political scientist caused a stir mainly with his proposed definition for politics.  He defined this central concept or factor as follows:  “who gets what, when, how.”[1]

He writes in the preface of his famous book the following:

The interpretation of politics found in this book underlies the working attitude of practicing politicians.  One skill of the politician is calculating probable changes in influence and the influential.

          This version of politics is not novel to all students of social development.  Yet it is constantly in danger of attenuation.[2]

The general thrust of his book portrays an elitist account of politics in general, but with a focus on American politics.  A reader of this work walks away, to the extent Lasswell is successful, with a sobering view of politicians devoid of sentimentality or much hope for a shared sense of communality.  As its title suggests, politics is a no-nonsense business of government that determines the distribution of public assets.

          Initially, Lasswell’s work did not have the influence it would eventually have.  That latter development begins in the 1950s and with the nation’s shift to more scientific concerns in the 1960s.  No political scientist garners more credit for this change than David Easton.[3]  Reviewing Easton’s main contribution, in terms of this series’ aims, his work facilitated political science’s shift toward a more scientific approach of study. 

          Those who deal with this matter identify Easton’s introduction of his model for the study of politics as central.  He introduced the political systems model in the early fifties.  Again, that is reviewed in previous postings, but generally the model describes a system noted for its depiction of a circular process. 

That is, it denotes citizens (individually or through some interest group arrangement) feed demands and supports into the system.  The system then converts those inputs into outputs of public policy usually in the form of laws and regulations.  Once issued, the output is subject to review by the populous that then engage in feedback, that is, communicated judgements that then can be new demands and supports.  This, again, is described in previous postings.

A side note should be emphasized:  if one approaches the typical civics teacher and asks about the political systems model, he or she will probably not know what that is.  Even those who received a degree in political science might not be familiar with the above language.  The political systems model no longer enjoys the dominance it once enjoyed, but among all political science programs, it is still quite influential.  In addition, most civics teachers received a degree in history or took a concentration in history, not in political science. 

The point here is that Easton’s work led to a more “scientific” approach to political science.  And in how this development affected civics, the subject matter became more objectified, less concerned with justice, and less aimed at promoting a civic society.  Instead, it became more of a report about how participants pursue self-interest within structural elements of government.

Initially, political systems approach with its related behavioral studies were meant to imitate the natural sciences in their approaches.  Those engaged with this effort anticipated successes in social sciences that those natural sciences experienced starting in the nineteenth century and straight through the twentieth century.  But alas, no such success was being achieved. 

Consequently, the political systems approach broke down into various derived approaches like cybernetics, public opinion studies, conflict theory studies, political sociology studies, comparative politics studies, political economy studies, etc.  In addition to this diverse, more specific areas of research, older methodologies are currently held in higher regard than they were in the late twentieth century.

They include philosophic and historical methods.  In addition, more recently, one finds hermeneutics studies (interpretive analyses) enjoying respected standing within the discipline.  But all of that has little to no effect on civics instruction.  Instead, that instruction has maintained a structural view of government and this blog in upcoming postings will give the reader an adequate taste of what that subject material looks like.

Through the developments associated with Sputnik and the coincidental influence of Lasswell and Easton, authors of civics textbooks took up the mantle in what they chose to include in their books.  One can make a general observation – and this blog will do so in more detail in the near future. - that by simply reviewing what the currently utilized textbooks contain one gets a good view of what and how civics is taught today. 

Currently, that would be looking at such best-selling textbooks as Magruder’s American Government or Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.  But as for the leadership of social studies, there has been a lingering effort among professional, teacher organizations to uphold the New Social Studies’ instructional format as being progressive and interactive.[4]

This is promoted to replace traditional teaching methods that have students receive instruction in a more passive fashion and known as didactic methods.  Inquiry, on the other hand, calls for students to employ interactive modes of study in which they discover information and form conclusions regarding civic problems.  Practically all teachers ignore these calls for change in teaching methods. 

This reluctance to change might be offset with all the new technologies that have befallen the typical classroom, especially in the more affluent school districts.  Easy access to the Internet probably encourages teachers to assign research topics, but in the understanding of this writer, the general process of dispensing information is still through lectures and demonstrations.

An Internet review of the prevalence of didactic teaching practices reveals that there are those who defend and promote the didactic style of teaching.  This blog’s position on this issue is that didactic teaching, while it can be used to solicit from students’ higher levels of thinking, the usual result is that students are expected to recall (a low level skill and highly dependent on an individual’s inherent ability to remember) information. 

While a lot of what is argued in this blog can be said to favor interactive, open, or student-centered instructional approaches, it does not rule out the ability of some teachers to be effective “didactic” teachers.  When this writer taught, didactic style was the prevailing form of teaching.  Since the technology factor is at play, it is difficult to say what prevails today, but from the evidence to which this writer is privy, he believes didactic teaching still dominates.

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[1] Harold Lasswell, Who Gets What, When, and How (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill, 1936).  Current distributor of this book is Papamoa Press.  Also access through online site, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Politics_Who_Gets_What_When_How/UlekDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover , accessed April 16, 2020.

[2] Ibid., n.p. (Preface).

[3] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965).

[4] See National Council for the Social Studies, Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life C3.  This writer has a critical review of these standards in recently published book.  See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).

FACTORS OF REALISM

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

Secondary civics textbooks capture an essential aspect of their subject matter, i.e., they describe a role that governance and politics play in citizens’ lives.  In their pages, a vision of government emerges as something out there responding to the wishes of the electorate through a political process of competition.  What is noteworthy, it does this by merely describing it in general terms without categorizing what is being described.  Mostly, the text will point out entity X gets Y but without revealing, in sufficiently descriptive language, how that happens.

That is, these books have a deficiency.  While a review of the typical civics textbook consists of chapters or “units” dedicated to the various input entities that engage in feedback on a regular basis, the language it uses does not feature a feedback loop.  These entities can be individuals, interest groups, or political parties.  The textbook depicts these entities not as integral parts of the political system, but as customers in relation to a department store. 

That is, feedback is an information loop communicating people’s reactions to government policy.  One might attribute to that loop, as political systems language does, a self-correcting mechanism for the system.  In short, as those in authority hear and see how people are reacting to past policies and actions, those in government can adjust or correct perceived mistakes; those being mistakes as perceived by those who have requisite power. 

While the image of citizens portrayed in textbooks might be of entities seeking satisfaction, it avoids the language of what that implies.  In line with this instruction, most people out there are not informed or do not care about the great majority of policy decisions.  Their concerns are limited to their personal demands.  This detaches citizens from the operations of government. 

Again, using the above analogy, the textbook image is of customers of a department store, and as such, they are not integral parts of that “store” and, therefore, do not worry to any extent about the general workings of that operation.  Likewise, these customers are not depicted as essential parts of the government and, therefore, they do not worry over the general workings of that institution.

Instead, these entities provide the demands that government is set up to satisfy; without those demands, government has no purpose.  As such, this view expresses a limited role for each entity.  Each is to express only those demands relating to that entity’s affected interests.  

But the assumptions underlying the US Constitution call for an alternate view of this relationship between government and citizen.  Those assumptions place each citizen as a partner with every other entity (citizens and interest groups) and partners concern themselves with the health of the enterprise be it a department store or a government. 

It might be unrealistic to expect each entity to know about what the concerns of every other entity are.  Furthermore, one cannot keep up with the way that each entity expresses those concerns.  But each partner can be expected to conceptualize what the federated expectations from each are.  That includes the standards each entity should meet in making its demands.  And that awareness to any level of formality should begin with appropriate instruction in a civics course of study.

But as this blog has made clear, federation theory does not guide current civics efforts in schools.  The natural rights view does.[1]  And it can be said that that view does hold reality as a necessary quality in whatever political concern is at hand.  So, with that in mind, one can hold certain requisites as needed in any review of the political landscape – even in terms of a natural rights view. 

It is, therefore, obvious and more realistic that a depiction of governance should describe feedback as those activities that inform the system of sought-after corrective policy changes.  Those are changes more in line with the desires of influential members of the citizenry – or stated more descriptively, to those who have more power.  But that is a realistic depiction of what goes on and, unfortunately, it is not currently captured by what those textbooks describe or explain despite the fact they are guided by the natural rights view.

Those with power are those in the environment who can administer either meaningful rewards (for example, campaign funds) or meaningful punishments (for example, the withholding of campaign funds).  To have power, one needs either ownership or control of one or more motivating resources that are effective in the political arena. 

It can be access to reward, punishment, legitimacy, expertise, or referent resources.[2]  But the language and the description of typical textbook accounts avoid such revealing information.  As a matter of fact, the model, as presented in those textbooks, says little about whose inputs have meaningful influence.[3] 

On the surface, one is easily led to believe that all participants are equal, not in a theoretical sense, but in reality.[4]  The closest those accounts come to describing how influence works is the way they describe the effect that numbers of votes have on a politician.  While having the ability to deliver votes counts, it is but one source of either reward or punishment.  Limiting the description of this important aspect of politics in this fashion is, of course, to be inaccurate and misleading.

For a more telling account of how the government responds to different constituents, one can see E. E. Schattschneider’s book, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America.[5]  In that account, Schattschneider reviews how different constituents of varying levels of power go about planning to win political competitions.  While this source has out of date descriptions of particular entities, its basic description and explanation of how the mechanisms of government operate still holds up fairly accurately. 

Another influential book that addresses the relative strength of constituents is Theodore J. Lowi’s book, The End of Liberalism:  The Second Republic of the United States.[6]  Lowi makes a convincing argument about how well-funded entities and interest groups have taken over the competition for government allocated benefits.  One can observe a constant stream of commentators on TV today making the same point – a particularly virulent issue today as the federal government has set about to dole out funds during the current Covid 19 emergency.

To interject a quick point and possibly mix the metaphor, a casual review of the civics textbooks used in our schools will give the reader more of a mechanistic view than an organic explanation – the one that includes a feedback loop.  What begins as a highly objectified approach, thanks to the political systems model’s effect, it becomes even more so and therefore less about what really affects average citizens.  They are accounts of politics and government devoid of passion and, one may judge, interest.

Before this posting leaves this topic, one last point should be made, or better stated, remade.  Most teachers depend on textbooks to basically make their curricular choices.[7]  The ironic part of this is how few pages of a textbook the average student actually reads.  Perhaps, the most expensive purchase that the public treasury makes is what school districts spend for those pages.  These books only serve to tell teachers what to teach.[8]  This blog will further develop this theme in future postings.

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[1] In this regard, the difference between a natural rights and federation theory is that natural rights view merely reports the reality involved while federation theory would have students consider how that reality affects the equality of those involved.  The former avoids normative questioning and latter engages in them.

[2] John R. P. French, Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Power,” in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, ed. Edwin P. Hollander and Raymond G. Hunt (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1967), 504-512.

[3] A good political question is:  why is this lack of candor the case?  This, one can suppose, is a political question.  Applying the message of this posting, one can further wonder, who’s political power is at play insuring this editorial decision.

[4] To interject a federalist message:  Government, according to the messaging of these books, is thereby a service rendered to entities with governmental demands, not to entities that are extensions of the system or the community that has a governing body – which reflects a federalist ideation of the governing process.

[5] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[6] Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979).

[7] Stephen J. Thornton, S. J. (1991).  Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies.  In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 237-248).  New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company.  While this citation is dated, there is no reason to believe the point made is not as true today as it was in 1991.

[8] A promising development is offered by the professional organization of social studies teachers, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).  It has issued a set of standards that through their implementation would question this depicted role of textbooks.  For further description of this possibility see Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementation of National Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020) – available through Amazon.  Chapter 1 of that book critically reviews the NCSS’ effort.

DIDACTIC METHOD RULES

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

The last posting reviewed the effects of the New Social Studies on that portion of the curriculum.  That initiative was an effort by social studies educators to jump on the federal government’s science bandwagon in the 1960s.  In general, the effort was to introduce scientific methods into the study of various social studies subjects.  That includes history, government/civics, and economics. 

Here in this blog, the concern is over government/civics, to be referred to as simply civics.  That subject is directly charged with imparting the knowledge and skills associated with citizenship (a responsibility that all social studies subjects share to some degree). 

          The last posting left off with a challenge that any reform in curriculum faces.  That is, teachers reluctantly giving up on how they do their jobs.  Most reform efforts from the last century into this one has emphasized changes in instructional methods.  Teachers who feel comfortable with using one approach – usually didactic methods – will not readily shift to another promoted method – usually an interactive approach called inquiry.

The important concern that transcends both instructional approaches is that to be successful either way needs for students to be reflective about what is being taught – i.e., not having students merely recalling the subject matter but thinking about it.  This might be more challenging when a teacher uses didactic methods since that method emphasizes the dispersal of information without calling for any mental action in response unless the teacher calls for it – it’s a demand that is not essential to the method, but can be made a part of it.

An online review as to the prevalence of didactic teaching practices today reveals that there are those who defend and promote this style of teaching.  Editorially, this writer argues that didactic teaching, while it can be used to solicit from students’ higher levels of thinking, the usual result is that students are expected to recall information (a low level skill and highly dependent for its success on an individual’s inherent ability to remember).  

But this writer can personally testify that even honors students who were exposed to didactic teaching could not recall basic information about a subject in the subsequent year.  He would, for example, ask ten basic American history questions – a subject taught in the eleventh grade – to twelfth grade honors students that they could not answer.  For whatever reason school officials require American history for graduation; this evidence seems to indicate that the reason is not being met.

While a lot of what this blog argues can be said to favor interactive instructional approaches, it does not rule out the ability of teachers to be effective “didactic” teachers.  When this writer taught, didactic style was the prevailing style of teaching and his ongoing communication with educators today indicates that is still the case.  The only proviso one might interject today is the effect technology might currently be having on instruction.  It is difficult to say, without any reservations, what teaching method prevails today, but common observation does not indicate that inquiry has taken over.

What can have an influence on instruction along with how lessons are taught is what is taught.  And that goes for civics as well as any other subject.  Relevant to this posting is how political science has affected civics content.  With the behavioral turn, explained previously in this blog, one has a more objectified view of government and politics.  This blog, with next posting, turns to that influence.  And to do that, it will look closely at the central determiner of what teachers teach.  That is the textbook.

INTRODUCING THE SCHOOL CONCERN

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

Earlier in this series of postings, this blog made the point that the academic field of political science had what is known as the behavioral revolt at about the mid twentieth century point.  According to one of that movement’s central figures, David Easton, there has even been a post-behavioral movement in the 1970s and ‘80s.  Be that as it may, the effect of natural science methods has had a fundamental influence on the study of politics.

Those earlier postings highlighted the different elements of these turns during the latter part of the twentieth century.  These elements include formulation and adoption of the political systems model and the adoption of more scientific protocols in carrying out the research within that academic discipline.  All of this was bound to have an effect in how civics and government would be taught in the nation’s secondary schools.  That effect is the next focus of this blog.

But for the sake of saving the reader who missed that earlier report, here is a brief summary.  Due in part to historical accident, the behavioral movement had a bigger impact on social studies than otherwise would have been the case.  During the 1960s, a parallel movement became prominent in our secondary schools.  As a point of reference, this all happened while the nation was reacting to Sputnik, the initial Soviet satellite launch into space in the late 1950s. 

Almost overnight, Americans grew very concerned with how well our schools were preparing our nation's youth to remain competitive with the Soviets.  The leadership of the nation did not only see this as a race for space, but they visualized the danger Americans would face if the Soviets had a meaningful advantage from a military capability perspective.  In response, the federal government pumped a lot of money into schools and most of it went to bolster science and math education (sound familiar?). 

In order not to be left out, a new movement began in social studies.  That movement was known as the “New Social Studies” and it promoted the teaching of the scientific method and applying that method to relatively simple historical, social, and in civics and government classes, political questions. 

In addition, to compete for federal funds, many in the social studies field promoted a potential shift in what social studies teachers would teach.  That is, school officials could shift their curriculum toward a more “scientific” approach.  This jelled nicely with the developments in the social sciences such as those in political science and its adoption of the political systems approach.

When this writer was a senior in high school in the 1965-66 school year, he didn't take government and economics as most seniors do today.  People his age remember taking problems of democracy courses (in many places it was called problems in American democracy). This course dealt with the social and political issues of the day.  It was focused on those issues that were current and this called for lessons that had normative dimensions. 

When one refers to “problems,” by necessity, one starts talking about values.  Social problems are situations that at least some people judge as not being good or right to some level.  Logically, one is therefore applying some standard of good and evil or right and wrong.  But by taking on a “scientific” approach, as the New Social Studies called for, educators were asked to take a step away from normative questions – teachers were instead asked or, at least, encouraged to present content without any ethical consideration to it. 

Not all of the New Social Studies were so objectified, but there was a definite move in the nation’s classrooms to be less engaged in instruction that promoted or discussed values.  In its place, lessons began emphasizing structural and procedural elements of the subject matter.  Of course, the effect was less strident in history since that whole endeavor emphasizes the noted issues of a given time, e.g., a unit concerning the Civil War in American history.  But even there the emphasis became what happened over what should have happened.

But there needs to be a distinction between those elements of the New Social Studies that referred to content and those elements that referred to instruction.  While the New Social Studies lost favor during the 1970s, there has been a lingering effort among professional, teacher organizations to uphold its instructional format as being progressive and interactive, as opposed to traditional teaching strategies that have students receive instruction in a more passive fashion – didactic methods.  

For example, of late the social studies professional organization, the NCSS, has recently issued a set of standards for civics education.  Those standards promote what it calls an “inquiry arc.”[1]  This writer believes that tying content standards to instructional approach is counterproductive; teachers are significantly less likely to adopt the program if that aspect becomes a requirement of its application.

As stated earlier in this blog, the majority of teachers ignore these calls for change as they continue following the more traditional modes of instruction.  This might be offset with all the new technologies that have befallen the typical classroom, exemplified by access to online resources, especially in the more affluent school districts.  That is, easy access to online sources probably encourages teachers to assign more research topics or engage in discussions in which students are expected to identify relevant evidence to any position they may make. 

But to the understanding of this writer, the general instructional process of dispensing information – through mostly lectures and other demonstrations – still prevails.  And, in defense of those teachers, teaching is a very personal activity.  Standing in front of a class full of adolescents, one needs to feel comfortable.  There is a palpable difference in using a didactic method as oppose to an inquiry method.  The next posting will pick up this line of thought.

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[1] National Council for the Social Studies, Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life C3.  This writer has a critical review of these standards in recently published book.  See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).

IS POLITICS DETERMINISTIC?

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

For those who might not be familiar with the term, determinism, it is the idea that humans do not really have control over their actions; that people are deceived into believing they do because they are conscious of going through some mental “decision-making” process before they act.  Of course, the exception to this process occurs when people react to an unexpected change in their immediate environment. 

This would be the case, for example, if one suddenly looked up and saw a ball headed for his/her noggin and the person automatically ducks.[1]  Perhaps the reader has noticed that while watching a baseball game and, from time to time, a foul lined ball will shoot directly backwards.  The people sitting behind the plate duck when that happens even though they know a fence is there to protect them. 

Obviously, there is no decision-making; there is just reaction in those types of cases.  But such occasions are rare; the rest of the time people, according to determinism, do more calculating than choosing.[2]  Commentators have related behaviorism to determinism.  The deterministic argument holds that due to the experiences a person has had, the physiological make-up of his/her body (a product of natural selection), and the conditions that a person faces at a given time, the way that person “decides” to act is, well, determined by those other forces. 

That is, the person will always react to any situation by “choosing” the option that the person perceives is best for him/her given the conditions.  Since the person has little control over the above listed factors, his/her choice is determined by them.  Even in an action which is judged to be a sacrifice, the best action for the person is determined by the emotional cost he/she will bear by doing otherwise.

Now, due to space constraints, the description here is simplifying things a bit, but what is pointed out is that whether it seems to be the best choice – in terms of the person’s self-defined interests – or not, it is.  People don’t choose against themselves as that is defined in its broadest terms.  And one has very little control over the experiences or situations that “teach” a person what those interests are.   In the extreme, this denies the existence of free will. 

Applying these ideas leads to the practice, by those who want to solicit specific behaviors, of manipulating the factors of a situation so that the uses of rewards and punishments lead to desired outcomes.  Many behaviorist studies are about finding which stimuli, rewards and punishments, lead to which behaviors.

For example, the motivations John R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven[3] identify (coercion, reward, legitimacy, expert, and reference) are different forms of punishments and rewards.  For example, expert power indicates that one follows the advice of an expert, not because it is something the person necessarily wants to do, but because not to do so, it is believed, will elicit a punishment of a greater degree.  That would be the case if not immediately, then eventually.  

The mind computes the expected rewards and punishments and decides to advance as much reward as possible and diminish as much punishment as possible.  And all is potentially calculated including the effort or costs involved with the calculations and the time sacrificed by following a course of action.  Yes, even laziness is a factor, but whether one is lazy or not in a given situation is the result from prior calculations.

And while such venues where political decision-making takes place, supporting behavioral approaches to the study of politics – and any resulting political posturing – does not explicitly cite this understanding, but they proceed as if people do not have free will and can be manipulated.  Their resulting plans seem to assume that this is the case.  And another factor is, these studies do not claim to predict individual behavior, but the behavior of collectives.

And this line of assuming is not foreign to most people.  Does the typical person ever promise a child extra dessert if he or she behaves in a certain way?  Or perhaps stays on a job or in a career because the pay is so good or secure and the alternatives are known to be wanting or unknown?  If yes, they have experienced behaviorism at work. 

Even those who decide otherwise are so affected but have experienced other prior reward/punishment conditions.  The recipient and dispenser of rewards and even punishments correctly predict behavior by providing the correct stimulus.  How much of parenting, managing fellow workers, or governing consists of calculating such factors?  Intuitively, one can say most of what various “supervisors” consider is what rewards and/or punishments work.

Those who ascribe to this position might sight the patterns that human behaviors follow.  With enough knowledge, marketing strategies can do a good job of determining what products will sell; pollsters can often predict which candidates will win.  Relatives can tell what a person will do when a life issue arises.  Pure free will, it seems, would make these predictions impossible. 

The only thing that prevents one hundred percent accuracy in these predictions is that just as in predicting the weather, there are too many factors interacting in highly complex ways that affect one’s decisions.[4]  And as with the weather, rates of successful predictions, especially at the individual level, are significantly low.  But most government decisions are not directed at an individual level, they aim at affecting populations – there the predicting level is much higher.

At least, that's what pure behaviorists would say.  There are few pure behaviorists these days. Historically, the names of Ivan Pavlov, Edward Lee Thorndike, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner can be cited as pioneers in behavioral studies.  Any introductory psychology textbook reviews the basic tenets associated with the works of these famous men. 

While somewhat tamed from their original constructed view, behavioral studies are still in vogue and used in all sorts of social calculations from psychology to marketing to political and economic analyses.[5]  But looking at that history is telling of current educational thinking.  The heyday of behaviorism began in the twentieth century.  Why did this shift toward behaviorism happen during the last century?  At work were several historical trends. 

Since the Enlightenment era, in the eighteenth century, science has been on an ascendancy in western countries.  Due to the successes it garnered in practical areas such as agriculture and medicine and then industry, people began to rely more and more on the sciences.  This process arose and reached its apogee with the technological advancements of World War II and the postwar years. 

Until the beginning of the twentieth century though, its influences were pretty much limited to the study of natural phenomena.  But starting with the twentieth century, scientific protocols were beginning to be applied to social concerns.  Practitioners soon were aware that science's reliance on observable reality limited social sciences to the study of behavior since it was impossible to observe what goes on in the brain – of course, that observation was made at a time long before magnetic resonance imaging was developed. 

Behavior was what one could see and what one could measure.  Anything else was subject to speculation; at least, that was the case behaviorists made.[6]  Practically, scholars who followed the systems approach to social reality began to rely on scientific protocols in their studies.  Political science became highly statistical as the methods followed the hypothesis testing format which had been (and still is) the mainstay of the natural sciences.

          How this progression of viewing governance and politics from a natural rights view to how that view has affected the study of politics via behavioral studies was reviewed in past postings by reporting on the work of David Easton and the development of the political systems model.  The question that remains is how those developments in political science have affected how civics is taught in the nation’s secondary schools.  To do that a review of a major textbook of American government will be shared.

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[1] For an insightful and somewhat detailed account of what happens physically in brain under such a condition, see Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017).

[2] Along with this calculating or computing notion, see Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).  Pinker graphically describes this process of computation and demonstrates how complex it is.  He adds to this explanatory approach to human behavior the effects of natural selection, another non self-determinate process.

[3] John R. P. French, Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Power,” in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, ed. Edwin P. Hollander and Raymond G. Hunt (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1967), 504-512.

[4] Interested, read B. F. Skinner’s book, Beyond Freedom and Dignity.  B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (Seattle, WA:  Hackett Publishing, 2002). 

[5] A more current source and directed at training future government bureaucrats is Mark R. Leary, Introduction to Behavioral Research Methods, Seventh Edition (New York, NY:  Pearson, 2017).  Here again, the sense that people act as a result of the effects of stimuli, does not explicitly claim people do not have free will, but it just about assumes it.

[6] Of course, not all psychologists agreed with this assessment.  For example, those who now or then ascribe to the ideas of Sigmund Freud would disagree since the focus of their study is the subconscious.

LACKING IN TERMS OF METHODS

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

This blog of late has been reviewing an approach to political science that has had a profound effect on civics education.  By stating an effect, that does not mean it has determined what that education is.  But it does mean influencing what that curriculum has chosen to highlight in terms of content or scope.  In addition, that influence has not been extended to the instructional approaches classroom teachers have implemented despite an attempt to do so by the federal government in the 1960s and ‘70s. 

During that time, federal officials encouraged teachers to apply something called the New Social Studies – a mostly instructional reform effort that heavily relied on scientific methodologies that teachers were to adopt.  That effort was initiated as a response to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik.  Science illiteracy among Americans was considered a national detriment in the ensuing competition with the Soviets in terms of space exploration with its defense implications in mind.  This a multidimensional story the reader can readily look up.  Here, only a mention will do.

While the effort to instill a more “scientific” approach to civics and to all social studies led to the publication of various textbooks, the overall effect was minimal.  The instructional approach this movement called for, the inquiry approach, was/is at odds with the dominant approaches most teachers employ.  Those would be didactic approaches such as lecturing.  Basically, didactic instruction imparts information; inquiry calls on students to discover information. 

At a minimum, those civics educators who have been so influenced by behavioral political studies have incorporated a general view of systems theory in terms of the content or scope of the subject matter but not its processes.  In terms of the scope, though, it has encouraged those civics educators to neglect the realm of community as an instructional topic and with it, all the obligations such an area of concern entails.

Over the last few decades or so, the trend toward individualism – as encouraged by the dominant natural rights view and further legitimized by behavioral studies – became so apparent that many school districts began to institute community service requirements for graduation.  This was relatively new when this writer left his last classroom assignment in the year 2000. 

At that time, his observation regarding this requirement was that the resulting process to supervise any community service was vacuous.  That is, the process was, in his school district, ill-supervised and students did not treat it seriously.  It demonstrated how un-communal the schools and the school system administrators had become. 

Perhaps things are different now, but he could find out by working at a school – an option not available to him.  But this judgement that the requirement was merely a formality was further supported recently by the testimony from a social studies teacher in a mid-size school district. 

During February 2020, this writer asked a teacher, a social studies department chairperson, about whether his district maintained any community service requirement.  According to the department chair the community service element is not a general requirement in the Leon County schools of Florida.  There is a requirement attached to an honors program, but again, other than asking standard questions, the supervision of the requirement is limited.

 So, to the degree this amoral view of politics which attachable to a natural rights view has captured the minds and hearts of Americans in general, and civics educators in particular, one can see how national politics has drifted.  Under the banner of a simplistic natural liberty, the dysfunctional state the nation’s politics finds itself as a bifurcated political environment and it has come about by people “doing their own thing.”  That state of affairs deserves its own investigation – the topic for future postings.

Up to this point, this blog might have left the reader with the impression that civics instruction around the country regularly portrays an image of citizens trying to outdo each other for favorable governmental policy decisions.  After all the overall description of politics is that it is an activity by which people or groups seek public resources through a competitive process.  But that characterization, as presented in civics classrooms, does not extend usually to average Americans and this blog doesn't state that it does. 

If only civics and government classes were that interesting.  What this blog tries to convey is that civics and government classes have taken on a descriptive role, and they limit their efforts to describing the structure of the American political system.  Stated another way, secondary schools portray the government and the other parts of the political system as one big machine.

In the political system there are these “branches” of government, bureaucratic departments and offices, and outside government there are people (voters, interest groups, and political parties) who seek government action.  Usually, each of these provide the subject matter for each of a civics course’s units of study.  The image, as portrayed by civics education as currently taught, is of a political system resembling a big machine with multiple interacting parts. 

The organism view that Easton wrote about[1] – and as described in a previous posting – has not made it to secondary civics instruction in American schools – at least not to any meaningful degree.  Most notably, that instruction has little to nothing to say about the feedback process which makes what Easton describes a system as being more organic than mechanical.  All the juicier stuff of intrigue, power plays, deception, and the like is left to novels or the more partisan pundits on TV.

In contrast, school renditions of government are pale, objectified, and lacking in human drama.  After all, in keeping with classical liberal values, there is no aim to induce any moral position, outrage, or normative stand except for its support of natural liberty.  Topics such as equality are avoided, community or communal obligations are neglected, business needs are absent, or concern for the impoverished is nonexistent.  What remains in those courses is bland, bland, bland.

Along with a lack of any drama, the nation’s classrooms, for the most part, neglect the research methodologies associated with the behavioral movement or that of any other political science approach.  But what of the instructional methodologies?  Are they important?  That is, is it important whether a teacher uses didactic methods or interactive/inquiry methods?

They round out what this adopted construct – the natural rights construct – is about; methodologies are not just ways to look at reality, they are ways to ignore reality or, as a former vice-president might say, fail to detect “inconvenient truths.”  This blog’s only editorial position regarding process is that whatever process a teacher adopts, it needs to have students reflect – not just memorize – on the needs of the political system and its citizens to be of any import or any effectiveness.

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[1] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965).