BELIEVING IN “Z”

In this posting, I want to pick up on the topic I introduced in the last posting. In that posting, I asked the question: what does it mean when one says that liberty is present when a person has the right to do what he/she should do? I have offered this view of liberty as a sort of ideal that liberated federalism posits and as an alternative way we should consider liberty in civics classes – at least as a discussion topic. By placing liberty in the frame of “what one should do,” we think of it in a different way from what is proposed by those who abide by the natural rights view. The natural rights view, the dominant view, sees liberty as having the right to do what one wants to do as long as what one does does not hurt anyone else and does not preclude anyone else from having the same right. In the last posting, I introduced this topic by sharing some basic ideas regarding valuing since “what one should do” is a moral question that, in turn, revolves around values. One acts morally when one is either forced to do so or one does so out of one's own volition. It is this latter mode that relates to the federalist view of liberty. Under this construct, certain assumptions are made. At some point, one needs to analyze what those assumptions are and ask how realistic they are. Does one formulate values that reflect moral reasoning or selfish ends? This type of question hits directly at the distinction between the natural rights view and that of liberated federalism.

In that previous posting, I stated that there are basically three types of value assertions:

• P likes X, because X leads to state Y;
• P likes X, because X is entailed in Z; or
• P likes X, because he/she simply likes X

I explained each of these assertion types. The first simply means that one likes something because by getting it or doing it, some positive consequence will result. The second simply states that one likes something because that something is entailed or part of a philosophy or ideology or religious belief. And finally, the third means that a person likes something because he/she just likes it. The first two types are considered rational and the third is considered irrational. Please; if you would like to read more about this, look at my previous posting (So You Say You Like Something, 5/19/14).

I also indicated that in this posting I will delve into two educational theories on values education. In part, I chose the theories I present because they focus on one type of value assertion over the other. The two theories have been around for quite a long time. Both originated during the 1960s and are part of the “values clarification” movement that has since been heavily criticized. But I think they are of value as a means to look further into values education and identify some issues involved in getting students to look at the concern: “what one should do.”

The first theory, the Jurisprudential approach, was first offered by Donald Oliver and James Shaver.¹ Their approach emphasizes the second assertion type – P likes X because it is entailed in Z. The Jurisprudential approach is highly dependent on a particular instructional protocol. The teacher, under this approach, first has students read or otherwise become aware of a case study – a short narrative that contains as part of its story people faced with a dilemma. In each case study, the dilemma – a situation in which someone is faced with a choice that has no positive consequence – reflects a condition that challenges the human dignity of one or more of the subjects in the case. So, for example – and here I am depending on my memory – an Eskimo family in the wilds of the northern Arctic region is faced with the decision of abandoning the grandmother – a practice which is sanctioned by the culture of the people depicted – or continuing to allow the grandmother to trek through the harsh conditions the family is facing. Leaving the older woman will mean her death and having her stay with family threatens all the other members of the family. What should they do?

One might ask at this point: why present this case? According to Oliver and Shaver, they were influenced by the work of Gunnar Myrdal, a Nobel laureate economist. Myrdal was the chief researcher for a Carnegie Foundation study of the treatment of African-Americans during the years leading up to the study's release. In that study, Myrdal contends that America has a sense, well enshrined in its culture, that goodness in social and public policy should be based on a commitment to liberty, justice, equality, and fair treatment for all people. He summarized this commitment, its concern for human dignity, as the American Creed. Running in the face of all this is the attitude most Americans at the time had toward African-Americans:

There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority of white Americans desire that there be as few Negroes as possible in America. If the Negroes could be eliminated from America or greatly decreased in numbers, this would meet the whites' approval – provided that it could be accomplished by means which are also approved. Correspondingly, an increase of the proportion of Negroes in the American population is commonly looked upon as undesirable.

White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually "cause" each other.²

Since these attitudes toward blacks are in direct contradiction to the American Creed, he coined the term describing this dissonance as the American dilemma. Hence, Oliver and Shaver took up this idea of using dilemmas to construct those experiences that students would be faced with when presented with situations that challenged, to the degree they shared in the American Creed, their values. How do they, for example, come down on the survival needs of an old woman compared to the survival needs of a whole family?

In the classroom using this approach, the students begin to argue how a course of action that addresses an appropriate dilemma should occur. They take a stand on a preferred action and answer questions derived from concerns over the ultimate concern, the American Creed. This all happens in discussion format in which not only teacher questions are used, but also those of students in a give and take manner. By participating, students are not told what to believe, but clarify their values in relation to a more overarching value or value structure such as the American Creed. For a variety of reasons this approach – the Jurisprudential approach – has been attacked by more fundamentally leaning religious groups and other conservatives. For example, is leaving the old woman in the icy surroundings a way to “sell” euthanasia or more currently, fictitious “death panels?” I believe that the fundamental concern of these critics is that students should have a more direct approach, one that aims at instilling unambiguous values. Usually those values reflect patriotic – in some cases, nationalistic – and religious beliefs.

The group that presented the Jurisprudential approach further assisted teachers and curricular material developers by couching useful classroom questions into three categories. They offered these categories so as to facilitate discussion and analysis: definitional questions, fact/explanation questions, and value questions. In each of these, students are held to certain communication requirements that keep the discussion on rational grounds. Value discussions easily deteriorate into emotional outbursts and other loud-mouthed assertions that aim at hurting opponents in emotionally laden debates.

Using this approach, we gain insight into the process which one needs to go through to develop a set of values that is logically consistent and defensible in terms of the terms used, the facts or explanations used as warrants for any stated positions, and value statements that can be shown to be consistent with proclaimed, higher ordered values. In using the Jurisprudential approach, the higher ordered values – the Z in our model – is the American Creed. The overlap of the American Creed and the moral code proposed in this blog is significant. Both have a sense that human dignity is central to defining moral standards. I will forgo the differences here, but I believe both are vehicles to focus on social and political issues that are important and fundamental toward societal health.

In my next posting, I will write about another value theory based on the aim to have students clarify their values. This other theory is offered by Louis E. Raths and his collaborators. By engaging in clarifying values, students have the opportunity to gain, hopefully, a better understanding of what it means to determine “what they should do.” It is a way to understand this aim from a procedural perspective.

1See http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3054239?uid=3739600&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104205421883 for a more extensive overview of the Jurisprudential approach which is also known as the Oliver-Shaver approach.

2Taken from Wikipedia article, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Dilemma:_The_Negro_Problem_and_Modern_Democracy#American_Creed .