I have been writing about the demands one faces when
contemplating or actually implementing change, particularly change in an
organization, such as a school. My
reason for looking at this topic is that this blog is dedicated to having our
schools approach civics content from a different perspective from how it is
viewed today.
I have written a great deal describing the prevailing mental
construct which governs our current view.
That construct I have called the natural rights construct and it is
based philosophically on the tenets of classical liberalism. The main governing variable of that construct
is liberty and the belief that every individual has the right to determine his
or her own values and has the rights to pursue those values. The problem is not so much the belief, but
the centrality of it; advocates of the natural rights construct hold it as
their trump value when it comes to governmental and political issues. This blog has attempted to document what
problems have been created due to this centrality.
The blog has gone on to argue that in its place, as a
dominant construct, our schools should adopt federation theory as their
dominant construct. This latter
construct espouses a heightened allegiance to liberty, but not as a trump
value. Instead, federation theory holds
societal welfare – as experienced through societal survival and societal
advancement – as its trump value. This
other view, I believe, is more in line with our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. This position has been developed over many
postings – postings that first appeared in 2011.[1] So, in
order to adopt federation theory, schools would have to engage in change. Hence, my concern now has been and will continue
to be: what all is involved in making a
profound curricular change in our public schools?
Each person involved with such an endeavor brings to the
effort a loaded slate (as opposed to a blank slate). A main challenge in what I am proposing is a
change that, in order to be successful, needs to be instituted by “believers”
and “doers” of the change. Therefore,
people can’t be ordered to institute this other view of civics content. Such an attempt would not work and whatever
strategy is utilized to institute the change must be seen as the appropriate
thing to do by those who are the “doers” of the change. They have to be convinced, not in a mild way,
but in a thorough way. And further,
those who are to implement the change need not only be believers of the change,
but also need to follow through with their behavior. I point this out because we often act
contrary to what we believe is right. In
this posting, I call this deviation “sinning.”
A bit of a backdrop: In
my previous posting, I wrote about how a person, in order to make sense of how
he/she feels about a particular challenge, forms a theory. In that posting, I more specifically
described a theory-in-action. We are so
adept at forming these theories that, through our behavior, we create what
Chris Argyris and Donald A. Shon[2] call a
behavioral world. That is, we are so
coordinated and consistent that we form a sort of perceived reality based on
the theory we create in our minds and then the behavior that follows. This, in turn, creates a sort of world in
which a person functions. Whether this
world reflects a true reality or not (or to what degree it is true) is
dependent on how we experience rewards and punishments derived from that world
view. For example, have you ever had a
friendship in which the friend no longer wants to continue the friendship and
without telling you why, drifts away?
Befuddled, you wonder why, but you accept the “divorce” without
inquiring what happened – you just don’t want to experience the
awkwardness. Chances are your behavioral
world concerning this person didn’t match the behavioral world of that person
when it comes to dealing with you. One
or another of you had perceptions of reality that were off – perhaps both of
you were incorrect. Behavioral worlds are
created as we act upon our theories-in-use.
But problems with perceptions and behaviors do not end there. There is also a potential gap between our
theories-in-use and espoused theories.
Espoused theories are what prominently emanate from the
mental domain I have called the ideal domain – that portion of our thinking and
feelings that contain all those messages about how things should be. Either through what we have been taught to be
good and evil – our inherited sense of morality – or through our life’s
experiences, we form our sense of what is right and what is rightness, the “shoulds”
and “oughts.” We don’t believe only this,
but when the occasion arises, we proclaim the elements of this view – our
espoused theories. These theories are
subject, as I wrote about in my last posting, to internal inconsistencies and
certain encounters with reality will arise that make these inconsistencies
apparent. See my last posting for a
description of internal inconsistencies.
My concern here is when there is a lack of congruence between an
espoused theory and a theory-in-use, i.e., sinning.
When we become conscious of such an incompatibility, we might
first try to rationalize. We might say
that the theory-in-use element and the elements of our espoused theory don’t
really relate or that any incompatibility is the fault of others or that the
element is not that central to our views of right and wrong or that the
situation is incompatible at some level but compatible at a more important
level. One more potential
rationalization: incompatibility is unavoidable
and a person might say, “I just had to choose the lesser of two evils” – he or
she is just doing his/her best. And
while we are at it, there is always the possibility that one is just ignorant
of all the relevant facts affecting the situation or they have not occurred to
us at the time. Any of these excuses
might be correct, but one needs to be very careful because we are prone to
believe what eases any dissonance we might be experiencing. Complicated, this thing we call life.
But let us say we are honest, know all the relevant facts,
and have a clear understanding of how relatively important all the factors
are. Yet the incompatibility
persists. In that case, change is called
for. This can be of our theory-in-use or
in our espoused theory. We want both to
be right: the former because practical
consequences offer up painful punishments; the latter because we are concerned
about how we perceive ourselves. In the
course of such changes – changes that can be very central to how we see the
world – it helps to have a good dose of self-worth. A lack of such self-esteem can block any
portion of this process. For example, we
might just figure that what we believe, as a lowly person, doesn’t matter.
Congruence can be good or bad. It can, for example, promote inadequate
theories. As such, incompatibility will
help to make these inadequacies apparent.
Once perceived, one can act to create a healthier congruence. Argyris and Schon point out that of the two,
it is better to have an adequate espoused theory because with having one, we
can more readily identify and rectify an inadequate theory-in-use.
It is precisely this insight that leads me to believe we need
to change our governing construct of civics education, because a move toward
federation theory will be one that addresses the contents of our espoused
theories concerning government and politics.
I see this move as beneficial for the betterment of our social world and
for the betterment of our students’ behavioral worlds.
[1] If you are new to this blog, you are invited to
sample some of them by hitting the archives button. The first two hundred postings have been
deleted, but one can gain access to them by visiting
gravitasarchives.blogspot.com . At that
site, you will be instructed as to how to attain a particular posting. The last two hundred or so postings can be
accessed by hitting the archives button on this page.
[2] Argyris, C. and Schon, D. A. (1985).
Evaluating theories in action. In W. G. Bennis, K. D. Benne, and R. Chin
(Eds.), The planning of change, Fourth
edition, (pp. 108-117). New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
