MOSTLY, STEADY AS IT GOES

This blog has presented a somewhat contradictory message.  On the one hand, it has reported that education is a conservative institution and yet it has also reported that one of its core subjects, social studies (particularly civics education) went through a transformational change in the late forties/early fifties.  That is, it shifted from a curriculum led by traditional federalism to one guided by the natural rights construct.

This had, in my estimation, profound effects on how our schools taught government and politics.  It changed from one that emphasized the problems we faced as a democracy to a much more structural-functional approach.  The concern became to teach students the overall structure of government as an institution, created to meet and solve or ameliorate those desires expressed by citizens.  That expression is funneled through institutionalized competitive processes using established means and structures – interest groups, lobbyists, political parties. 

While this is transformational, this blog has deemed the change as unwelcome.  Why?  Because certain consequences have been derived and they are seen as not good.  One, the change has taken out a lot of the government being “of and by the people” and has left only the “for the people” attribute in place.  In other words, the change has helped institutionalize a segregated cleavage between the citizen and its government. 

Two, it has encouraged a systems view of government which seriously encourages an objectified perspective of government and politics.  Or stated another way, it has taken a lot of the humanness out of the study of politics.  Politics in this form becomes reductionist and forces become factors or variables as when measuring voting and non-voting, legitimacy or lack of legitimacy, surpluses or deficits; that is, things that can be measured, not understood and appreciated.

And three, in doing so, value questions are short-changed.  Despite several attempts at introducing values education into the study of civics, they have not been successful.  The reason is that they, in an attempt to be value neutral, have not been totally truthful in containing political biases.  As such, those who have implemented such efforts, mostly unintentionally, have engaged in subtle political messaging. 

This is unavoidable, but the proper thing to do is be forthright and provide a thoughtful rationale for what is being presented.  For these and other reasons, the change of the last fifty to sixty years needs another transformation.  This blog is dedicated to proposing and justifying such a change.  To be blunt, it is the position of this blog that American schools should adopt a liberated federalist approach to the study of civics and government.

          But in this, the change described in civics education and social studies is the exception – at least that I am aware of – and the rest of education is pretty much unchanged.  Oh, as compared to about a century or so ago, chalk boards were introduced to be later changed to white boards and to computer imagery being able to be projected for the class to see.  Computers have made a difference; hopefully, teachers are more apt to assign inquiry styled lessons since students have a virtual library at their fingertips.  But as for basic lesson structure and attitudes and norms, schools are the same.

          Of course, the nation’s project at desegregating schools has been an enormous effort.  In some cases, desegregation has led to integration, but given the racial tensions that have boiled over this summer, not enough.  But our efforts continue and our efforts have resulted in many more African-Americans filling prominent positions in our economy – things do seem to be getting better.

          Beyond these areas, Americans seem satisfied with their schools; at least, there is no concerted effort to change them.  Oh, they wish the schools were more successful in teaching, but they seem very pleased that schools mirror their biases in terms of profound value orientations.  And again, this blog has reported what they are.  Along with the above change in civics, a natural rights bias has Americans augmenting their belief in an ideology of growth, achievement, success, and individualism.[1]

          These general aims translate into more specific goals:  individual accomplishment, competition, and coming out on top.  Some – I would say most – Americans see this as advancing the interests not only of the individual student, but also of the community and nation.  This is the assumption derived from Adam Smith economics. 

History has not, in the overall, disproved such a notion; these capitalist values have proven very successful in leading to untold riches.  But the riches have been punctuated by dire economic collapses – see:  2008 collapse or the Great Depression of the 1930s.  On the other hand, even in times of success, there is the social consequence in which certain unsavory qualities seem to emerge.

Currently, and this blog has documented, high levels of narcissism, selfishness, incivility, and even criminality seem to characterize American social order.  One can attribute these qualities to these very biases American education promotes; it at least can be said to enable them.  My next posting will review – again – the main answer that the educational establishment has offered as an alternative, critical theory.

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[1] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004).

IT AIN’T WHAT IT USE TO BE

In the last posting, I wrote about two important aspects of the American sociological landscape that have had an enormous influence on the nation’s educational efforts:  a strong work ethic and a belief in balance between equity and liberty.  This posting will add a third: the strong dynamic quality of American society, the rate of change.  As Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins state, the rate (the speed of change) is more important than the direction.  Let me share how Ornstein and Hunkins introduce this topic:

Curricula appropriate for various groups cannot be determined with certainty because groups are changing, ethnic demands are emerging, information is exploding, philosophical views of the nature of knowledge are becoming more diverse, views of what it means to learn are expanding, new frontiers on the nature of the brain are being discovered, behaviors of students and teachers are being modified, and attitudes and values are being altered … the particulars of society are shifting.[1]

So, for a potential change agent, this rapidity of change and the change itself are both good and bad.

It is good to the degree that change is not so dissimilar from what people expect.  But the bad is multidimensional.  For one thing, a singular change effort is seen as just another disruption, something to tolerate, not embrace.  The second, more serious consequence is that people in such an environment find it more difficult to form and keep meaningful value commitments and that includes values associated with work-related concerns. 

When the ground is shifting under one’s feet, it is difficult to latch on to a steady sense of what is morally good and morally bad.  And this includes making such determinations concerning education.

          In this, the work of David Purple is important.  He points out the need for moral standards and frameworks.  These are important when one speaks about the social, political, and economic arrangements with which one is engaged.  Without them, it is nearly impossible for people to have a mode of behavior one can consider just as immediate demands steer people to those options that provide immediate rewards with little to no concern for long term consequences.[2]

          All this hoopla, when it is directed to education, has built-in tension.  Education, by its very nature, is a conservative institution.  As the critical theorists point out, a primary function for education is “reproduction” or, as mainstream sociologists describe, “system maintenance.” 

That is, in order for a social system to operate with any viability, it needs to go about insuring that its basic values and norms, its processes and structures, its very sense of itself, be passed on and kept within certain parameters.  That social system, in our case the society itself, needs to make sure that each new generation is sufficiently taught what all that entails for that given society.

Perhaps that is why in the field of education, as we have seen in previous postings, most teachers and administrators tend to choose the more conservative philosophies, approaches, and psychological views; at the same time, why the rate of change is seen as threatening and mostly fought against.  Schools are noted for their cultural lag.

And yet in a stroll through any school, one will see many of the trappings one associates with the changes we are experiencing, especially when it comes to technological change.  The computer has changed many schools, and determining their full impact will take some more years to determine and that might be blurred by further change.  One is reminded of the warning of the late futurist Alvin Toffler who proclaimed we were in for a future shock.

And in no aspect of life is this change more evident than in the number of choices we have from the very personal dimensions of life to every consumer option one encounters.  We have choices over things we didn’t know we would have choices.  We have “needs” today about which we didn’t know we would have “needs.” 

For example, we are currently considering a world where labor will no longer be needed; where, between robots and artificial intelligence, Marx’s warning about labor saving machinery will “be on steroids” (a saying that had no meaning in my early adult years).  How will we handle such a change and then what will be the role of schools?

This topic of societal change will be front and center in this blog over the upcoming postings.  This one posting serves as an introduction.

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[1] Allan Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues, (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2004), 140.

[2] David E. Purple, Moral Outrage in Education (New York:  Peter Lang, 1999).