The last few
postings attempted to convey the theoretical concerns of political science
during the years after World War II (1950s and 1960s). This period is important to appreciate when
one is concerned with the current state of civics education. Educators of that time adopted a more
scientific orientation to their subject disciplines. Included were the social studies, and the
story that led to this development is worth considering.
The sum effect of this theoretical work – the political systems
model and the structural-functional model – on civics education – particularly
on the content of civics curriculum – is to emphasize teaching the structure
and processes of input agents such as interest groups and the structure and
processes of government.
What is minimized is a more value-oriented content. This is significantly different from what
prevailed as late as the mid-1960s when at the high school level, courses entitled
Problems of Democracy were common. In
short, civics became more mechanical and avoided dealing with social issues
that could be controversial.
Today, if teachers want to introduce controversial issues, they
need to either develop such materials or obtain available materials that are
designed to have students analyze such issues and develop defensible positions
regarding such concerns.[1] More on this below.
As for the story that led to the current prevailing view of
civics, there are three relevant developments.
One, the one that this blog has already commented on extensively, is the
growing cultural shift from a federalist view to a natural rights view in the
prevailing beliefs and attitudes concerning government and politics. But there are two other developments that
have had meaningful effects.
The second development was the prominent position that behavioral
psychology enjoyed in the study of politics during the mid-century years of the
last century. The work of various
behaviorists, most prominent being B. F. Skinner, had an influence on the
various social sciences. The exact
nature of this influence was a subject David Easton wrote about:
The original behavioristic
paradigm, S-R (stimulus-response), has yielded to the more intelligible one of
S-O-R (stimulus – organism – response) in which feelings, motivations, and all
the other aspects of the subjective awareness and reaction of the organism are
taken into account as potentially useful data.
This has, of course, spelled the doom of pristine behaviorism …[2]
This quote hints at the influence of behaviorism. That is, it assumes people basically try to seek
rewards and avoid punishments. The
variance lies in how a current situation is viewed and how rewards and
punishments are defined at a given time.
By studying behaviors, how people react in what they do in varying
situations, one can describe, with certain levels of certainty, how people will
behave in similar situations in the future.
This view led to the input-output-feedback structure of the political
systems model.
Critics
of this view argued that the whole systems approach made the study of politics mechanical. To counter, Easton argued that with the
introduction of an “organism” element, the systems view was more akin to studying
politics as the activity of an organism with self-adjusting abilities. One issue debated was how deterministic this
view attempted to cast political behavior.
Briefly stated, the question was:
how much was human political behavior no more than a calculation of
rewards and punishments in a particular environment?
And
by observing and measuring behavior, political studies took on a more
scientific posture. The turn provided an
anecdote to what was perceived as being more traditional approaches to that
study that relied on historical methods of research.
Many saw those earlier methods
as elaborate self-indulgent exercises in which personal political biases were
expressed. Lacking any effort to objectify
their analysis using qualitative methods, political scientists were not
scientists; they were, at best, expert editorial writers. On the other hand, a shift toward a behavioral
approach promised to be scientific as it relied on quantitative research
instead.
There
was created a nexus between those who favored quantified research, such as
corporate approaches to studying business practices, and natural rights
advocates who favored self-defining consumer demands. There is an ironic association in which those
who see value in a deterministic accounting for human behavior and, at the same
time, hold a view of individuals being free agents to determine their life
goals and how to pursue those goals.
These reflect assumptions
about the nature of human beings that barely rise to conscious
consideration. Yet this inconsistency
seems not to deter those who defend both behaviorism and believe that liberty
should be a person’s political trump value.
By doing so, those educators
who agree with both positions develop and implement a natural rights-based
civics curriculum which practices instruction that is devoid of normative
concerns and highly reliant on imparting information concerning the structure
and functions of government.
But there was a singular historical
event that sealed the establishment of a natural rights approach. This third development was the launching of
Sputnik, the Soviet satellite. Suddenly,
in 1957, the US’s major adversary demonstrated that it had the scientific
understanding, technical knowledge, and wherewithal to deliver a nuclear weapon
via a rocket. That posed a true threat
to America. The US could not match that
ability and, therefore, had to immediately do something about it.
One of the things the government
did was to invest a great deal of money in the nation’s schools to upgrade math
and science instruction. This would
close the gap between the US and the Soviet Union regarding the science and
math knowledge requirements to catch the Soviets.[3]
In the process, the
government provided moneys to other disciplines and that included social
studies. Suddenly, there appeared new
curricula with names such as new math, new biology, new physics, and the
like. Included was the new social
studies.
The
new social studies was to be more scientific in its instructional choices. The general thought was to align school
subjects with science and scientific thinking by imbuing the nation’s overall
curriculum with scientifically inspired innovations.
Educators
introduced students to methodologies – referred to as the scientific
method. This newer approach was applied
to social studies and was called the inquiry approach. And this took place at the same time the
above-mentioned application of systems’ behavioral view was being applied to human
study. Even the study of history was
affected.[4]
Citing progressive
rationales, social studies teachers were to implement open-ended lessons, thereby
generating student involvement into investigating inquiry questions and avoiding
dull lecturing; an aim, by the way, that was not successfully accomplished. Most social studies teachers kept on lecturing.
While there were teachers
who attempted the newer instructional methods, they were the exceptions. One should never expect that teachers will
readily accept what educational innovators concoct on their university campuses
or in their publishing offices. The new
social studies movement lasted about ten to fifteen years and all that remains,
in terms of civics education, are textbooks that do not apply inquiry methods,
but do reflect the bias to present structural and functional information.
But what about values
education? One can readily see the
relevance of values if the subject matter is citizenship. The natural rights bias is to promote
individuals determining what their own values will be – it treats this concern
as an element of liberty. On the other
hand, the bias toward objectifying political studies encouraged that a distance
should be established between the study of government and politics and the
treatment of values.[5]
The effect was to avoid
or diminish any treatment of value issues in the classroom.[6] There were exceptions to this general
trend. Sensing a demand for addressing
values in relation to social studies, there were various projects that
attempted to fill the gap that the natural rights turn created. Two notable examples were the Jurisprudential
approach[7]
and the values clarification approach.[8]
Both efforts had students
review either a controversial issue or a personal character issue and pass
judgement as to what should be done in a value challenged situation or how
students should identify a personal preference. Those choices were to reflect students’ values
and, in turn, provide the opportunity and obligation to publicly – within the
classroom – defend the values identified.
The instructor’s role was not to pass judgement as to the worthiness of students’
preferences, but to instruct them on how to logically defend their positions.
Stated another way, as part of the nation’s shift toward a natural
rights perspective, one resulting change was relinquishing the traditional
dependence on Protestant theology to define what moral lessons schools imparted
to students.[9] Collectively, these two efforts were to
present either opportunities for students to make life-defining value
statements or to solve controversial issues which presented value dilemmas in
the classroom.
These efforts are continued even today by others, mostly education
professors as part of their training of aspiring teachers. In most classrooms around the nation, the
only values that are actively promoted are organizational values that are
essential in running a school. Such values
are, for example, punctuality – get to class on time – and honesty – don’t
cheat on tests. But in terms of political
values, students are mostly left to their own devices.
[1] For example, an organization that offers civics
rationale and classroom materials concerning controversial issues is
ProCon.com. See http://www.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005860 (accessed April 5, 2017). Some of the argument promoting such value
oriented material ties the concern to instruction that has students engage in
critical thinking. Critical thinking has
gained prominence in the various state standards around the country.
[2] David Easton, “The Current
Meanings of ‘Behavioralism,’” in Contemporary
Political Analysis, ed. James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1967), 11-31, 12.
[3] Jeffrey Byford and William Russell, “The New Social
Studies: A Historical Examination of
Curriculum Reform,” Social Studies Research and Practice, 2 (1), accessed April
7, 2017, http://www.socstrpr.org/files/Vol%202/Issue%201%20-%20Spring%202007/Research/2.1.3.pdf .
[4] Edwin Fenton, The
New Social Studies, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967).
[5] Reference to values, according to this
view, should be limited to treating them as variables in the study of human
behavior, variables no more important than other variables such as income level
or ethnic background. For example, why
do citizens vote the way they do? A
tested variable in a relevant inquiry could look at stated values as a
predictor of voting behavior.
[6] James D. Hunter, The Death of Character: Moral Education
in an Age without Good and Evil (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000.
[7] Donald W. Oliver and James P. Shaver, Teaching Public Issues in the High School (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1966) AND Fred M. Newmann, and Donald W. Oliver, Clarifying Public Controversy: An Approach to Teaching Social Studies
(Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Company, 1970).
[8] Louis E. Raths, Merrill Harmin, and
Sidney B. Simon, Values and Teaching
(Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill
Publishing Co, 1966).
[9] Toni M. Massaro, Constitutional
Literacy (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press 1993) AND James D. Hunter, The
Death of Character: Moral Education in
an Age without Good and Evil.
