THE ACTION PART OF THE DEAL

The last posting made a connection between dialogue and action.  Simply stated, the connection is that talking leads to collective action.  But one needs to be careful.  Talking does not necessarily lead to action and, if it does, it does not necessarily lead to the action one would judge beneficial or logically derived from such talk.  In other words, talking is usually a precondition, but other factors are involved in getting people to act in ways the collective says they should.

          In its treatment of change, this blog reviewed many of these factors from mental domains (the real, the ideal, the physiological) to the sociological/political environment of a family, an organization, a community, or a nation.  The one message that one can derive from that review is that change or social action can be very complex.  In terms of change, those who are dedicated to facilitating change need to be conscious of that complexity and understand that there is no sure recipe for success.

What a debate does, in a competitive format, is to allow a person to voice concerns over obstacles standing in the way of implementing a plan.  Students, in determining in what action they want to participate, can review their own feelings, those of their fellow students, and those of the community or other significant people who would be involved in such an effort.

With that warning, this posting shares some ideas of what kinds of actions students can initiate and work to accomplish.  The reader is reminded, that the unit under development calls on students to study an international issue, that of foreign trade.[1]  A challenge with such an effort is how does such a unit get students to meaningfully act on an issue that does not immediately make itself known locally.  Yes, some of the consequences can be locally felt, but the actual trading processes do not.

This challenge will be addressed in an upcoming posting.  This posting will look at the types of issues or topics over which secondary students can address and act.  Based on the work of Jerome Bruner and others, the argument for students being actively involved in developing and implementing political-action plans has been made.[2] 

Examples that have been given are political issues such as poverty and racial relations.  Bruner described this type of learning as having student investigate, first hand, the “occupations” or ways of life of those who live in their communities.  This is in the tradition laid down by John Dewey and described earlier in this blog.  To summarize the philosopher’s concern, most of what schools usually do – exposition and “book learning” – isolates students from real life and lacks the ability of instilling “the spirit of service.”[3]

In the literature of educational studies, such action-learning is generally called experiential education.  There is empirical evidence to suggest that experiential education succeeds in many of the aims that federation theory highlights.  That is, by students going out and dealing with the people affected by social and governmental policy and practice, they more readily engage emotionally and develop a sense of self in relation to the concerns they are investigating and upon which they are acting. 

That would be a sound foundation to instill social capital.  An insightful description of this effect, of overcoming a more self-centered view, is offered by Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing:  “while most students identify themselves as citizens, their grasp of what it means to act as citizens is rudimentary and dominated by a focus on rights, thus creating a privately oriented, passive understanding.”[4]  To usher them out of this self-serving and unengaged view, nothing is more effective than political participation, especially when it is focused on relevant, local concerns.

That insight can be traced to the writings of Tocqueville in the eighteen-hundreds, a favorite writer of this blog.  More specifically, voting and giving money is not enough; what is called for is political action.  William Damon further concludes that nothing is more effective in terms of moral education than programs “that engage students directly in action, with subsequent opportunities for reflection.”[5]

More to the point, these actions can include the following: 

·        showing up for and taking part in political meetings;

·        scheduling and putting on political meetings which can be platforms to express political opinions or demands;

·        organizing and carrying out fund drives;

·        canvasing an area to gather signatures in support or against bills or other initiatives;

·        seeking to attain membership on political boards;

·        joining or starting a political club;

·        participating in debates or other deliberations over a social and/or political issue relevant to student lives; and

·        starting an educational plan that leads to an occupation that has public value.

This writer is aware of a couple of organizations that are dedicated to advance students in the pursuit of these types of activities.  They are The National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC) and SOS Outreach.[6]

          But what about the school itself?  Can it be a more accessible and perhaps a more realistic environment by which experiential learning can take place?  When one considers a school in these terms, the name John Dewey again pops up.  His writing included a vision which characterized a potential role for schools; i.e., one cannot think of a better location to encourage students to engage.  They attend this place 180 days a year.  It is where their friends are.  It is where political decisions affect them directly.  This is how Dewey saw a school site or, better stated, a school community.

He, therefore, thought of it as the ideal place to encourage and facilitate students being involved and creating a more democratic site.  And more importantly, if it is democratic enough, it can create a democratic culture – a way of doing things that reflect the values of those who attend that school.  As such it can be the site for political, experiential learning to take place.  As Theodore Sizer points out, the school site and how it is run can do more to teach democratic values than any other source.

There have been several writers who have addressed this potential source of experiential learning.  For example, Sizer writes:  “Students learn much more from the way a school is run,” … “and the best way to teach values is when the school is a living example of the values to be taught.”[7] This quote hints at the type of concerns over which students could investigate and deliberate. 

This can include every day concerns such as student discipline, school physical maintenance, social problems among students like bullying, instances of sexism or racism, or, with deference for expert input, questions concerning curriculum.  In choosing actual policies in which students could have a say, a teacher needs to give that choice some reflection.  Schools are not experiments, they are places where public business is conducted with real consequences.  So, the areas of operation that students should be invited to express their input, perhaps given a degree of decision-making discretion, deserves serious thought.

This writer was at one time the faculty advisor for student government at a middle school.  He and another teacher wrote a plan, called “Brainstormers,” that created a new model for student government.  Part of the innovation was to get administration to hand over “authority” over one aspect of school life. 

That aspect was extracurricular activities.  The central student body council determined what extracurricular activities could be scheduled and where they could take place.  Of course, any decisions were subject to oversight by administration, but, on a day-to-day basis, that oversight was not felt.  The aim was to identify that segment of campus life that students could handle and was age-appropriate for them to determine with real consequences.

Hopefully, the reader can find such a potential opportunity to socialize students to democratic life as a viable way to teach civics.  At this point, the writer, unlike many of his prior colleagues, does not see this as being “the way” for all schools or all teachers.  He has previously written about how a teacher needs to be of a certain type of teacher who feels comfortable with such experiential teaching techniques. 

Further, when one talks of a school-wide effort, the supportive philosophy needs to be widely shared among that school’s faculty and staff.  If a teacher, who wants to engage in experiential learning strategies, stands alone in terms of these ideas in a faculty, he/she needs to be conscious of that fact and plan accordingly. 

But, if he/she is committed to apply this experiential learning approach, with a bit of creativity, this writer believes the opportunities are there in most schools.  He/she should begin by contacting supportive organizations that can provide supportive ideas and resources.  Perhaps this blog can be but one such source.

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[1] That development has been the topic of the past various postings; if the reader is new to this blog, he/she might review a few of those postings.

[2] “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013/2007, accessed on October 1, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civic-education/ .

[3] Ibid.

[4] Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing, “A Political Socialization Perspective,” in Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education, eds. Lorraine M. McDonnell, P. Michael Timpane, and Roger Benjamin (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000), 91-124, 108.

[5] “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[6] The writer is not recommending membership in these organizations.  His knowledge of them is limited to his awareness that they exist and is mentioned in related sources of information.  One such source is “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[7] Thomas R. Sizer, Horace’s Compromise:  The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1984), 120, 122.

SOME GENERIC ELEMENTS OF DEBATES

Before sharing the first new sentiments of this posting, the writer wants to reemphasize something – this blog is developing a unit of study in real time.  Therefore, the writer begs the pardon of the reader when he indicates that he wants to change the name of the approach he is simultaneously developing.  That name is historical dialogue.  Initially, his thoughts were guided by the notion that he wanted to steer away from a political science based approach to the study of civics.  Instead, a historical approach is more effective when dealing with secondary students and the overall goals of civics education.

          These goals include students engaging themselves with the content of the course on moral and emotional levels.  History, with its stories of human interaction, including political actions, are more apt to be able to identify those conditions with which students can relate.  On the other hand, political science is scientific, in that it reduces reality to factors or variables and to testing those variables as to whether some have predictive power over others.  Such study is noted for its objectivity and consciously avoids language that elicits emotional response.

          The writer has determined that while political science studies can be utilized in the study of civics, those studies can be cited as the need arises.  In the main, though, history should be the discipline that a civics course should look to for the stories and descriptions of related events. 

For example, in the present unit that this blog is developing, the history of foreign trade and related legislation – Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and the North American Foreign Trade Act – provides a representational account of how American thinking over foreign trade has developed during the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. 

By reviewing this history, students need not engage in highly abstract information to get a sense of how that thinking has evolved.  The review of this history is not meant to have student engage in forensic debating, but to engage in deliberative debating.  The question is not what should have happened in the past, but what should happen in the future.  Forensic questions are useful in a history course, deliberative questions are on which civics courses should focus.

With that thrust, the term, historic dialogue, was deemed to be appropriate for what the unit of study was aiming student to do.  But there is one more goal, that while a dialogue based course can assist, does not address directly.  That is, students should engage in some action or, stated another way, they should engage in action learning. 

As John Dewey espoused, experience is the best teacher.  It is the intent of this developer, therefore, to include an action component.  That component will have a political character to it.  So, perhaps the term to describe this approach might be historic dialogue and political action.  The writer will keep working on it.

As for this posting, its main purpose was to finish a description of the overall progression a civics course might take that, in turn, depends on the approach being developed.  In the last posting, this approach’s first two stages where described.  Those two stages are discussion and argument.  The third is debate.  The obvious logic of this progression reflects the evolution students are to take from having them expressing opinions, to devising arguments, to improving on the soundness of those arguments, and now, to engaging in a more formally structured argument or debate.[1]

This blog, in the upcoming postings, will more thoroughly develop what a teacher would instruct students to do as they prepare and engage in a debate.  But the reader should keep in mind that this deliberative process is geared not only to determine who argues more effectively, but to determine what action students will take in response to the issue under study.

To begin, when students reach the level of sophistication in which they can take part, effectively, in a debate, they should have already been introduced to certain elements of debating.  For example, one thing that characterizes the progression from discussion to debate is that the give and take among students becomes more targeted as the course advances. 

Early in the course, students take part in discussions.  These sessions are about individual issues, e.g., gun control.  Then during the argumentation stage, the give and take is over various policy choices.  At that point, the discussion focuses on specific action a government, an organization, or an individual should take.  When it comes to debating, this approach calls on students to decide what action should students take. 

The challenge, though, in this progression is that as the course advances, its issues are projected toward more national or international issues.  For example, the unit of study being developed here, the last unit of the course, is about international trade.  So, if the action component of the unit calls on students to think of something students can do that reflects their sense of what should be done, there are limited actions a student can take that addresses this global topic.  This is a challenge the developer will try to resolve.

Another point can be made.  To engage in a debate, that is sufficiently focused, is to find that aspect of the issue that, by its nature, serves to separate those aspects debaters agree upon and those that they do not.  By doing this, debaters can get at debating without wasting a lot of energy just repeating with what all the participants agree.  Instead, the debate zeroes-in on what is under contention.

In terms of foreign trade, for example, it is safe to say all or, at least, most students agree that foreign trade should advance American interests.  But perhaps students disagree as to whether the US should manipulate their currency or should the US set higher tariffs on more products.  Of course, such narrowing is part and parcel of devising potential policy and, so, the natural tendency is for debating to not be over a total issue area, but on a policy choice. 

The point at which students agree, just before shifting over to disagreement, is called the point of stasis.  By the time students get to the debating stage, they can be taught what a point of stasis is, its function, and what to look for in determining what it is in the given topic being considered.  This developer has not done the actual development of an appropriate lesson plan for this aim, but he feels that identifying a point of stasis can be part of the instruction during the argument stage of the course.

Another advancement that can be developed during the earlier portions of the course – before the debating stage begins – is to have discussants or students who argue to add nuance to either the question under consideration or to their opinions or arguments.  An example might be:  instead of just saying, “I believe that everyone should be allowed to say what they want to say,” they could say “I believe that adults should be allowed to say what they want to say as long as their speech does not endanger someone else’s safety.” 

In other words, to be nuanced is to add qualifications and reservations so that what is said better reflects what a person really wants to express or argue.  In the above example, by being nuanced, the person avoids saying that immature or irresponsible remarks – that can be dangerous – are okay; not what the speaker intended to say.  And this goes for the question upon which the debate is based.  Nuanced questions help prevent debates from being derailed away from what they were meant to be.

The final aspect of a debate that should be reviewed is an element that they have.  Discussions and arguments are not competitions, but debates are.  And, in determining which side of the competition wins there is the addition of a third-party judge.  Why?  Because debates do not have, as in many games or sports, any unequivocal point system.  In baseball, for example, every time a runner crosses home plate, that’s a run and whatever team has the most runs wins.  It’s not so obvious with debating.

Later postings will address how good debates accrue “points.”  But for now, the point (intended) to be made is that a debate is judged by a third party, a judge or a panel of judges, and a winner is declared – with accompanying reasons for the resulting determination.  There are various consequences to this addition.  Among them is that by having a third party, the presentations tend to be addressed to the judge(s) and, consequently, will be less likely to escalate emotionally.  Debaters are more apt to keep their give and takes to expressing useful arguments.  They tend to be reasoned, more logical, and with emotions in check.

So, debates are noted for being on message (with a point of stasis identified), nuanced, and judged by a judge or a panel of judges.  There are other structural elements that a debate contains, but for now, this account has laid the groundwork so that the reader can delve into some of the elements that make for good debating.  The next posting will pick up on these aspects.

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[1] This review of debate relies on Professor Atchison’s course.  See Jarrod Atchison, The Art of Debate – A Transcript Book (Chanilly, VA:  The Great Courses, 2017).