In the April 14th’s posting, “Introducing C3,”
this blog acquainted the reader to the educational establishment’s response to
the woes facing education and, more specifically, social studies. Basically, C3 is part of the US Department of
Education attempt to encourage state education systems to adopt world class
standards.
The word “encourage” is key here in
that the federal government does not run education systems; these systems are
run by state governments. But since
education in America is seriously lacking in a global economy,[1] the
federal government has taken the position that it needs to assist schools in changing
what they do. The purpose here is not to
re-describe and explain again C3 – the reader can revisit the previous posting
– but to further comment on its approach.
One point that deserves restatement
is that the C3 Framework is focused on process or instruction. Toward that end, the C3 Framework speaks of
the “Inquiry Arc.” That end is summarily
aimed at having teachers employ inquiry strategies through their mode of
teaching. While this writer favors such
strategies and tried to implement them in his teaching days, he also has warned
in this blog that any policy that mandates such strategies are bound to fail –
not all teachers will “play ball.” That
is a topic for another day.
Here, the emphasis is on
content. That is, what does the C3 Framework
call for in terms of civics’ scope? Of
course, content and process can’t be totally divorced from each other. Certain content elements favor or insists on
specific instructional choices. If the
content, for example, highlights certain aspects of reality that need to be
seen to be known or understood, then the instruction would call for students to
see it. But most content is open to the various
instructional options that are typically employed by or otherwise available to
teachers.
Content, on the other hand, reflects a
social philosophy.[2] That is especially true in social
studies. The challenge here, then, is to
see how much the content choices of the C3 Framework in civics is reflective of
the natural rights perspective of governance and politics and how much of it is
reflective of any other political construct.
Given the stated biases of this blog, the question is more directed at
how much the standards of C3 reflect or employ the tenets of federation theory.
If the reader is new to this blog,
he/she is encouraged to read the introductory remarks this site offers – at
least if one is accessing it through Google on a regular computer. Generally, federation theory emphasizes the
need for viable citizenry to be communal, collaborative, and to feel, among themselves,
a sense of partnership – that is, that they feel federated. This blog has used the terms social capital
and civic humanism[3]
to encapsulate these qualities.
As a reminder, this blog, in its
review of C3, hypothesized that those who developed it were guided by the natural
rights perspective. That perspective is
noted for its emphasis on liberty and individualism. It furthers a view of pluralism that Daniel
Elazar calls radical pluralism – a view which is associated with California and
sees people, at the individual level, being free and encouraged to determine
their self-defined sense of morality and social demeanor.[4] The previous postings, reviewing C3 has argued
this “educated” guess is correct.
But that judgement has not reviewed
the C3 standards, themselves. Well, upon
reviewing them, they do contain a surprise.
They are written in a more communal language. They assume the acceptance of various
communal values and, if followed, instruct teachers and curriculum developers
to share with students these values. The
problem is, they are not developed, and their legitimacy is taken for
granted. It can also be added, they are
poorly defined. It is assumed everyone
knows what is meant by the language the Framework employs.
Before sharing the language of their descriptors
(offered over the next two postings), a word on the need to anchor these values
in an overall philosophic or theoretical rationale is prudent. Why?
Because without such a rationale, resulting language can be readily seen
as a set of platitudes.
This will be demonstrated as this
posting reviews a sampling of that language.
But to further make this point, a lot of what will follow can be easily
interpreted from a variety of political biases and subsequently used to mean
very different things – at times, opposite messaging. If one does not find this problematic, then
one is probably in line with natural rights thinking.
And that bias probably finds most
attempts by schools to promulgate any values – other than liberty – offensive and
even dangerous. But such a stand is, at
best, unintentionally disingenuous. For
if one argues the natural rights argument, one is basically arguing market
values. That is not to say, market
values are all bad, but they are values.
In teaching, one cannot escape promoting values of one sort or another.
So, by watering down a set of socio/political/economic
values – which one does when they are ill-defined and lacking in justification
– one falls in line with the natural rights credo: “do your own thing.” Having stated that, this posting does want to
commend this communal turn in the C3 document.
At least it does pick up on the language of a more communal perspective.
Due to length, these remarks will
stop here. In the next posting, this
blog will comment on the limited explanation the C3 document offers and then on
the following posting, the blog will look at a sampling of the C3 standards and
analyze their language.
[1] Marian
Wilde, “Global grade: How do U.S. students
compare?” Great Schools, April 2, 2015, accessed on May 12, 2018, http://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/u-s-students-compare/ .
[3] This blog defines these social qualities as
follows: social capital is characterized
by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political
relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation and civic humanism,
as Isaac Kramnick describes it, “conceives of man as a political being whose
realization of self occurs only through participation in public life, through
active citizenship in a republic. The
virtuous man is concerned primarily with the public good, res publica, or commonweal, not with private or selfish ends.”
[4] Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring
Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL: The
University of Alabama Press, 1987).
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