FROM LOCAL TO NATIONAL

[Note:  This posting completes this blog’s report on the development of a civics unit of study.  The unit is meant to direct students in their understanding of a local political/governmental issue.  The issue is the opioid epidemic.  Writer wants to express gratitude to Wikipedia for identifying the bulk of the research this blog has used in the development of this unit.[1]]

This posting will serve as a transition from reporting, in real time, the development of one unit of study to another.  As indicated above – and in a long string of previous postings – the unit being completed targeted the opioid epidemic.  That development took various steps in its progression.

The plan consisted of first choosing an issue area that affects a local area within the polity – the neighborhood.  Then the development determined where in the course it should be situated.  In terms of a local issue, progressing from the immediate and local toward the outer reaches of students’ civic interests, this unit is situated early in the course.

          For example, the assumed course places the “opioid” unit as probably the third unit.  To remind a recurring reader – one who follows this blog – it has been suggested that a civics course, one guided by federation theory, should have students study issues that help advance social capital and civic humanism.

          This is what this blog reported in a previous posting:

To implement this course, one needs to forget the prevailing textbooks[2] and the structure that these textbooks outline and [instead] develop a course entirely on social capital [and civic humanism] priorities.  To begin with, each element of a society, from the most basic to the most complicated, becomes a potential source of content.  From the individual – the most basic, but still complicated – to international arrangements such as the UN can be included.

A list of these elements and an accompanying “social capital” [and “civic humanist”] issues is included in the following:

•         The individual – short term interests vs. long term interests

•         The family – the effects of divorce

•         The neighborhood – responsibilities toward problem children

•         A small business – treatment of employees

•         A labor association (such as a union) – efficiency and quality issues vs. worker interests

•         A large corporation – product safety

•         A local government (either city or county) – zoning or racial/ethnic divisions

•         Law enforcement agency – judicial rights applicable to an accused

•         White House – leadership that advances social capital

•         Congress – the extent that money (donations) is influential

•         The courts – the role of interpreting constitutional principles as expressions of social capital

•         Society during wartime – special demands on citizenship

•         International associations – levels of interdependence between nations

Such a course of study would be comprised of thirteen units to be covered in an eighteen-week semester at the high school level.  Middle school civics courses last the entire academic year, so the list can be longer, or each item can demand more time (or a combination of the two).[3]

A third unit would correspond to the “neighborhood” unit in the above listing.  Of course, an “opioid” concern replaces the above identified issue, “responsibilities toward problem children.”

          On another matter, in a previous posting, this blog promised that the listing of all factoids and insights, previously identified in prior postings, would be collected in one extra, posting site.  The resulting list takes up eighteen pages, so the posting option on this blog seems undoable.  So instead, the listing appears in a PDF type posting. 

Interested readers can click to the online site identified in the footnote below.[4]  That collection of factoids and insights were made up of researched information and the sources of that information is identified by accompanying footnotes.  Interested parties that wish to access those sources can merely click on those sites.

Those bits of information are arranged according to an aspect of the opioid crisis.  Those aspects are:  updating information of the epidemic history, effects on the individual, counter measures, production and distribution, demographics, and governmental reactions.  So, for example, factoids regarding heroin appear as follows:

Factoids relating to current updating of historical account:

Concerning heroin –

* Of those who misuse prescribed opioids, 4 to 6 percent “graduate” to heroin and 80 percent of those, who use heroin, previously misused prescription opioids.

* Men are significantly more likely to use heroin;

* Between 2012 and 2015, deaths due to heroin-use were more numerous than deaths due to other opioids even though among women, deaths were higher due to opioid medications;

* The last decade or so has seen significant increases in heroin use. Those numbers include an increase from an estimated 374,000 Americans using heroin in the years 2002-2005 to 607,000 in the years 2009-2011.4 By 2014, as a reflection of a leveling-off progression, the number was estimated to still be over half a million.

In turn, each of these entries are properly footnoted and their sources identified.

With that effort completed, it is time to move on.  This blog will develop another unit of study.  This will be a third unit so developed.  The first one covered the issue of foreign trade and how that trade has affected the availability of jobs here in the US.  This blog developed that unit as one that would appear at the end of a course of study.  The “trade” issue would replace (or develop further) the “levels of interdependence between nations” in the identified course of study above.

What is visualized here is that a unit on jurisprudence can be a third developed unit and can be situated with a “national” context – “the courts.”  More specifically, the federalist target will be three sets of jurisprudential concepts:  strict liability vs. negligence, malfeasance vs. non feasance, reasonable standard vs. causation.  All three are central concepts in the practice of tort law.  Again, this will be the organizing aim for a long string of postings to come.

As with the other two units, this newer plan will be to identify a history (aligning this effort with the “historical dialogue-to-action” strategy), to cull out those aspects that define the current social/political condition that affect citizens in this area of interest, and develop lesson-scenarios that address, individually, each identified aspect.  And it will be done, as with the other two, in real time. 

That means, the reader should not be surprised if its development backtracks at times.  It also points out that this development should not be equated to what a typical teacher can do.  He/she does not have the luxury of spending weeks to develop the units that comprise his/her courses.  That is especially true if the textbook takes a backseat – as suggested here – in defining what is to be taught.

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[1] The writer also wants to state that where possible, he has checked the sources and has at times added to the listed research.

[2] The prevailing textbooks can be maintained, but as reference books that contain much, if not all, of the structural information a student would use in carrying out inquiries this course of study would have students perform.

[3] The previous posting is entitled “Social Capital as a Fundamental Commitment,” February 10, 2017.

[4] The site for the PDF type document is https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11635&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AFhwqIF3ZhONVK8 .