EQUALITY AND JUSTICE, RELATED VALUES

In previous postings, this blog has made a claim:  equality is based on the idea that, despite variance among people in terms of talent, intelligence, and other qualities, every person of normal mental capacity has an equal capacity to consent.  In addition, according to writers of the eighteenth century and even current scholars, people are also equal in having a moral sense – a sense over what is right and wrong.  The difference is:  today, that latter belief is more nuanced.

          Part of the nuance is based on more sophisticated research.  An important, current book, by Robert Sapolski,[1] makes the case of how “human” it is to see the social world in terms of “us-versus-them.”  But then it introduces a salvo; i.e., while this tribalistic tendency serves to motivate a great deal of immorality, there is a bright spot: 

Spelled out this way, these findings don’t seem to bode well for humans.  We have evolved to support our immediate social groups, a tendency that can be easily manipulated into discriminatory behavior, especially at younger ages.  The good news, according to Sapolsky, is that there are always individuals who resist the temptation to discriminate and won’t conform to harmful acts based on othering or hierarchy.

          … he offers suggestions for how we might subvert social tendencies to conform and aim our behavior towards better social ends.  For example, his advice to counter xenophobia includes “emphasizing individuation and shared attributes, perspective taking, more benign dichotomies, learning hierarchical differences, and bringing people together on equal terms with shared goals.”[2]

It is this call for equality that serves to allow a federated sense among citizens in a functional polity.

          Morality, when seen through secular eyes, is practical.  This writer is currently reading the novel, A Column of Fire, by Ken Follett.[3]  Follett gives a vivid account of how religious conflict, in sixteenth century Europe, served to hinder the progression of those nations that were enmeshed in the often-violent, intra-national fighting between those who supported Catholic beliefs against those who opted for Protestant beliefs and Protestants behaving the same way, a form of us-versus-them.

          It took leaders, such as Queen Elizabeth I, to lead their nations beyond this crippling antagonism and, as a consequence, advance the nation as truly national entities.  But such a move, at some level, depends on the citizenry to share a federated sense among themselves.  This can be generalized to all social arrangements and, at its base, must be accepted as a moral foundation.

          Given this fundamental sense, how do various political/governmental decisions reflect these concerns?  If one sees equality in these terms, one cannot help but see the interrelationship between the value, equality, and the value, justice.  This blog gives definitions for both:

·        Equality, according to federation theory, refers to the belief that despite inequality in talent, wealth, health or other assets, the entailed value calls for equal consideration of all persons’ well-being, that all have an equal right to maintain their dignity and integrity as individual persons.

·        And justice is the commitment to give everyone his/her due based on a realistic view of dispersed or accumulated advantages.

          Of course, if one is xenophobic, then in any community or society that has any level of various cultural traditions, one would be challenged to being either a defender of equality or a practitioner of justice.  Given the demographic realities of most countries, being moral, therefore, would be a challenge to many.  As a matter of fact, the current upsurge of nationalism can be seen in this light.

          Further, one can analyze many moral questions in this light.  In the upcoming postings, this blog will visit the work of Michael J. Sandel, Justice:  What’s the Right Thing to Do?[4] In that work, Sandel offers a number of scenarios or situations that present moral questions – some needing or calling for changes in governmental policies.  For example:  should war veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder be eligible or granted the Purple Heart medal?

---

[1] Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave:  The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst (New York, NY:  Penguin Press, 2017).

[2] C. Brandon Ogbunu, “Why Do People Do Bad Things?,” Greater Good Magazine, December 1, 2017, accessed March 14, 2019, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_people_do_bad_things .  Emphasis added.

[3] Ken Follett, A Column of Fire (New York, NY:  Viking, 2017).

[4]  Michael J. Sandel, Justice:  What’s the right thing to do?  (New York, NY:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009).

MORE ON AN ACTION MODEL

This blog is currently addressing an instructional model that outlines a series of phases – admittedly intuitive phases – that defines the action in the historical dialogue-to-action approach to civics.  Here is a shortened version of the model:

Phase One:  Reflecting one’s interests and concerns, identify issue

Phase Two:  Investigate local aspect of issue

Phase Three:  Identify local relevant agents

Phase Four:  Set up information gathering protocol

Phase Five:  Gather information

Phase Six:  Review various action options

Phase Seven:  Perform action[1]

Phase Eight:  Coalesce information in a report

Phase Nine:  Submit report and provide evaluation of the experience

Anyone of these activities, which have been pointed out earlier in the blog, need to be set up by gathering from studied groups relevant information regarding some problematic issue.  Too much for the average person to undertake?  Perhaps, life is full of responsibilities leaving little time for such activities; but a civics course can promote a more engaged ideal. 

A course of study that adopts the HD-to-A model needs to allow enough time for students, individually or in groups, to carry off such an action component.  What follows is what this blog has described before:

The course can assign an experiential project as a course-long assignment – perhaps taking the place of a final exam.[2]

So, while the units of a HD-to-A civics course can address action components, a course-long assignment can implement class instruction lessons.  They also can include activities more associated with students’ school experiences:  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 – and that includes teaching. 

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.[3]  The writer is not recommending membership in these organizations.  His knowledge of them is limited to his awareness that they exist and is mentioned here to be of assistance.

          But before leaving this concern there is one area of special interest.  As Theodore Sizer points out, the school site can do more to teach democratic values than any other source.[4]  They can do more to impart a commitment to social capital and civic humanism.  Sizer further offers the following:  “Students learn much more from the way a school is run,”[5] and “… the best way to teach values is when the school is a living example of the values to be taught.”[6] These quotes hint at the type of concerns over which students could investigate and deliberate. 

And what can students address?  This can include every day concerns such as student discipline, the school’s 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 or perhaps an administrator needs to give that choice some reflection.[7]

This review ends with addressing a distinction related to dialogue.  Whether students discuss, argue, or participate in a debate, they should be able to see a fundamental difference between history courses and civics courses that use historical information.  That is, history can be used for one of two purposes:  forensic uses or deliberative uses. 

Forensic questioning asks:  what happened, why did it happen, and what should have happened?  This form of questions is suitable in historical studies and, as these questions indicate, the study or dialogue emphasize the past.  Deliberative questioning, on the other hand, asks:  based on past events or developments, what is likely to happen, why will it happen, and what should happen?  A civics course deals with policy questions and, therefore, has a future, deliberative orientation.[8] 

The historic dialogue-to-action (HD-to-A) approach has students review the historical record relating to an issue. The conditions of that issue reflect some social reality in which a federalist value is being, to some degree, defiled.  Those involved use history to decide what should be done to solve or ameliorate the issue.  That is a future oriented process and the reader – those who have opted to review the following elements of logical argumentation – should keep that aim in mind.

---

[1] This phase is added from the original list.

[2] This option of substituting a report or other work product is suggested also at the unit level of the course by calling on some work product being used to substitute for a unit test.

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

[4] Theodore R. Sizer, Horace’s Compromise:  The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston, MA:  Houghton Mifflin, 1984).

[5] Ibid., 120.

[6] Ibid., 122.

[7] 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. 

[8] Jarrod Atchison, The Art of Debate – A Transcript Book.