THE MAGRUDER AND GLENCOE CASE, PART VIII

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.  Part of that influence is how the discipline helps guide civics textbook writers.]

Of late this blog has reviewed various aspects of the leading American government textbooks used in the nation’s high schools.  The blog is asking whether in fact their content has been guided by a perspective of governance and politics this blog calls the natural rights view.  As readers of this blog know, it promotes the use of the federation theory view.  The blog also maintains that certain conditions in schools are obstacles to providing a civics curriculum that encourages a communal, collaborative, and a disposition to engage in principled compromise – in short, to help in developing a federated people.

          To support this claim, the blog through this current series of postings has been reporting an analysis of those textbooks.  To date, that report has described a check of their tables of content to get a sense what the books highlight, a check into the various indices to see if the texts address federalist topics, a review of a feature a former edition of one the text reported on political engagement opportunities and skills, and with this posting begins a look at the actual written content of the two textbooks.

The two textbooks are Magruder’s American Government[1]and Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[2]  For each textbook, the writer randomly identified five pages and within each page, selected a random paragraph.[3]  What follows is a rundown of what each of these chosen paragraphs shares with students, what the context of the paragraph is, and an evaluation of the paragraph. 

This evaluation asks: 

·       Does the paragraph convey a natural rights description or explanation of some aspect of governance or politics?  If so, how?

·       Does the paragraph entice the interest of the student by being relevant or entertaining is some way?  If so, how?

·       Does the paragraph relate to some federalist values or concerns such as communal, collaborative, and/or principled compromising political interactions? 

·       And summarily, do the answers to these questions add to the evidence that the natural rights view does, in fact, guide the civics curriculum of the nation?

In terms of the Magruder text, this writer selected the following pages (in ascending order):  51, 167, 183, 282, and 674.[4]  The review below indicates the title information of each paragraph, content of the chosen paragraph, a description of its context, and an evaluation (based on the above questions).

Titles: 

Topic 2, “The Beginnings of American Government,” Lesson 1, “Origins of American Political Ideals,” Page 51 –

Content:

The governments of these three [proprietary] colonies were much like those in the royal colonies.  The governor, however, was appointed by the proprietor.  In Maryland and Delaware, the legislatures were bicameral.  In Pennsylvania, the legislature was a unicameral body.  The Frame of Government, a constitution that William Penn drew up for that colony in 1682, was, for its time, exceedingly democratic.  As in royal colonies, appeals of decisions in the proprietary colonies could be carried to the king in London.[5]

Context:

          The obvious purpose of this paragraph is to instruct students as to the historical origins of the ideals that would influence the origins of the nation.  Here, the case of William Penn is cited and his formulation of a constitution. 

Evaluation:

While the constitution was not the product of a people coming together (a federalist requirement), Penn was influenced by “federal” ideals.  For example, this brief overview from another source offers:

Penn visited America once more, in 1699.  In those years he put forward a plan to make a federation of all English colonies in America.  There have been claims that he also fought slavery, but that seems unlikely, as he owned and even traded slaves himself.  However, he did promote good treatment for slaves, and other Pennsylvania Quakers [an unpopular religious sect in England] were among the earliest fighters against slavery.[6]

Since proprietorships were business arrangements, Penn, while harboring the racists attitudes of his time, did demonstrate a genuine federal bent.  His efforts were of inclusion that he weighed against his commercial interests.  None of this is included in the cited paragraph.

          Should it be?  This writer believes it should since federalist ideals were taking hold across all the colonies (especially in the New England colonies)[7] although the version of federalism being adopted is what this blog calls parochial/traditional federalism.  That is, those who were included in any federal arrangement were highly exclusive – e.g., it would not include African slaves.  But this version did help introduce the value of inclusion as Penn promoted it.

          As being relevant to what a government course should highlight, the opinion here is that this is more a topic that should be included in an American History course, but whether it should be included in an American government course is contingent on a better contextual setting.  The mode of its presentation in Magruder lacks sufficient functional bases for its inclusion. 

The story of Penn is a whole lot more interesting and entertaining than what is offered in this text.  As presented, this writer feels the Magruder account becomes just further information to which students would not pay much attention.

Next posting will review page 167 and evaluate its content.

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[1] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[2] Richard C. Remy, Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).

[3] If the random chosen page happens to contain “end of lesson” material (an insert or illustration of some sort), the next preceding page is selected.  That happened with the page 51 selection, the random page identified is 53, but that page contained inserted information – excerpts from historical documents – that further illustrated the information contained within the lesson.

[4] While the pages were randomly chosen, the blogger “rigged” the choices to assure that at least one page was situated within those portions of the book that addressed some governmental entity of the federal government since, as the earlier review of the chapter titles indicates, a great bulk of the textbook is dedicated to those entities.  In terms of this list of pages, page 282 was so chosen.

[5] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government, 51, emphasis (bolden type) in original.

[6] “Brief History of William Penn,” William Penn, n.d., accessed June 8, 2020, https://www.ushistory.org/penn/bio.htm .

[7] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966) and Daniel J. Elazar, Exploring Federalism (Tuscaloosa, AL:  The University of Alabama Press, 1987).