A TIME OF TURMOIL

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

Change marks most of life, but adolescence is noted for it.  Central to that change is the individual coming to terms with what he/she wants as opposed to what his/her various social arrangements demand.  Another term one might use to describe this push and pull could be politics in its broadest sense; after all, politics is a process by which who gets what, where, and when is decided.

          It, politics, is ubiquitous and a young person’s proclivity to fall prey to faulty modeling, described in the previous posting, promises to cause recurring disappointments.  Of course, a formal arena where such conflicts occur is the government.  And a good part of civics education is meant to introduce young people to this institutionalized process. 

If nothing else, civics can be a means to teach young ones they are not the only ones who fall short of having their desires being satisfied.  But more practically, it serves to point out those agencies they are apt to encounter (e.g., the DMV) or duties they will be called upon to serve (e.g., jury duty, paying taxes).  Of course, this is presented by describing the basic structures, processes, and functions of the various parts of the political system including the agencies of government but also those established entities that vie for public assets such as interest groups.

One way to approach this instruction is to spotlight the tension between liberals and conservatives.  And a distinction one can make between these two camps is the way conservatives tend to rely on a more behavioralist mode of analysis and view most political activity as the product of calculating participants as they weigh anticipated rewards and punishments.  These are what are at stake in a given competition over some public policy – such as where a highway will go. 

This view limits itself to the immediate conditions and the terms under consideration.  Along with these considerations, the center of concern is the individual political entity be it a person, an organization, or a political jurisdiction.  In other words, it’s a self-centered view and, as such, matches the thrust of the natural rights construct.

          According to psychological research, these characteristics match the way in which most humans tend to think about political matters; they are mostly reactive to political challenges or opportunities with little reflection.  And boiling down these concerns to merely rewards and punishments, one is not bogged down with more far reaching consequences – which might or might not be known.

          But surely, there are those who take a more complex view and some of them are conservatives (by the way, there are liberals who also tend to simplify matters).  And complexity usually means nuance and a holistic way of thinking.  This includes thinking about and considering each participant’s intuitive and emotional disposition relating to what is at stake.  When one thinks or observes politics with this more encompassing perception, a multitude of factors comes into play.  As one adds factors, one approaches reality.

          One should not lose sight that where all this is occurring is a political arena and these arenas are known for the participation of less than honest agents.  Without prejudging any participant, history is replete with actors who not only act with less than honest claims but also are quite artful in how they practice their dishonesty or duplicity. 

In any civics course, therefore, part of instruction should include the study of rhetoric that points out the use of illogical and misleading argumentation.  For example, the use of the illogical argument, “cum hoc ergo propter hoc,” should be looked at.  That is when someone says something causes something else because the something took place just before the result in question.  This example is pointed out since it occurs all too often.

This whole account questions how a simplistic view can even provide an adequate description or explanation of how politics occurs, especially if the intent is to arrive at a functional understanding by typical citizens.  Simplified, civics is about informing students as to what characterizes the government and those who interact with it in more or less formal grounds.  But that view would miss out – and often does – about how immaturity can and does affect governmental processes, decisions, and the consequences policy decisions have.

Helping one take on a more complex approach is to take into account various psychological factors and, in that, phenomenology is helpful.  It emphasizes the holistic nature of life, including politics, and how one should take on its study.  This “third way” approach (opposed to behavioral and cognitive psychologies) relies on holistic accounts.

These accounts are derived from participants telling their stories in all their complexities.  These stories turn out to be the main data source for phenomenological studies in which people are encouraged to reveal, through their language, their whole relevant self and their whole environments – i.e., his/her lifeworld.  But the emphasis is not on them as self-centered actors but as interactive agents in various social arrangements or settings.