[Note:
This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses
what a civics teacher preparation program should include. The last posting finished describing and
explaining the first of five elements.
This posting will begin by describing what the second element is. If not read, the reader is encouraged to check
out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September
28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]
As this note points out, this blog continues
with reviewing the second of five elements that a teacher preparation program
should include. That second element is,
Element Two:
A preparation program identifies both the challenge presented by the
commodification of education and the popular culture that supports such
commodification by describing it, explaining it, and evaluating it.
And as cultures tend to do, they promote some
values and degrade others. Understanding
that dynamic in terms of what schools should be striving to accomplish needs to
be part of what teacher preparation programs should address.
There are those in education who fear recent developments –
those pointed out by Daniel Bell and addressed in the last posting. While this blogger has some reservations
concerning Bell’s points, his overall message rings true. With a popular culture that adopts an
alluring commercial view, one hears, as legitimate prescriptions, commercial
answers for the problems of education.
In heeding such answers, is the nation bartering
away its obligation to teach the young what should be taught? When such policies as vouchers, other market
mechanisms, and policies that heighten parental influence – as consumers – and
limit the ability of school officials to run schools, do the more civic aims of
education become compromised?
First, there is no doubt that parents need to
have access to school officials to voice their concerns about the quality of
the service that schools provide for their children. They enjoy perspectives that are beneficial for
school officials to hear and consider.
But the voice of a consumer is not what is needed. What is needed is the voice of a partner in
the endeavor to educate his/her son or daughter. And that more communal role occurs, by
definition, in truly federated arrangements.
Second, and here is the point at which this
blogger’s experience kicks in, he believes, on a daily basis, that most
parents do not respect good education per se. What they want are credentials for their
children. They want the acquisition of
those credentials to be as smooth, with the least number of hassles, as
possible.
Yes, overall, they might buy more expensive
housing to be able to send their children to what are perceived as better
schools, but how do they measure better schools? As the grind of daily living takes its toll,
many parents simply do not want to be bothered with the on-going challenges
associated with assuring that the education their children are getting is good.
There is nothing in the popular culture that
this blogger can detect that promises, encourages, or ensures that anything
else is the case. Oh, the economy may
hold out rewards for those who have attained a superior education, but not as that
education is taking place. Instead, the
popular culture seems to promote values, attitudes, and biases that are at best
indifferent to the challenges of doing well in school if not “pushing” for a more
immediate gratification frame of mind.
The popular culture also works in another
counterproductive way. Of course,
students of college age are also products of that same culture. In order to create a teacher education
program that adopts this second element, college level programs need the
assistance of appropriate messaging that would emanate from state government
officials who support college professors as they conduct teacher preparation
courses. Such messaging should counter those
counterproductive elements of the popular culture.
At the pre-college level, policies should be in
place constraining schools from having to depend on the commercial interests
that exploit the popular culture and its messages. For example, this blogger taught at a high
school some years ago that signed a contract with a soft drink giant to promote
its drinks on campus. The beverage they
promoted was one high in caffeine. Of
course, the vending machines on campus made the drink readily available. One can safely conclude that schools hinder
the learning environment of their campuses by selling such a product. While this practice may have become less likely
of late, here it is cited as illustrating how a commercial entity might exert questionable
influence.
When questioned, the principal justified the
contract by pointing out that school supplies were going to be bought with the
funds accrued from the deal. In
addition, the newspapers are full of stories about obesity of children a
condition enabled by the lack of healthy food choices in the nation’s schools’
cafeterias.
Should schools have to depend on such deals to
buy educational equipment and supplies or should the state provide these supplies
without having to promote harmful products to the nation’s youth? Is the nation bartering away its
responsibilities as far as education and schooling are concerned?
And shouldn’t new teachers understand how
pervasive the legitimacy of the popular culture is that supports this
commercial view? Of course, the answer
given here is yes, but this blogger cannot express how difficult it is to even mention
that message in public forums. Yet, to
be a viable civics education program, it must promote this messaging if it is
to meet this particular challenge.
In short, the public spirit that this blog
promotes and that it wants civics education to support in the nation’s public
schools sounds to a degree hollow and out of place in school settings that not
only function in a popular culture of commercialism, but also have, to varying
degrees, sold out to it. In addition, even
in education circles, this seems to be an incubating problem. It’s under the surface and not being given
the attention it deserves.
The popular culture which this posting
addresses treats the dysfunctional aspects of the nation’s current society not
as ones subject to reform, but as parts of a political and social backdrop
untouchable by those who are involved.
Yes, they may lament this general condition, but little else. One can look at current discussions and
debates over civics education. This
blogger remembers before he retired, attending a Congressional Conference on
civics education that was completely mute on these points.
He remembers that the assumptions of the
discussions did not allow for the inclusion of these concerns and feels a bit
awkward addressing them here. Is it a
state of affairs about which one cannot do anything to ameliorate the
underlying factors causing these conditions?
Yes, critical theorists might speak to them, but does one have to adopt
what this blogger considers such an extreme position to question this
commercialization?
Without some meaningful recognition and
commitment to change these conditions, the educational establishment and its
classroom teachers have no hope of developing the type of civics education to
which a partnered view would aspire.
Without a profound, transforming change, an educational system or even a
local community might spend some money, make some noise and, as a fad, such
effort will pass with little change.
As things stand, any concerned teachers dubious
of this undergirding condition are justified in being suspicious of any
likelihood that things will change. Addressing
the obstacles to instituting changes in the nation’s polity, Matt Grossmann
looks at how difficult it is to institute them into the American political system. He writes,
Policymakers
can and do collectively ignore public opinion and the direction of election
results, sometimes by enacting contrary policy but most often by making no
change at all. The results of the policy
process are determined by the interactions among policymakers themselves, and
the public appears to have quite limited impact.[1]
Yet, Leslie R. Crutchfield writes of the
potentials of “grass roots” politics and provides evidence of movements – such as
the antismoking effort – being able to change policy.[2]
And these aspects of American politics should
be addressed by teacher preparation programs.
Bottom line: this should be
addressed and those addressing the issue should be realistic, but believe that
change can happen, if only through incremental advances at a time. So, with that this blog is now ready to, and in
the next posting will, share the third element.
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