UNCHECKED TRENDS

 

A few postings ago, this blog announced that it would issue, online, a “book” that makes available the first one hundred postings of this blog.  Its title is Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To access it, the reader is guided to use the archive feature of this blog and look up the posting entitled “Starting It Off” which was the entry dated September 24, 2021.  That posting shared this blog book’s “Introduction” as a teaser.

These one hundred postings are no longer listed in this blog’s archive.  They, for this newer presentation, have been reedited and introduce the reader to the aims of this blog and a rationale for why it was started.  This might be helpful to readers who have recently become aware of this blog or for long time readers who might find it useful to become reacquainted with what this blog sets out to do.

          If the reader wishes access to the “book,” he/she can use the following URL to do so; that is, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or gain access through the gateway posting, “A Digression,” that can be accessed through the URL, http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for October 23, 2021.  There, one finds not only a link to this blog book but other works by this blogger supplementing the books he has published.

          And while considering past efforts, this blogger has been motivated to look at some of his long-ago writings.  Of interest, from 1998, is the following:

 

In the last forty years [now sixty years], according to some noted writers, there has been a growing awareness that America’s stock in community and social trust has been waning.  Civility, or a civil society, as measured by sociological factors and reported in the popular press, [has] particularly affected the younger population of the nation.  The growing awareness and interest in a civil society [have] had a rippling effect on the welfare of the nation and of the young people in question.[1] 

 

He then ties this sentiment to the goals of or the reasons for civics education and, therefore, signifies those social studies professionals, with their commitment to citizenship education as a primary goal.  They cannot ignore the deteriorating effects these social trends represent.

And what has happened since these concerns were shared?  The political landscape has become extremely polarized, and as this blog and just about every interested venue have reported, incivility and other forms of antagonistic social behavior have seen a constant uptick of activity.  One finds parents verbally abusing school board members, people who have expressed political opinions being threatened with physical violence, and this past weekend, NBC News reported increased levels of violence in the nation’s schools.[2] 

Yes, crime rates among young people did experience a drop from 2000 to 2012, but there has been an uptrend in more recent years, and one should remember that at the turn of the century (into the 21^st century), those numbers were peaking as compared to historical trends. 

The U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reports, “The juvenile murder rate reached its lowest level in 2012, 84% below the 1993 peak; since 2012, the rate increased 27% through 2018 (from 2.2 to 2.7 per 100,000 youth), then declined 6% (to 2.6) by 2019.”[3]  As one can judge, crime among the young still reflects a serious civil problem in this nation.  A telling report can be found in the OJJDP site, “Age-Specific Arrest Rate Trends.”[4]  There, youth crime rates as opposed to other age brackets are highlighted and reveal how augmented the rates of crime are among the younger age groups.

Back in 1998, youth crime was getting a lot of concern.  This blogger back then stated various statistics that reflected the reason for this concern; for example, “Juvenile (10- to 17-year-olds) arrests rose from just over 300 per 100,000 in 1986 to about 500 per 100,000 in 1994 …”  All of this concern found its expression in making school sites out to be hostile places.  Today, this hostility is taking other avenues. 

Now, this blogger while writing this posting can see on television parents bringing very animated complaints – even threatening violence – over such issues as “critical race theory,” “masking” policies, and vaccination requirements.  School board meetings have drawn the attention of national media.  Throughout all of this, what one does not sense is a communal atmosphere. 

What one does find is a consumer-oriented populace that is going to those meetings not to find a mutual resolution to the problems they face, but to express a tone of disgruntled customers about this public service.  Human endeavors, especially if they are taken on in the public stage – or even in the public arena – cannot be successful without taking into account the need for communal approaches.  While this can be measured in matters of degree, the current social levels of community one generally sees are historically low.  This could be one’s observation back in 1998 as well as today.

Here is what a recent Pew Report[5] claims:

·      All types of communities face both common problems and those characteristics of the various types one finds in America (that being urban, suburban, and rural types)

·      Local problems include those associated with race, socio-economic status, and demographic factors (not so much geography)

·      Both in urban and rural communities, drug addiction as an observed problem is ranked highly (judged so at a rate of 50% and 46% respectively)

·      In all three types, people cite concern over affordable housing, levels of poverty, rates of crime, and especially among urban dwellers, the quality of public-school education – concern about these areas are cited by residents from a 30% range to a 50% range

Of course, there are those areas of concern significantly felt by one type of community as opposed to the other types.  For example,

 

Some problems stand out as being particularly acute in rural areas. Rural residents are significantly more likely than those living in urban or suburban areas to say the availability of jobs: 42% of rural residents say this is a major problem in their community, compared with 34% of urban and 22% of suburban residents. Rural residents are also significantly more likely to say access to public transportation is a major problem where they live.[6]

 

Of late, communities are facing two very daunting challenges, that of social media and, of course, the covid pandemic.  They have heightened the effects of a social/political cultural influence favoring the natural rights view.

          That view, as this blog has argued repeatedly, acts to undermine a community by holding many of the supportive beliefs and dispositions – communal, collaborative, and willingness to compromise – as illegitimate or naive in too many settings.  This anti-community bias undermines this nation’s federal foundation.  In practical terms, it is adding gas to the polarization fire.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, The Usefulness and Appropriateness of a Federalist Perspective as a Theoretical Construct for the Study of Government and Civics at the Secondary Level (Tallahassee, FL:  The Florida State University (a dissertation):  1998), 1.

[2] “Kids under Pressure,” NBC Nightly News, October 31, 2021.

[3] “Juvenile Arrest Rate Trends,” OJJDP (n.d.), accessed November 1, 2021, https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05201 .

[4] “Age-Specific Arrest Rate Trends,” OJJDP (n.d.), accessed November 1, 2021, https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/qa05301.asp .  By way of comparison, take into account this  excerpt from a 1974 source.  It states:

The rate of delinquency cases (the number of cases per 1,000 child population) ages 10-17 was an estimated 37.5 in 1974 compared to 34.2 in 1973. From 1973 to 1974, the increase in the delinquency rate was approximately 9 percent as compared to an increase of 1.8 percent from 1972 to 1973. Between 1960 and 1974, the rate increased from 20.1 to 37.5 per 1,000, representing an 86 percent increase in 14 years.

See Jacqueline Corbett and Thomas S. Vereb, “Juvenile Court Statistics, 1974,” (n.d.) accessed November 1, 2021, https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/148122NCJRS.pdf .  Of note is that statistics are based on a per 1,000 rate as opposed to a per 100,000 rate. 

[5] Kim Parker, Julian Menasce Horowitz, Anna Brown, Richard Fry, D’Vera Cohn, and Ruth Igielnik, “4. Views of Problems Facing Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities,” Pew Research Center (May 22, 2018), accessed November 1, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/views-of-problems-facing-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ .

[6] Ibid.