This blog, over recent postings, has emphasized describing and explaining
the theory upon which it is based. And
based on the concerns expressed by such a review, certain research questions
become prominent. Does a federalist
perspective provide a legitimate and viable way to study government and
politics at the secondary school level, i.e., in middle school and in high school? There, the targeted courses would be civics
and American government, respectively.
This overall question
leads to subsidiary questions. They are
concerned with those issues associated with the comparison between the natural
rights perspective, dominant today, and the federalist perspective, promoted in
this blog. These views, in many ways,
are at loggerheads not only about how government should rule, and politics
should be conducted, but about how people should relate to that rule and to
each other.
Therefore, the subsidiary questions ask about
the evolution of these opposing constructs as they have affected curriculum
regarding the nation’s government and the general relationship that people have
toward that governmental structure – both at the national and at the state
levels.
They further ask about the desirable projection
of how Americans should perceive the future – what would be ideal in the years
to come. Finally, any further questions
inquire into the practical concerns of bringing desired ends into reality. The subsidiary questions can be:
1. How has the construct guiding the teaching of
American government and civics evolved?
2. What have been the salient consequences of that
development?
3. To what social arrangement should the
development of a construct lead?
4. How can a desirable social arrangement come
about?
Through a description of the historical development of the effects of the
two opposing perspectives, a clear comparison can and will be made.
By critically analyzing that development, this
blog has – from time to time – designated the strengths and weaknesses of each
perspective and has given a sense of the causal factors that led to the
adoption and/or rejection of each as either the dominant or subordinate view. A major implication of this blog is that once
in that dominant position, many political acts ensue from that status.
To study that development, of course, certain assumptions
need to be made – all studies make assumptions.
The above main and subsidiary questions assume that government and
civics courses at the secondary level in American schools promote good
citizenship. This blog has been written
under the assumed commitment – to whatever level – that civics’ curriculum
content in the areas of government and politics can and should be part of a
general socialization pattern whose ultimate goal is healthy, productive, and
moral citizens.
While the definition of the term good
citizenship has not been consistent in the literature of social studies, its
general meaning has been included as central to the professional goals of that
field since its inception in the early part of the 20th century.[1] And this is not unique to the US:
Since
the birth of western civilization, education, especially instruction in what is
today called history and social studies, has been to foster habits of good
citizenship. According to Aristotle,
“that which contributes most of the permanence of constitutions is the
adaptation of education to the form of government. The best laws will be of no avail unless the
young are trained by habit and example in the spirit of the constitution.”[2]
The assumption is that this predisposition will
continue to be adhered to in our school systems.
Along
with this assumption, the argument made in this blog also has limitations. The effort is meant to encourage a
pedagogical debate and pose a set of questions that are relevant to such a
proposed change. An area of such
questions, for example, could include whether students in an era of natural
rights philosophy can be shown that such a perspective is seriously
dysfunctional to the preservation of democratic ideals and practices.
This blogger is not totally surprised with all
the talk about how this nation’s democracy is presently in danger. The natural rights perspective is so
pervasive that in the minds of Americans – or at least many of them – that that
view has become synonymous with democracy and capitalism. Again, from the late 1990s, the late
prominent economist, Lester C. Thurow, provided a warning:
Unfortunately,
neither capitalism nor democracy is a unifying ideology. Both are process ideologies that assert that
if one follows the recommended process, one will be better off than if one does
not. They have no “common good,” no
common goals, toward which everyone is collectively working. Both stress the individual and not the group
… Neither imposes an obligation to worry about the welfare of the other
[workers or businesses].
When anyone talks about societies
being organic, wholes, something more than the statistical summation of their
individual members’ wants and achievements, both capitalists and democrats
assert that there is no such thing. In
both, individual freedom dominates community obligations. All political or economic transactions are
voluntary. If an individual does not
want to vote, or buy something, that is his or her right. If citizens want to be greedy and vote for
their narrow self-interest at the expense of others, that is their right. In the most rigorous expression of
capitalistic ethics, crime is simply another economic activity that happens to
have a high price (jail) if one is caught.
There is no social obligation to obey the law. There is nothing that one “ought” not to do. Duties and obligations do not exist. Only market transactions exist.[3]
While such an expression might be true for pure
capitalism, it totally ignores the federalist origins and foundation of American
democracy.[4] The hope is that a federalist view, if
presented in a manner relevant to current conditions, can capture a reasonable
level of legitimacy, if not commitment, among today’s school aged youth.
This
blog targets civics, but what is stated above extends to all of social studies
and to how schools are organized.
Communal concerns should be a central component of any social study and,
historically, federalism is about how Americans define communal approaches.[5] Federalism “suggests that self-government
works best when sovereignty is dispersed and citizenship formed across multiple
sites of civic engagement. This aspect
of federalism informs the pluralist version of republican politics.”[6]
In
like manner, the federalist perspective has implications for the running of
schools. All of these proposed areas of
concerns can be subsequent topics of research – either using an analytical or a
positivist approach – stemming from the topics that this blog entertains. For example, one such approach could employ a
dialectic analysis in which a researcher can visualize the overarching struggles
dotting American history.
This blog will in future postings pursue this
approach, but before it does, a bit more context needs to be shared in the
immediate postings to follow. That means some general historical staging needs
to take place before one is ready to appreciate how and why a particular form
of governance took hold.
[Reminder:
The reader is reminded that he/she can have access to the first 100 postings
of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:
The Blog Book, Volume I. To
gain access, he/she can click the following URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit or click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader
access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this
blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then look up the posting for
October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]
[1] This blogger as a teacher and researcher of social
studies can vouch that central not only to civics but to all social studies,
the main goal is good citizenship. But
to buttress that assumption, see the recent source, respected Twitter-or,
Jeanne DeJong’s Transylvanian Times article on the subject. Jeanne DeJong, “Social Studies: Developing Good Citizens,” Transylvanian
Times (June 17, 2013), accessed December 1, 2021, https://www.transylvaniatimes.com/story/2013/06/17/education/social-studies-developing-good-citizens/13592.html AND Michael B. Lybarger, “The Historiography of
Social Studies: Retrospect, Circumspect, and Prospect,” in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, ed. James
P. Shaver (New York, NY: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 3-15.
[2]
Lybarger, “The Historiography of Social Studies,
in Handbook of Research on Social Studies
Teaching and Learning, 3.
[3]
Lester C. Thurow, Head to Head: The
Coming Battle among Japan, Europe, and America (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc.), 159.
[4] The reference here is to the covenantal/compact-al
origins of the American republic emanating from the Puritanical settlements
throughout the colonial areas but centering in the Massachusetts of New
England.
[5] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the
Constitution? Thoroughly!” In a booklet
of readings, Readings for Classes Taught
by Professor Elazar (1994),
prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. Conducted in
Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1-30.
[6] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy
(Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1996), 347.
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