An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …
Continuing this blog’s review of the “student” as “commonplace” of
curricular development, this posting targets the social interests of students.
Social Student Interest
The social demands of the adolescent years are
well documented. Again, this blogger’s
upcoming book[2] will feature the
challenges of adolescence and many of those challenges relate to social
relationships. Ian Robertson reviews
these demands in his introductory textbook back in 1977.[3]
He describes adolescents who are physically
able to take on the activities of the adult world in industrial societies but
must put off these activities until they finish their extended educational
requirements. This state of affairs
leads to a confused period of life in which rules are often ambiguous.
Robertson writes:
The
American socialization process equips people poorly for the challenges of
adolescence, for teenagers are constantly confronted with contradictory demands
and pressures. The media, for example,
extol the virtues of sexual satisfaction and the value of material goods, but
adolescents are usually forbidden full access to both, even though they have
the physical maturity to achieve them.
Having more freedom than children but less than adults, adolescents are
constantly tempted to question or test the authority of parents and
teachers. Segregated from other age
groups in high school, they tend to form their own subculture, with norms,
values, and attitudes that may differ significantly from those of the society
that surrounds them.[4]
This quote is highlighted since it, early on, indicates the development
of a youth culture that has in the ensuing years gained more and more academic
interest. That literature has brought a
good deal of attention to how a distinct youth culture has proven to be an incubating
atmosphere for anti-social traits such as excessive narcissism and detrimental
self-absorption.[5]
As this blog has reported, this subculture has
been described as often being antisocial and significantly dysfunctional to the
well-being of the general communities (with ramifications at the national
level) as well as to the adolescents themselves. For example, there is the research of Robert
Putnam.[6] He points out that most Americans are simply
not being instructed, especially during adolescence, as to socioeconomic
realities of the nation.
He uses the mental image of two kids who live a
few miles apart, one being brought up in an advantaged family, the other in a
disadvantaged situation – one can’t even use the term “family” to describe this
disadvantaged home setting. Despite
their proximity to each other, there is little or no chance they will ever have
any contact.
This is desperately different from the social
world where Putnam grew up in the 1950s.
In that earlier world, his high school had kids from differing social
and economic classes. The level of
interaction among the differing segments of the student body was healthy and
often. This is not so true today and the
level of interaction is becoming more and more infrequent.
For one thing, poorer kids are stuck in
dysfunctional schools while wealthier kids are more apt to attend private
schools. The “indivisibility” of the
nation’s schools is becoming a memory. The nation needs to address this development
by, in part, having its economic metrics account for the social cost factors
that result from segregation.
One way it can begin to address this growing
dysfunction is by changing what is taught in civics classes: they can include lessons about how the
original values and ideals of the American constitutional tradition – its
federalist foundation – have been shunted and point out how what is prevalent –
the natural rights perspective – has promoted antisocial attitudes and beliefs.
But beyond adolescent social views, there seems
to exist a pervasive problem of individuals misunderstanding or led to hold misgivings
about social institutions in general.
Robert Bellah, et al., report:
Individualistic
Americans fear that institutions impinge on their freedom. In the case of the handshake this impingement
may give rise only to a very occasional qualm.
More powerful institutions seem more directly to threaten our
freedom. For just this reason, the
classical liberal view held that institutions ought to be as a possible neutral
mechanism for individuals to use to attain their separate ends – a view so
persuasive that most Americans take it for granted, sharing with liberalism the
fear that institutions that are not properly limited and neutral may be
oppressive. This belief leads us to
think of institutions as efficient or inefficient mechanisms … that we learn to
use for our own purposes, or as malevolent “bureaucracies” that may crunch us
under their impersonal wheels. It is not
that either of these beliefs is wholly mistaken. In modern society we do indeed need to learn
how to manipulate institutions … Yet if this is our only conception of
institutions, we have a very impoverished idea of our common life, an idea that
cannot effectively help us with our problems but only worsens them.[7]
And this view is not lost on the young – it becomes part of the assumed world
view that youngsters inherit.
Institutions are patterns
of behavior within societies which have a normative quality. Usually, institutions are associated with
organizations to the point that they are often confused with them. These elements can combine to give youths the
impression that it is organizations, such as schools, corporations, marriages,
or families that are the oppressors, where the problem really lies in the norms
of a particular institution.
The faulty perception convinces many
adults, as well as youths, that the solution to perceived oppressions is to just
abandon one organization – e.g., drop out of school – for a more promising,
liberated one. Often, job-hopping or divorce
can be seen in this light. Of course,
this oftentimes reflects or falls conducive to a natural rights view.
The more fundamentally functional perception,
one that needs to be socialized to each generation, is to create and re-create
a society’s institutional arrangements by working on them directly, as opposed
to running away from them.[8] And while parents are the chief agents
situated to do so, schools, especially through their social studies programs,
have an essential role.
The individualistic mode characterizes
the nation’s cultural bent.
This
loss of community [due to excessive individualism] has serious
implications. More specifically, the
erosion of social capital – a natural byproduct of communities – has serious
implications.[9]
Cheyenne Polimedio
goes on to point out that this erosion of social capital has brought the
viability of America’s oldest organizations such as political parties,
organized religions, and other community groups, into question. That
is, it undermines the functional role of institutions.
Institutions not only constrain behavior, but
they also enable one by assisting in the understanding of who one is and who
others are as collectively, a people seek a decent society. But by elevating the virtue of independence
as the sole good, advocates of natural rights have become blind to the role
institutions play in supporting the eventuality of autonomy in this nation’s
society.
Bellah, et al. add, “autonomy, valuable as it
is in itself, is only one virtue among others and that without such virtues as
responsibility and care, which can be exercised only through institutions,
autonomy itself becomes … an empty form without substance.”[10] A parochial federalist construct, as a
guiding view, serves as a more communal, less individualistic approach. Therefore, it should serve to guide a civics
curriculum.
The next posting will
begin by reviewing some of the implications of these social aspects have on the
national social health and then move on to the student’s economic interests
which were alluded to above.
[1] This presentation begins with the posting, “A Parochial Subject Matter” (March 11, 2022). The reader is reminded that the claims made
in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this
blogger. Instead, the posting is a
representation of what an advocate of parochial federalism might
present. This is done to present a
dialectic position of that construct.
[2] This book is still in manuscript form. When ready, this blog will announce its
availability.
[3] Ian Robertson, Sociology (New York, NY: Worth Publishing, Inc., 1977).
[4] Ibid., 134.
[5] For example, Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age
of Entitlement (New York, NY: Free
Press, 2009).
[6]
Robert D. Putnam, Our Kids: The American Dream in
Crisis (New York, NY: Simon and
Schuster, 2015).
[7]
Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M.
Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York,
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 10.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Cheyenne Polimedio, “Our Focus-Like Focus on Individualism
Is Destroying Our Communities,” New America (October 4, 2018), accessed May
1, 2022,
https://www.newamerica.org/weekly/our-laser-focus-individualism-destroying-our-communities/
AND for added thoughts, see Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996).
[10]
Bellah, et al., The Good Society, 12.
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