JUDGING PAROCHIAL FEDERALISM, XXI

 

An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …

Milieu

Earlier, this blog offered four commonplaces of curriculum development.  These commonplaces are the brainchild of William Schubert, and they include the subject matter, teachers, learners or students, and milieu.  It is now time to address the milieu.  It is defined as the general social environment of the classroom and the school site.  For the purposes of this account, the milieu is seen as being affected by the following factors:  the expectations of the school, the youth culture found at the school site, and the socio-economic status base of the school.

          The literature on this topic generally describes how important the social environment is in assisting and assuring positive results in learning and in the socialization of young people.  For example, one finds the following as typical:

 

Students of all ages need social support to experience academic success, but adolescents are especially in need of direction. Because so much of a student's day is spent at school, middle schoolers use this as a venue in which to figure out who they are outside of their family relationships. When students of any age avail themselves of positive peer relationships in an academic setting, such as peer tutoring programs, they can experience academic success.[2]

 

As for the listed factors above (expectation, culture, and socio-economic status), Christopher Hurn, at least as long ago as 1993, places a great deal of emphasis on them as he describes the sociological make-up of today’s schools in America.[3]

          Of course, discussion of social factors in the United States, be it in schools or any other institutions, must take into account the diversity of the nation’s social settings:

Every modern society, and the United States more than others, is a divided society, with different conceptions of the ideal man or woman, the heroes that should be emulated, and the values we should strive to realize in our lives.  Furthermore, most of these differences are related to the ethnic, class, religious, or regional differences between groups.[4]

 

If anything, in the ensuing years, this characterization has become more so.[5]  While this posting cannot be of particular focus on every group and class, the points made will hopefully be sensitive to the vast social array this diversity creates.

          Specifically, this and following postings will provide answers to the following questions:

 

·      How do current expectations of schools affect the implementation of a parochial/traditional federalist construct?

·      How does the socio-economic status of a school affect the implementation of a parochial/traditional federalist construct? 

·      How does the youth culture of a school affect the implementation of a parochial/traditional federalist construct?

Expectations of Schools

          Hurn argues that the milieu of a school and classroom is affected by the expectations that the general society has of that school.[6]  In more recent research, for example, it provides evidence that parental expectations, highly influenced by other cultural factors, do affect how well students perform academically.[7]  Perhaps the oldest of these recognized expectations is that schools, or whatever educational institutions exist, are responsible to transfer the cultural heritage of a particular society.

          Generally, that literature begins a description by offering a definition.  That is for “socialization” being the process of transmitting cultural knowledge, including myths, values, ideals, and skills.  Schools have a role; they are responsible for socializing the youth of a society to those elements of the culture sufficiently important and complex that they require formal instruction and a deliberate effort.

          Industrial and post-industrial societies make enormous efforts to transmit, through overt means such as formal curricula, materials, textbooks, and the like, and through subtle means such as through organization of schools, appearance of school buildings, arrangements of chairs, organization of school schedules, staff behavior or lack of behavior, etc. to meet this aim. 

These latter methods, called the hidden curriculum, are at times far more effective than the formal curriculum.  Chiefly, and of long-lasting effect, they assist in forming the assumptions students hold in their educational efforts and later, the beliefs they bring into their employment experiences.[8]

          Roughly beginning in the 1980s through today, people have increasingly questioned the effectiveness of schools in preparing the younger generation for the demands of the economy.  Through the years of the current century, more than fifty percent of the American population is dissatisfied with how their schools are preparing the youth for the realities of that economy.[9] 

Of course, currently, these sentiments are being affected by the COVID experience when many young people stayed home for their schooling – which apparently has caused a newfound appreciation for what schools usually do.[10]  But this will probably pass as the pandemic fades in the common memory. 

In any event, official policy has so prized education that these modern societies, as just alluded to, have invested heavily in mass education and, for the most part, have made schooling compulsory.  So, a controversy has been generated as schools were perceived as mediocre; they have been looked upon as not being  successful in imparting basic literacy and math skills.  While this general judgment has softened, one can basically see that only about half the population holds positive judgments as to their efficacy.

Here's a summary about how they feel:

 

Gallup’s annual update of how Americans feel about the quality of primary and secondary education in the U.S. finds the public relatively upbeat this year [2019]. For the first time since 2004, a slim majority of U.S. adults, 51%, are satisfied with the overall quality of education that students in kindergarten through grade 12 receive. This is up from 43% in 2018 and an average 45% since 2005.[11]

 

And a lot of that past dissatisfaction judged schools graduating youngsters who had not mastered the fundamental skills that the parents considered essential given the demands of a modern economy.  Adding to this, many parents could not come to terms with permitting students free choice among a vast array of undemanding courses.

          What seems significant to the dialectic argument being presented in this blog is whether a parochial/traditional federalist construct can be amenable to general expectations held by all or some of the socio-economic classes or are expectations of career or job preparation so strong as to drown out all other concerns that parochial federalism addresses.

For more on the effect of socio-economic class, it will be further developed in an upcoming posting.  More specifically, this report on how schools are doing in preparing youngsters for the needs of society will be continued in the next posting.  Yet, from what this posting reports, one can detect concern as to whether schools are doing a sufficiently good job, and there are good reasons for that uncertainty given the upheaval of the pandemic, school shootings, a rapidly changing economy, and the effects they have had on people’s perceptions of how well schools are doing.

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[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] Ashly Garris, “The Effects of School Environments on Student Success,” Classroom (September 26, 2017), accessed June 8, 2022, https://classroom.synonym.com/identify-positive-school-climate-18044.html .

[3] Christopher Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of Schooling:  An Introduction to the Sociology of Education (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 1993).

[4] Ibid., 6.  This concern can be traced all the way back to the origin of the nation where James Madison wrote of an “extended republic” which in part referred to America’s diverse population – at that time, mostly from the various Western European nations.

[5] Eric Jensen, Nicholas Jones, Megan Rabe, Beverly Pratt, Lauren Medina, Kimberly Orozo, and Lindsay Spell, “The Chance that Two People Chosen at Random Are of Different Race or Ethnicity Groups Has Increased Since 2010,” United States Census Bureau (August 12, 2021), accessed June 8, 2022, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/2020-united-states-population-more-racially-ethnically-diverse-than-2010.html .

[6] Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of Schooling.

[7] Ian Robertson, Sociology:  A Brief Introduction (New York, NY:  Worth Publishing, Inc., 1987).

[8] For example, “The Hidden Curriculum and School Ethos,” Revise Sociology (n.d.), accessed June 8, 2022, https://revisesociology.com/tag/hidden-curriculum/ .

[9] Rebecca Riffkin, “America’s Satisfaction with Education System Increases,” Gallup (August 28, 2014), accessed June 8, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/175517/americans-satisfaction-education-system-increases.aspx.

[10] Emilian Vagas and Rebecca Winthrop, “Beyond Reopening Schools:  How Education Can Emerge Stronger than before COVID-19,” Brookings (September 8, 2020), accessed June 8, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/research/beyond-reopening-schools-how-education-can-emerge-stronger-than-before-covid-19/ .

[11] Lydia Saad, “Americans’ Satisfaction with U.S. Education at 15-Year High,” Gallup (August 29, 2019), accessed June 8, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/266063/americans-satisfaction-education-year-high.aspx .  Again, the COVID effect might be influencing this uptick in satisfaction.