An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation[1] …
Student Culture (cont.)
This posting ends this blog’s presentation of a
parochial federalist advocate’s defense of that construct. In doing so, what follows are the final
thoughts regarding the commonplace of curriculum development, the milieu, and
its element of a student culture. To
this point, this blog has made an attempt to deal with meaningful increases in
diversification that led to fewer supervisory roles and, with that, less
demanding curricular content.
Schools also lost a good
deal of cultural vitality and consequently, the youth generation, especially in
the 1960s, found its vitality. Since
that time, youth’s cultural elements such as music, clothes, hair styles, and
attitudes have become more distinctive and antagonistic to traditional, adult
values. Under the auspices of the
natural rights perspectives, the younger generation was given more rights that
were never before deemed appropriate for that age group.
Schools lost their
traditional role of loco parentis in which students were expected to
fulfill duties and responsibilities and teachers and other school officials had
near parental authority to see that they would be carried out. Instead, the emphasis was on granting more
student rights, at times upon the insistence of court decisions.[2]
The youth culture in
schools can be described as less supportive of school functions and authority,
less supportive of disciplined attitudes in which students are solicited to do
their best, and less apt to be intimidated by rules and sanctions which schools
have at their disposal. Along with this,
youth culture at schools has become less supportive of school ceremonies and
rituals which not only encourage school allegiance but community inclusion.
“Increasingly schools
became simply spaces to which one went, more or less willingly to work, rather
than communities for which they felt loyalty and affection,”[3]
was a sentiment expressed toward the end of the twentieth century. More recent research finds repeatedly that
such factors as school spirit – a communal aspect experienced on secondary
school sites – correlates with high academic performance.[4] A study funded by Varsity Brands concludes,
Students with higher levels of school spirit
perform better academically, are more civically engaged, and are happier in
general than their less-spirited peers … This online research was conducted by
Harris Poll … this past spring among 1,016 high school students, 315 parents of
high school students and 150 high school principals across the United States to
learn more about school pride, academics, self-esteem, community involvement
and more.
The research found
that students with higher levels of school spirit also have higher average
Grade Point Averages and are more likely to plan to further their education
than students with lower school spirit. Additionally, the large majority of
principals (89%) feel that it’s important to build school spirit at their
school and four in five (80%) agree that school spirit is a key measure of an
effective school administration. Parents who say their child has a lot of
school spirit are more likely than parents who don’t to report that their child
performs above average in school academically compared to other students (61%
vs. 31%).[5]
But this study or
other efforts find little evidence that that spirit is relatively high in
occurrence in today’s campuses. Instead,
one finds a mixed bag of findings as to how well schools are doing. This reflects unclear expectations on the
part of the American public as to what they want their schools to accomplish.
Goals stretch from preparing the next
generation for the work-a-day world to easing or “fixing” an array of social
ills such as race relations, crime, language deficiencies, and other perceived
cultural shortcomings. This has led to
what seemed to be the consensus that American schools were not meeting
reasonable levels of proficiency.
Books, not so long ago, lamented the state of American
education. They included No Child
Left Behind (2008) by William Hayes and The Death and Life of the Great
American School Life (2010) by Diane Ravitch. From personal experience as a classroom
teacher for twenty-five years (last one in 2000), in terms of accomplishing
curricular aims and goals, American schools have much room to improve. This blog has repeatedly reported that
schools are not doing a good job regarding civics, a conclusion readily
supported by any review of how well Americans are doing in terms of
self-governance and the prevalence of the polarized political landscape the
polity is experiencing.
Whatever one’s position on how well schools are doing, an
advocate of parochial/traditional federalism would support the idea that steps
should be taken to reintroduce and advance a higher rate of engagement by
parents and citizens, in general, as to how well their local schools are doing
and what they, the schools, should be about.
That would be a federalist response to what prevails today.
This engagement would aim at helping to define what their local
school(s) stands for and that that should reflect the culture of those local
communities. Given the cultural roles
schools play, each one should not be a “cookie-cutter” rendition of some
idealized image of what it should be, but a human location that reflects the students
who attend it.
Included should be the personalities of those schools’ student
bodies whether they be urban, rural, or suburban communities, whether they be Anglo,
African American, Hispanic, Asian or any other cultural designation they might
be. And the student body, to levels that
reasonably reflect the maturity levels of those students, should be involved in
determining that “personality.” It would
be a matter of going beyond the day-to-day concerns facing those schools and
graduate to developing, defining, and promoting an articulated mission for each
of them.
And the assumption here is that that can even be accomplished in
diversely populated schools.
Parochialism need not necessarily be defined by race, ethnicity,
or nationality. This is not an either/or
issue. It can also be defined in a way
that enhances diversity as long as one puts in place a priority on individual
integrity. A commitment to bring diverse
groups under a federalist formula in which individual integrities of students
are respected, but in which they are encouraged to be committed to republican, communal
values can be the source of a strong emotional attachment.
Authority based on such a commitment can engender support
because it is a common bond that once established, could provide a sense of
liberty that is enriching and not shallow and self-absorbing. The more communal message of the traditional
federalist perspective provides a more human face to education.
To follow what is prevalent, maintaining a bureaucratic leaning location
in which schools are more concerned with “downtown’s” policies than addressing the
human concerns before them, those schools’ personnel will continue to make them
officious places. That is, they will be
“… like a commuter junior college, offering choice and diversity and exercising
fewer controls over school behavior, but unable to stimulate any but the most
modest sentiments of commitment, community, and shared purposes.”[6]
A place to start a shift toward a more communal and shared
milieu could be to adopt a parochial/traditional federalist construct in the
teaching and the studying of American government and civics. No course in the secondary curriculum more
closely would address the above concerns than would civics and government
courses. And with that parting
sentiment, the next point of interest in this blog is a critique of a parochial/traditional
federalist construct.
[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] The argument here is not that these decisions were
all mal directed. But the overall effect
has been to curtail school official authority at the school site. See, for example, New Jersey v. TLO (1985),
United States v. Lopez (1995), and Mahanoy Area School District v. B.
L. (2021). To illustrate, in terms
of the Mahanoy case, see Sophia Cope and Naomi Gilens, “U.S. Supreme Court
Upholds Public School Students’ Off-Campus Speech Rights” (September 30, 2021),
accessed July 5, 2022, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/09/us-supreme-court-upholds-public-school-students-campus-speech-rights.
[3] Christopher Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of
Schooling: An Introduction to the
Sociology of Education (Boston, MA:
Allyn and Bacon, 1993), 285.
[4] See, for example, “Survey Shows with School Spirit
Are Top Achievers,” National Federation of State High School Associations
(February 5, 2015), accessed July 3, 2022, https://www.nfhs.org/articles/survey-shows-students-with-school-spirit-are-top-achievers/#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20showing%20support,than%20their%20less%2Dspirited%20peers.
[5] “Research Connects School Spirit and Student
Achievement,” Varsity Brands (September 3, 2014), accessed July 3. 2022, https://www.varsitybrands.com/varsity-brands/research-by-varsity-brands-identifies-connection-between-school-spirit-and-student-achievement-involvement-and-confidence.
[6]
Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of
Schooling, 291.
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