JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, XIX

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

In line with this positive presentation of the natural rights view, this posting looks at the political interests of students.  That is in line with this blog’s review of the commonplace of curriculum development (a la Joseph Schwab’s thinking[2]) of the learner and how it fits the aims of civics education.  Again, the learner is but one of the commonplaces; the others are the subject matter, teachers, and milieu.

Political Student Interests

Naturally, what this blog has presented under the commonplace, the student, in previous postings alludes to the political interests of students.  Three areas of interest that relate to instruction and would be of particular benefit to students’ political interests are: 

 

1.    instruction that highlights the political systems model’s value of liberty as expressed by the recognized rights accorded – or belonging to – Americans,

2.    instruction describing and explaining the processes of the nation’s political system, and

3.    instruction reviewing the structural elements of that system.

 

After readers consider these three aims, they might be tempted to also consider the resulting course of study in American government or civics as being similar to a user’s manual.  Why?  Because such aims are directed at dispensing the practical information of governmental institutions from which students can derive useful descriptions and explanations.  Such a course will empower young students with a clear understanding of the rights they and other participating citizens have in working the system.

     Along with these elements, students also deserve further realistic descriptions and explanations about how competitive the system is.  In that line of thinking, readers might ask:  how do these elements fit the essentialist demands for education?  To answer that question, readers are helped by considering a historical character.  That would be Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the US nuclear naval submarine, who was an outspoken promotor of essentialist thinking. 

He also became involved in and was an influential contributor to American educational policy.  Gerald Gutek,[3] toward the last years of Rickover’s life, provided a historical account of the admiral’s contribution.  That account summarizes Rickover’s recommendations for schools as they carry out their important mandates.  These recommendations are:

 

·      Commitment to a liberal education, emphasizing a knowledge base which would be employed to train young people to think and solve problems

·      Multiple tracks so that students can be placed in classroom settings suitable to their academic ability

·      National standards

·      Concentration on academic education for the talented students

·      Preparation for the technological society of a modern economic nation for the average and below average students

 

These essentialist conditions would – so his view holds – lead to serious attempts to prepare young people for the realities of the American political system.

          The natural rights perspective, as defined earlier in this blog (especially when it reviewed the work of Robert Gagne), provides a paradigm of curriculum that is flexible for different levels of sophistication.  But Rickover goes a bit further in that he supports tracking, and a highly (what essentialists are apt to believe) realistic view of political life in American society.  The result is to limit the opportunities of the youngsters in their preparation that would allow them to maximize the political opportunities that exist and, therefore, the main essentialist thought today sides with Gagne.

          But overall, essentialists argue that without this sort of approach or concern, they decry that such indifference to student abilities has led to school conditions characterized by a decline in academic standards, a decline in respect for authority, particularly of teachers, immoral behavior and ethics with a corresponding increase in violence, delinquency, and deterioration of civic values.[4]

          To state the obvious, these are not appropriate conditions for preparing young people to be successful in the competitive world they currently face or will face as adults.  As such, a less than meaningful implementation of the prescribed approach is leading to the incivility and insufficient levels of social capital Robert Putman laments.[5]  And that leads to the next posting which focuses on students’ pedagogic interests.

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[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed 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 the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.  [Note:  This blog, in the postings entitled “Judging the Natural Rights View, I-XVI, started with “An advocate of parochial federalism continues his/her presentation …”  It should have read “An advocate of natural rights …”  Please excuse the mistake.  The archived record has been corrected.]

[2] See William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] Gerald L. Gutek, Basic Education:  A Historical Perspective (Bloomington, IN:  Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1981).

[4] Ibid.  This blog has provided a good deal of cited sources that support these unfortunate conditions.

[5] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).  Social capital is defined as a societal environment as having active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.