An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …
As this blog makes its way through the natural rights view, currently
reporting on its influence on civics education, the blog turns to the next aspect,
schools’ sociological-economic bases.
This aspect is part of the commonplace of curriculum development, the
milieu of school settings. The notion of
commonplaces is the product of Joseph Schwab.[2]
If one keeps in mind that
the main benefits of following a natural rights perspective in the teaching of
American government and civics is that one, students are made aware of their
rights and, two, they are presented with a realistic view of the nation’s
political system, certain advantages can be realized. Such educating leads students to viably, as
adults, compete in the political fray.
As such, its use can be a positive force in the nation’s quest for
equity.
But the reality is that
there are hitches with this quest. Here
is how a financial writer sees the state of variance among the various state
systems in the US:
For
the majority of U.S. families, public education is the only option. But the quality of public school systems
varies widely from state to state and is often a question of funding. Public elementary and secondary education
money usually flows from three sources:
the federal, state and local government.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, states contribute nearly
as much as local governments, while the federal government supplies the
smallest share. Some researchers have
found that more resources – or taxes paid by residents – typically result in
better school-system performance.[3]
And this concern is not new. Here
is what David Berliner and Bruce Biddle reported in 1995:
Some
Americans like to pretend that public education in this country is of one piece
and that it provides equal opportunities for all … And yet, huge differences
persist in the levels of support given to public schools in this country –
differences that are far greater than those found in other advanced countries. Funding levels are also closely tied to
community affluence, which means that America’s wealthy suburbs have some of
the world’s best schools, while appallingly bad schools appear in our urban ghettos. Thus, instead of funding an educational system
that provides equal opportunity[,] America operates a system of public education
that discriminates against poor students because the schools they attend are
badly underfunded.[4]
With the instruction of these realities to American students, which
would be derived from an honest implementation of the natural rights
perspective, certain results are possible.
That is, students who are from lower income environments can come to
understand the politics that lead to their schools losing the “public education
funding race.”
The conditions of poorer
schools are deteriorating and even an equalization of funding, at this time,
will not lead to equal conditions. While
well-funded schools enjoy attractive and well-apportioned physical facilities
with well trained teachers, small classes, and students who are being brought
up in supportive environments, schools in the poorer areas of the nation
exhibit quite different circumstances.
These latter schools are often squalid, crowded, and riddled with crime
and violence.
Teachers in these schools
are continually looking to find a way out of them as they have to deal with
inordinate numbers of students who are impoverished and “at risk.”[5] Equal funding would only stop the gap from
further widening. For true equality,
huge investments in these poorer areas need to be spent in order for these
schools to catch up. And central to this
problem area has been the reliance on property taxes to fund schools.
An American University
online site addresses this source of inequality. It reports the following:
The financing systems
of public schools in the US ensure that community wealth disparities carry over
into education. By relying largely on property taxes to fund schools, which can
vary widely between wealthy and poor areas, districts create funding gaps from
the word go. Affluent areas end up with well-funded schools and low-income
areas end up with poorly funded schools. District sizes also distort funding
levels. Predominantly white districts are typically smaller, yet still receive
23 billion more than districts that are predominantly students of color, according to a recent
EdBuild study. This results from the tendency to draw district lines around
small affluent islands of well-funded schools within larger poorer areas that
serve mostly students of color.[6]
While teaching the
natural rights perspective will not in itself do much to ameliorate the
depressing conditions of the poorer schools, its message, if responsibly
conveyed and heeded, is a positive one that can at least provide the
information that could lead to understanding and, hopefully, to viable
political effort by those so afflicted by the inequitable realities of poverty
in America.
In conjunction with other
efforts, the use of the natural rights perspective could have a large positive
impact on the conditions facing the nation’s poorer schools. And this one factor – the economic inequality
one finds among America’s school populations – proves to be a structurally
imbedded factor that hinders those school systems in attaining their full
potential. And with that note, this blog
will turn next to youth culture as the last topic this “judgment” of the
natural rights influence on American education addresses.
[Note: As regular and ongoing readers of this blog
might know, this blogger takes a break every four hundred postings. He did so after 400, 800, and now will do so
after 1200 postings. As of his counting,
this posting is number 1199. That leaves
one more posting before the next break.
He anticipates the break will last at least two months, maybe
three. He has other projects, e.g.,
finishing his preparation of the re-edited collection of the blog’s second
hundred postings. He looks forward to the
break and of getting back from it to resume producing this blog’s postings.]
[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.
[2] Joseph Schwab presents his conception of the
commonplaces of curriculum development – they are subject matter, students, teachers, and milieu. See William
H. Schubert, Curriculum: Perspective,
Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:
MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).
[3] Adam McCann, “States with the Best & Worst School
Systems,” WalletHub (July 25, 2022), accessed October 26, 2022, https://wallethub.com/edu/e/states-with-the-best-schools/5335.
[4] David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, The
Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and
the Attack on America’s Public Schools (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Company, Inc., 1995), 264.
[5] Ibid.
[6] “Inequality in Public School Funding: Key Issues & Solutions for Closing the
Gap,” American University/School of Education (September 10, 2020), accessed
October 26, 2022, https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/inequality-in-public-school-funding.
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