Friday, April 12, 2024

INSTRUCTIONAL CONCERNS FOR CONSUMER GOVERNMENT

 

Since the posting, “A Practical Turn” (March 19, 2024),[1] this blog has been promoting the adoption of a consumer government approach to civics education.  The aim of such a change would be to begin the focus of civics from a structural/national view to a more local/engaged view. 

What is in place is a highly individualistic sense to politics and while the change would not counter that sense, it would help shift students’ attention to the concerns of their local communities.  In doing so, civics would undermine the natural rights view and encourage students toward a federated view.  Readers, if they have not done so, are encouraged to use the archive feature of this blog to review those postings.  That would be the postings that develop a rational for this curricular change.

This posting will further comment on the goals and objectives the last posting, “Goals and Objectives for Consumer Government” (April 9, 2024),[2] presented.  It begins by suggesting that school site planning of this proposed curricular change should strive to adopt a resulting course of study that highlights local problems or how statewide, national, or global problems affect local realities.

Such adaptation needs to be done carefully weighing the constraints of the classroom and relevancy of the materials adopted.  Text materials need to be edited to reflect this newer approach (not a simple task), and they would provide a pre-determined set of governmental/political problems.  While it is expected some of these identified problems will be applicable to local conditions throughout the US, others will not.  Naturally, appropriate deletions, changes, and additions should be considered by implementing staff.

To further the “local” effect, where possible, an added goal to this curriculum at the instructional level would be to learn from real life situations or what are known as field experiences.  That is, students are called upon, where appropriate, to actively participate in political activities relevant to a problem or issue under study.  This instruction should be considered or planned as local needs and concerns dictate.

The lesson objectives as presented in the last posting might seem repetitive since one basic decision-making model is being employed.  It should be kept in mind that what has been presented is an initial proposal, admittedly needing further development.  Variety of learning objectives, though, is highly encouraged when planning the cognitive input segments.  Depending on the nature of the individual problems considered, students will need reliable knowledge to make rational decisions based on actual conditions.

          The lesson objectives should reflect the different types of knowledge presented.  For example, it is strongly suggested that objectives emphasize the development of process skills associated with inquiry.  Particularly in problems where there are controversial decisions to be made, then predictive assertions, anticipating the likelihood of consequences, can be investigated through student inquiry that aim at discovering cause and effect relationships.

          These instructional objectives will target the teaching of transferable skills, make disciplinary information functional, and add to the overall open-endedness of real decision-making processes.  And in lessons where controversial decisions are to be made, they further highlight the value component of the lesson.  In that, the lesson plans should first develop affective domain objective – those objectives regarding students’ value positions.

          And finally, cognitive material – those elements regarding factual content – will rely heavily on political science discipline but will not be exclusive to that source.  Other social sciences and respected research sources should be employed for relevant, reliable information.  This might be also useful in discrediting disinformation one can readily find on social media.  All this suggests certain teaching strategies, which is the topic of the next posting.

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