SAY AH AT A PRICE

From time to time, I get political material in the mail. The common theme of all this correspondence is a solicitation for money. A recent letter from Public Citizen, a lobbying group, begins this way:

Dear Friend,

The world is now divided in two.

Countries that cover all of their citizens with health insurance. And those that don't.

Countries that make it unlawful to profit off of basic health insurance. And those that allow for health insurance corporations to profit off the sick.

Countries where health care is a human right. And those where it is not. Where if you can afford it, you get treated. And if you can't afford it you may die.

Pay or die.

The letter goes on to state that 120 people in America die every day for lack of health insurance and that our current health system costs us $350 billion more than it would if we didn't support a system that pays that amount to the insurance industry for basically needless services – services that can be provided by government. This group is promoting a “single-payer” system or, using language most people can understand, Medicare for everyone. My purpose here is not to seek your approval of such a program, but to point out that if I were a teacher now-a-days I would make copies of this letter and distribute it to my students.

Again, not to convince them to support Medicare for all, but to present a concept: health care as a “human right.” Is it? If so, what does that mean? Is it a natural right, such as liberty, or is it a civil right; that is, a right that is “created” by human society, such as the right to social security retirement benefits. I have my opinion regarding Medicare for all, but my job as a social studies teacher was to have students become aware of the debate, have them research it, analyze the opposing positions regarding it, and have them come up with their own position of whether or not this policy option should be adopted by the US. It is a legitimate topic because I believe health is a basic human concern, such as the concern to express our opinions, and that the commonwealth is affected by the level of health – and, therefore, the level of healthcare – that prevails in a federated society like ours.

One can look at this from different angles: what should the role of government be regarding health care? How does the level of health care among Americans affect equal opportunity among our citizens? What will the option of single-payer mean to the costs of health care? What will it mean to those costs if the current system is allowed to continue or if we do away with the Affordable Healthcare Act and go back to the way it used to be? Is health care a form of security – much as defense against foreign enemies is – and therefore a legitimate concern of government? I can think of other questions to ask students, but this selection gives you, I believe, a sense of what issues are involved in this policy question. And what I would definitely stress would be the facts. Does a government program force doctors to work for the government? Medicare doesn't do that. How does a government program affect doctors' pay? Medicare, I understand, does do that. Wherever the facts go, we should follow them and avoid cherry-picking to bolster one side or the other. The problem with political messaging by lobbyists and other spokespeople is that our public discourse is depleted of unbiased reporting of the relevant facts. Even news accounts seem to tailor their reporting to a far less degree than what would be considered comprehensive coverage. When reporting on these issues, the news media should go out of its way to remind people of the meaningful contextual information to make whatever develops on a daily basis meaningful to the overall situation. If true, for example, the “fact” that 120 Americans die each day from a lack of healthcare should be repeated constantly.

The letter from Public Citizen emphasizes the need to adopt a single-payer system for practical reasons. It does couch the argument as one which regards health care as a right, but the reasons for the position concern mostly costs. Yes, the number of people who die every year due to a lack of health insurance coverage is a moral concern, but just stating the death rate does not delve into moral considerations regarding this gruesome detail. Why is human life, from a moral perspective, so important? I don't get a sense why it is from the letter. Maybe such language is a turnoff to the general public. A specific political campaign needs to be sensitive to such a bias, but a classroom is where such a concern should not be avoided. Of course, such a turn in a discussion needs to be in an atmosphere that has already been established for such a concern. Before any mention of health care as an issue is made, instruction should review the different ways that moral questions can be viewed. Included is the notion that governments are not individuals, but institutions designed to seek the most good when they are behaving morally for the most people – a utilitarian view of morals. Should this be the way a government treats an issue that determines if people live and die? This is a question more complicated in times of peace as opposed to war.

Yes, healthcare is a “juicy” issue and one that deserves class time. A letter from Public Citizen or perhaps a political tract from a conservative group addressing health care provides a potentially enticing “springboard” that can initiate investigation and discussion over what our policy should be. Should it revert to what was in place before Obamacare; should it stay with the Affordable Healthcare Act, or should it move on to a single-payer system such as Medicare for all? While complex, a suitable set of materials can, at a minimum, explain to secondary students the basic stakes involved with this policy decision.

A COMPLEX WEB

For those of you who have never stood in front of a class of students to teach something, I thought you might want to consider what goes into preparing for the challenges a teacher faces when doing his/her job. I'm not going to address the grading of student work products – such as reading essays or going over mathematical operations – or dealing with discipline problems or parent concerns or complaints or demands from the administration. I don't list these concerns as unreasonable elements of the job, but just to put into context what I'll be describing in this posting. What I want to focus on here is the actual teaching act and what goes into performing that act so that it might be successful or at least acceptable with a reasonable level of probability.

To do this, I will borrow from a media selection model that I was taught many years ago. In trying to help an educator choose the right media for a given lesson, I believe that model addresses the factors that either make a lesson a good one or a not so good one. The thing is, for much of this, it turns out to be a guessing game, particularly toward the beginning of the year. We can improve on this, but more on this aspect later. The factors are the complexity of the subject matter, the sophistication of the students, the motivation of the students, and the abstraction level of the materials used – the media. Let me describe each of these.

Complexity levels are determined by how abstract the content is. Of course, complexity is a continuous type variable, but it has an obtuse quality. That is, it's not as if you can put a meter on it and measure complexity. But one can compare things roughly and say that's more complex than that other thing. And if we use the measure of abstraction we can, again roughly, say there are categories of abstraction. The great educational psychologist, Jerome Bruner, gives us a sort of mental measuring stick by which to gauge abstraction. This wasn't his intent; his conception is more a way to describe different representations of material or content. But I will borrow his terms and say that a teacher can think of the content he/she is about to teach and how he/she observes it, mentally. Does the content represent itself as words, verbal explanations, equations, or the like? If so, we can measure this content as being symbolic and this is the highest level of abstraction. If the content is seen as something one can observe happening but not as something one would personally engage in, either because one is not interested, skilled, or otherwise it is not “doable,” then one can measure this abstraction as iconic. Going to the movies and taking in a story that one can see visually is an example of this level of abstraction. Then there is the least abstract level, “enactive,” and that is content one can think of as something in which one can participate such as in playing a game. So by using Bruner's terminology, we can say a unit of content can be of a symbolic, iconic, or enactive level of abstraction.

Now I hope you can see that further complicating a teacher's calculations is that before him/her is a significant variation among students in how content will be perceived in terms of its abstract quality. For some a given content is symbolic while others will see it as either iconic or enactive. For example, a student can see quantum physics, even though it is represented by symbolic figures and diagrams as something he/she can “do” – enactive. That is, complexity is in the eyes of the beholder and in a given class, views of complexity will vary and this poses a source of challenge for the teacher. An attempt at tracking students according to ability levels is meant to address this problem, but it has introduced other problems in its stead – a topic for another posting. My point here is that we can categorize the cognitive presentation that content has for a student in relation to its abstraction level for that student. By using Bruner's terminology, we can compare where the student is with how the content is represented. The obvious aim is to match both; that is, if we have an iconic cognitive view of the content, then we should use iconic materials including the verbal descriptions and explanations the teacher uses.

It is tempting to extend Bruner's terms to describe levels of student sophistication – the next factor – but by doing so, we imprudently narrow how we conceptualize the student. Not only does sophistication of the student refer to how abstract the student can think, but also how universally he/she thinks. This is related to abstraction, but it includes more than abstraction. The question is: how readily can the student grasp the universality of truth and beauty? Does the student merely see truth and beauty in terms of him/herself or in terms of the family, the community, the nation, the world? We can also refer to universality in terms of time. The more universal a student can see and define truth and beauty in ever more expanding realms, the more sophisticated the student is. So sophistication or maturity determines how the student will not only see or be able to understand content, but how the content will be seen in terms of importance. Unfortunately, I don't have categories here. A teacher can be aware that this concern is important and try to gauge where his/her students are. As I alluded to above, the teacher becomes more proficient as the school year advances and he/she gets to know the students more thoroughly. The more the teacher knows and understands the students, the more he/she will come to understand how sophisticated they are.

I will say that social conditions in a school will probably set parameters on this variable. A school has a culture that reflects the culture of a community. That culture will have social norms and the norms go a long way in providing the context in which student sophistication will be developed. While this does not preclude a particular student defying that context and having the student either be more or less sophisticated than the mean, for the most part, the culture will affect the range of sophistication.

Related to how universal a student thinks and feels is his/her motivation is our third factor. There is a link between these aspects. For motivation, I'll use David Riesman's terms: tradition directed, inner directed, and other directed. Again, I am taking license; Riesman had other meanings for these terms. To these terms, I will add the term, principle directed. Again these levels are related to the other concerns, but particularly to maturity. As one begins life, there is a battle within oneself between tradition directed motivation – the views of good and evil one attains from one's parents and family – and inner directed motivation – the drive to seek what one wants which is fairly self-centered during our early years. As we become more social with friends and the bureaucratic world of school and other formal settings, one learns and strives to meet the expectations of others – other directed. Here, a church experience can be highly instrumental. Life experiences bring a lot of what our motivations are based on into question. These challenges usually have their effect and a person seeks to find out what one regards as principled behavior. This can extend from how we view and deal with job related expectations to more abstract realities such as our motivations regarding equality or liberty. Even the more mature criminals adopt a “creed” to their nefarious thinking. Of course, not everyone goes through all of these developments. If one is born in a remote village with little diversity among one's neighbors and a life experience that repeats itself year after year, tradition directed motivations will have a strong effect on how one behaves and sees the world. The musical, Fiddler on the Roof, comes to mind.

I will not add much for the last variable. The materials a teacher uses should be chosen with these other variables in mind. I already pointed out that the terms Bruner uses were meant to describe how content could be represented. Of course, representation relies on materials: textbooks, films, simulations, artifacts, drawings, and the like. Another model that complements Bruner is something called Dale's Cone of Experience. The “cone,” in its visual representation, is a triangle that ascends from a wide base, representing the highest amount of reality presented or the least level of abstraction. The bottom of the triangle contains such enactive representations as simulations or role playing materials or activities. The middle levels of the cone contain materials that one observes or views. They usually portray lifelike images such as in a film or sounds such as in a radio production of a drama. Notice that as one goes up the triangle, the width of it lessens and this represents lesser amounts of reality and, therefore, the material at the mid-range of the triangle is of an iconic level of abstraction. The upper part of the triangle, the part with the least width, contains materials that are at the least levels of depicted reality and, therefore, of the most abstraction. Here we have symbolic representations as written text or mathematical equations. Ironically, the more abstract levels of representation tend to relate to more universal content – math equations work the same wherever you go.

Do teachers think of all this? My experience tells me they don't. Most are not even aware of these variables. Heck; I didn't think about all of this on a daily basis. But I believe that being aware of these concerns helped me be as good a teacher as I could be. Knowing and using these ideas don't guarantee success; a teacher could be dynamite in using these ideas and lack the social skills to be effective in the classroom. But I do believe the above are important concerns and I wish more teachers were at least cognizant of their determinant power on good teaching.

EITHER/OR AS A PROFESSIONAL OBSTACLE

I believe that a prevailing problem with the way people think is their tendency to engage in what I call dichotomous thinking. That is, they tend to see reality as being either one thing or another. Philosophers write of this tendency. They use the term duality or either/or. The problem is that reality is seldom so simple, especially if you are discussing or considering public policy. Unfortunately, the fate of civics education is affected by this tendency. I referred to it in a previous posting, Convoluted Division,¹ which reported how within the field of social studies and civics, there are those who advance the aim of promoting the heritage of the American political system and those who advance a reconstructive agenda, as in we need to fundamentally change our political approach toward the distribution of public goods and public assets – such as education. The division is made up of conservative groups – backing the heritage side – and critical theorists – backing the reconstructive side. So, if we take this dichotomy at face value, one is claiming that one is either for teaching American political values or one is arguing for fundamental changes in our political way of doing things. On the face of it, it seems silly and childish.

But what happens if you are for both? Take me, for example. I believe we should teach and encourage adoption of many of our basic political values such as our love of freedom, equality, and liberty. At the same time, I believe that there are aspects of our accepted political mode of operation that need to be changed. For example, I believe that the way we run elections – especially how we draw Congressional districts – needs changing. This, by the way, is a fundamental change, one that needs a constitutional amendment. But this incidence of dichotomous thinking – heritage vs. reconstruction – stands, to a significant degree, in the way of addressing many of the issues that face civics education. Kathleen Hall Jamieson² writes about this very dichotomy. Let me cite, from Jamieson's article, the writings of Amy Goodman, who captures how the division manifests itself through more specific issues:

The first issue is whether civic education that is publicly mandated must be minimal so that parental choice can be maximal. The second issue concerns the way in which publicly subsidized schools should respond to the increasingly multicultural character of societies. The third issue is whether democratic education should try to cultivate cosmopolitan or patriotic sentiments among students.³

My response to all of these issues is yes to both sides of each issue. The most difficult issue is the first: how far should a school go to promote values at the expense of those values advanced at home? No matter how one feels about this issue, one is probably able to accept some limitations on the values parents can instill as well as those promoted at school. Neither source of instruction, for example, should promote a criminal life style. But where the limits exist is a serious concern and it does no good to approach such issues in an “either/or” frame of mind. The same goes for the other issues. If one questions extreme efforts to promote the American heritage, to the degree that instruction addresses only American contributions to democratic thought and glosses over such practices as slavery, one should not be seen as an advocate of critical theory or the reconstruction of American society. Yet a lot of the professional discourse within the field of social studies and civics education takes on this type of exchange.

Ronald Evans has called this state of affairs in the field as the “social studies wars.” The problem is that the field cannot advance when one side of this divide, the academic contingency, has so overwhelming adopted the reconstruction position. Critical theorists control to a large degree what is happening in our research facilities on our higher education campuses. The rest of the field, the bureaucracy and the teaching corps, is mostly inattentive to the quarrel. The other side, those who promote the American heritage side, is made up of special interests such as certain church groups, conservative foundations, conservative political operatives, or ideologically committed citizens. They have a political agenda and some have significant financial resources to bolster their positions. The Fordham Foundation publication gives a flavor of the rhetoric that this side spews:

Evidence also accumulated that, in the field of social studies itself, the lunatics had taken over the asylum. Its leaders were people who had plenty of grand degrees and impressive titles but who possessed no respect for Western civilization; who were inclined to view America's evolution as a problem for humanity rather than mankind's last best hope … ⁴

While the description of academics might be somewhat accurate, the effect on social studies in our schools is way overstated. As a matter of fact, Jamieson cites research that amply documents the lack of any effect academics have on the teacher corps. As a former teacher, I can assure you that during my twenty-five years in two different school districts (between the years 1972-2000), I was fairly unaware that there was an academic literature that promoted the reconstruction side of the debate. For that matter, beyond hearing of some efforts around the country to influence social studies instruction by the occasional conservative group, I was not aware of any successful attempts to promote the heritage side of the debate. For my part, I vigorously pursued a teaching approach that attempted to have students “critically” question American practices that flew in the face of democratic ideals – not as a way to reconstruct our society, but as a way to instill accepted American values such as freedom – and I can testify that I was encouraged to do so by in-service training and other professional literature. It wasn't until I became a doctoral student that I was aware of the vehement nature of the “social studies wars.”

1Posted November 25, 2013.

2Jamieson, K. H. (2013). The challenges facing civic education. Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring, 142 (2), pp. 65-83.

3Quoted in Jamieson (p.70): See Goodman, A. (1999). Democratic education. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 292.

4Quoted in Jamieson, p. 70. See http://edexcellence.net/publications/wheredidssgowrong.html .

CHANGE AGENTS IN THE MAKING

In terms of teacher preparation, many of our finest universities and colleges have programs dedicated to the task. Recently, at least here in Florida, what were previously known as community colleges have included teacher preparation as part of their curriculum. My comments in this posting have to do with teacher preparation, but I will limit what I have to say to the traditional format, the four year college/university degree program or the graduate program, both leading to teacher certification. I am assuming that most young teachers today still get their necessary course work through one of these two options: a four year bachelor's degree program or a graduate program leading to a master's degree. It has been the case that both of these options lead to jobs basically demanding the same professional expectations. Master's degree teachers do receive higher pay, but what the system assigns them to do is no different from what is expected from a teacher with a bachelor's degree. I think that, especially at a time when most people see our school systems deficient in many ways, that we are bypassing an opportunity to productively differentiate the expectations between these two categories of teachers. We could have master's degree teachers take on special duties and roles to fill a needed function in our schools.

I believe that as part of its preparation programs, graduate instruction should include course work in the area of curriculum design and curriculum change. That is, these students should be taught how to become change agents in the schools where they eventually are assigned. This preparation would be useful to a school's administration as it attempts to institute changes. Even the most effective school should be about adapting to inevitable changes in the social landscape, not to mention changes in what are considered best practices in the educational field. As is the case for most schools, given the deficiencies that exist in the general conditions of education, having trained personnel in change theory and practices can ease any efforts to reform what goes on in those schools in terms of instruction and in the other roles those schools are expected to fill. We should modify the aim of teacher preparation programs at the graduate level to enhance the role of master's degree teachers in the planning and implementation of curricular plans. Remember that the term curriculum encompasses much of what goes on in schools. So curricular changes can be seen as central in improving educational efforts.

Curricular issues not only pervade all aspects of school operations, but also transcend the school setting and reflect pedagogic decisions at the district, state, and federal levels. In addition, teacher preparation instructors, those who complete doctoral degree programs, need to be conversant in general curricular concepts and curriculum design. This is so they can help prepare teachers to take on roles in curriculum decision-making. In turn, if successful, those teachers, as a result of instruction on curriculum and curricular issues, will be more fully engaged in the curricular deliberations of their schools and districts This content will include elements such as curricular concepts and theories and provide training in those skills associated with curricular studies and curriculum design. The history of most teacher preparation programs has been too centered on subject field defined instruction, such as in English education or in science education, and has not pursued instruction in the more general content field of curriculum studies.

My vision of instituting such a component in the graduate programs consists of a series of courses. Perhaps, given the other demands on graduate students, if a graduate student were required to take two courses in the broader area of curriculum studies, it would not only make students aware that the field exists, but also go a long way in providing the academic foundation for a masters' degree teacher to be well on the way to becoming an effective change agent in his or her school or district. Let me offer a list of courses from which a graduate student could pick two or more courses to satisfy the proposed requirement:

• Curriculum theory
• Teachers and curriculum development
• Curriculum Implementation: Teacher as change agent
• Teacher as curriculum evaluator
• Curriculum integration with instruction
• Politics of curriculum policy at the school site, the school district, the state, and the nation

Of this list of six courses, I would imagine that most higher education departments have a course addressing curriculum theory, but I would suspect, as indicated above, that it would be geared toward addressing curriculum from the perspective of specific subject fields and not from the perspective of a more general view of curriculum as a generic field of study.

To give you a more substantive sense of what would be expected of graduate students as they take these courses, let me share with you what I would designate as the terminal objectives for one of the six courses identified above. In terms of the course, Teacher and curriculum development, the following aims could be sought:

1. The student would be able to define appropriate and potential role(s) that master's degree teachers can assume in the curricular deliberations of an assigned school site or district. He or she can demonstrate this ability by expressing those roles in discussions, conversations, and written or other work products.
2. The student would be able to conduct a needs-assessment of a school's curricular offerings given the demographic, professional resource, and community factors facing that school.
3. The student will be conversant in key professional curricular terminology evidenced by appropriate use of those terms in course related work including verbal and written products.
4. The student will develop a curricular strategy for a given school setting that accounts for overall philosophy and rationale, goals and objectives, highlighted instructional approaches, media/material selection strategy, and evaluation strategy.
5. The student will be cognizant and account for both potential implementation problems and a utilized change strategy which is congruent with sought after curricular decisions judged viable by course determined criteria.
6. The student will demonstrate comprehension of the basic tenets of “action research” as that generic protocol can be applied to curricular design and implementation.
7. The student will be cognizant of general national trends, such as multiculturalism, and problem areas, such as sexism, lack of diversity, class-ism, in the field of curricular design, and apply such concerns to class discussion, deliberations, and verbal and written work products.

These objectives can be pursued through a series of units making up the course. They can be:

Week One – What is curriculum design? Its working concepts

Week Two – Schools and school districts as organizations with distinguishing cultural elements

Week Three – Curriculum design as an exercise in power

Week Four – General curriculum design as a change strategy

Week Five – Basic principles of curriculum design

Week Six – Planning a curriculum: A multi-dimensional process

Week Seven – Roles in designing curriculum, highlighting teachers

Week Eight – Curricular philosophies, approaches, and aims

Week Nine – Needs assessment at a school site and/or school district

Week Ten – Identifying and defining a set of curricular goals

Week Eleven – Implementation issues

Week Twelve – Instructional goals and objectives

Week Thirteen – Instruction strategies

Week Fourteen – Evaluation

Week Fifteen – School site research protocol

Week Sixteen – Review of research findings, lasting lessons

If you get the notion that this course would serve as an introduction to the rest of the proposed courses, I would agree if you also include the Curriculum theory course. The remaining courses would delve into several of the topics composing a number of items identified in the weekly units of study at a more in-depth level.

If the above sounds like a course syllabus, there is good reason. A lot of what is included above comes directly from a course proposal I submitted and received approval for at Florida State University. That course is now part of FSU's course offerings. Hopefully, the course is a vehicle by which future teachers, armed with master's degrees, can become active and effective contributors in their schools and/or districts when it comes time to consider their curricula and how to change them. Perhaps they might even become effective change agents and help usher in those reforms that will make the schools to which they are assigned better places for their students to learn and grow.

FRAMEWORK

As I write these words, it's Father's Day. While my son is a soccer fan and watched the World Cup, I watched the final round of the US Open Golf Championship, even though it was relatively boring. Martin Kaymer took a fairly safe lead and held on to it all afternoon. He is our new national champion. As I was watching, I remembered my own personal rule of thumb: if a player has a lead of more shots than the number of holes remaining, it's over. Does this rule hold up in every occasion? No, but often enough – as it did this afternoon – and so I felt fairly sure that my rule would hold true as I watched – out of loyalty – till the bitter end.

This rule is a heuristic. We hold heuristically derived beliefs as a way to handle complex realities around us. They are useful and even necessary when we are called upon to make quick decisions and we don't have the time to figure out how every factor affects that decision. They are usually formed from experience and, given the quality of those experiences, they tend to be reliably effective. When it comes to politics, heuristically derived principles go a long way in organizing how we think about politics.

Most people don't give politics a lot of thought, much less a lot of analysis and reflection. When presented with a political stimulus, it is our heuristically formed beliefs, more times than not, that determine how we will react to that stimulus. In terms of politics, it's not a matter of time restraints, but a lack of interest that engages our heuristic thinking. Most Americans find politics and governance bewildering and lacking in any entertaining qualities. Of course, there is a minority of folks who finds politics as a source of a lot of entertainment. I hope civics teachers fall into that category. But for most, politics is one of those periphery subjects that people organize in their minds according to mental shortcuts; that is, heuristic thinking. What do these shortcuts look like and how do they become consciously engaged?

In Paul Goren's new book, On Voter Competence, three heuristically derived general principles are identified: limited government, traditional morality, and defense/military. Martha Kropf would add a fourth: race/identity.¹ Goren applies these principles to the mental operations that citizens perform in choosing a president. But the basic mental process can be applied to any politically motivated thinking and I think that the specific principles identified by Goren and Kropf pertain to many of our policy issues involving the federal government. Let me cite how Goren describes these principles: “policy principles lie in that sweet spot of mass beliefs systems; neither too abstract, such as liberal-conservative worldviews, nor too concrete, such as particular issues, to elude all but the most-diligent citizens.”² This level of sophistication does not allow for serious reflection over involved political matters, such as what the government should do about the civil war in Syria, but it does give a basis for interpreting political messaging. The danger is it can expose the citizen to vulnerabilities of being swayed by certain language choices used by politicians and other political operators. Given this state of affairs, educators who are responsible to impart those beliefs, knowledge, and skills necessary for good citizenship should make the student aware of how citizens think or, stated more directly, how they will probably think about public policies in the future.

Chances are that those students will take up those thought processes as they leave school and go about leading their adult lives. After all, for most people, having a job, raising a family, and the other demands of adulthood are varied and taxing, leaving little inclination to contemplate political topics and little energy for the kind of effort many political and governmental issues entail. While the ideal is – an ideal a civics course should promote – that every citizen should dedicate meaningful time in meeting civic responsibilities, the reality is that such time and effort will not be forthcoming. One of the aims a civics course should have is to identify those principles that prevail among the populous and function as frameworks in which political messages are organized. By so doing, in effect, the educator warns the student that in the upcoming years, he or she will be subjected to accounts of what is happening politically that will exploit these heuristics and try to persuade him/her to particular policy choices. To engage the heuristics of the voter, these operatives will hit on one or more of those principles and contrive narratives that present the facts of relevant situations in ways that are persuasive of whatever policy choices operatives want to advance. So, in the Syrian situation, the offending practices of one of the belligerents – let's say, the Syrian government – offend our traditional moral sensitivities. The heuristic takes over, short circuits any perceived need to analyze further, and the citizen is more apt to agree with a particular message that reflects the targeted principle.

Another principle related to Syria and, now, Iraq is our defense/military principle. Apparently, according to the messaging of this last week, the recent events in Iraq pose a direct threat to our security. For example: “U.S. lawmakers said the Obama administration and other nations must move quickly to contain the resurgence of extremist violence in Iraq and prevent that country's government from falling, saying the situation is sowing the seeds for the next 9-11-type terrorist attack.”³ Of course, this messaging is being promoted by politicians who are advocating a more active military role for the US in preventing the overthrow of the Iraqi government. The purpose of an educator who analyzes such messaging is not to dissuade a student of a policy choice, but to make that student aware of how messaging can color the facts and make certain choices more acceptable if not preferred.

If students leave school with at least a guard against such politicized messaging – geared not at rational reflection and discussion but toward triggering unconscious reactive responses – then schools will be providing a useful service. For students who gain such a critical perspective, it will take more than timely slogans or truncated messaging aimed at their heuristic thinking before they accept advocated pleas. Perhaps more of such reluctance would have saved us from what most consider ghastly mistakes of the past such as our involvement in Vietnam and the second Iraq War.

1Kropf, M. (2013-14). On voter competence by Paul Goren. Political Science Quarterly, Winter-Spring, Book Review section, pp. 777-778.

2Ibid., p. 778.

3Nissenbaum, K. (2014). U. S. lawmakers urge rapid containment of extremist violence in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal, June 15, see http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-lawmakers-urge-rapid-containment-of-extremist-violence-in-iraq-1402849650 .

DISAPPOINTING

You might be against trading five members of the Taliban for a captured American soldier. You might be against treating that captured American soldier as a hero because he might have deserted his post. But if you believe in the basic tenets of American justice, you can't be against making every effort to bring him back home. You can't, even if you choose to believe he is a traitor, when the young man has not been tried or even been given the opportunity to defend himself, or even if you don't like the president who arranged for his exchange. That line of thinking just doesn't add up to being true to how Americans are supposed to deal with people who are accused of anything. It also doesn't add up to how we treat our soldiers, especially those who become prisoners of our enemies. And you don't criticize his father for growing a beard or learning a language. You also don't condemn the soldier's hometown for planning a celebration over his release. This whole business of personal attacks, prevalent in the far right press, reeks of being despicable.

For those of you who follow this blog, you know that I don't rant about the issues of the day. My intent here is to describe and explain a perspective of governance and politics of which you might not be aware. My other purpose is to address some issues involved with schooling, especially those that pertain to civics education. I hope some of the postings I issue in this space would be useful to teachers who might use them to introduce or initiate discussions over pending concerns facing the nation. But this latest round of demagoguery is just too much. While I have no problem with people questioning the President's action with the exchange – I happen to believe he did the right thing – the whole suggestion that this young man should have been left behind is not worthy of even being considered. That young man is part of us; he is our federated partner. We cannot purposely abandon him and still say we believe in our constitution. If it turns out that he needs to be accused of a crime, then that is what will be done – I trust our military officials to do what is legally proper to do. But all of that comes in due time and soon enough. As long as Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was a captive of the enemy, it was not the time.

MIX 'EM UP

Nothing says federalism more to some people than the notion of local control or state's rights. That is not my take of the concept. To me, federalism means joining a union; being an equal member in a federation of members. To say the US is a federation means that we are citizens of a grand association in which we attempt to strive toward equality, if not of results, at least in terms of opportunity and equal standing before the law. Let me stretch the argument a bit more: if we don't strive toward equal opportunity, we will not establish or maintain equality before the law. Left to our own devices among our fellow citizens, as in liassez-faire economy, before long, there will be a growing inequality. This is because we have varying degrees of natural abilities and once some people gain advantages, they will use their increased resources to increase their power to further augment their advantages. We see this process all the time. Here in the US, we are currently seeing the process increase in velocity. As the rich are gaining an ever increasing portion of national income and of total wealth, they are in positions to increasingly affect public policy. There is currently a literature out there detailing how this is happening. In turn, such a development is undermining the quality of our democracy and republican form of government.

Therefore, I see any attempt to bolster opportunity in our national scene as activating a federalist principle. As a federalist, I was heartened to read an account of developments in the Head Start program. But first the bad news.

Head Start is a surviving program from Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty initiatives. Generally, the program was designed for preschoolers from low income households. Unfortunately, the overall estimation of how well the program prepares low income kids for kindergarten has not been good. One of the latest extensive evaluations of the program was a federal government review that was published in 2012. This report “concluded that children who participated in Head Start were not more successful in elementary school than others … 'no better than random.'”¹ Of course, its not as if this news is met with unequivocal sorrow. There are those who see it as vindication of their practical and ideological antagonism. For them, Head Start is just another one of those liberal efforts in which a lot of taxpayer dollars have been squandered with nearly nothing to show for the expenditures. But should this report just preclude a finality to the effort? Should it mean that in terms of this federalist principle that we should just give up on this avenue to promote equal opportunity?

Well, hold on. There are signs that things are getting better; that there have been, of late, improvements to the program. There is also other data that show the effects of the program can be delayed; that former participants have shown better results when measured during their teenaged years. It seems that one thing the program has instilled among the youngsters it has serviced is character. This has had a “sleeper effect.” But of more importance is that when one analyzes the data more closely, we find a promising trend. That is, when a specific Head Start site is located where the center serves both low income and middle to upper income kids, the low income youngsters do quite well in school. This seems to be the case without noting any harm to the more advantaged kids. Exclusively low income centers are generally underfunded and manned with poorly paid staffs. But in centers that have a mixed income arrangement, the higher income parents make sure that the centers are not under resourced. Beyond that, the kids of the varied income groups teach each other. They mix, socialize, and share their stories and understanding of the lessons they are receiving. David L. Kirp reports on several such sites.

One such case is the Rosemount Center in Washington, D. C. That case is more of an accident in that a higher income neighborhood happens to be in the vicinity of a low income area. Geographically, the situated families from these two areas have Rosemount as the place to send their children. There is a tuition fee attached to attending this center, but that is based on a sliding scale. The poorer kids are covered by Head Start funds, but the better off families pay from $9,600 to $20,400 depending on their income. It seems the more advantaged families are doing quite well – some live in homes valued in seven figures. But is this “accident” pointing toward a workable model for Head Start programs to make them more effective?

There is evidence supporting this approach. A 2007 Connecticut study showed a marked improvement by youngsters who attend these mixed income Head Start preschool sites over those who attend centers servicing solely low income kids. Quoting a staff person who works in one of these mix income sites: “Vocabulary and background knowledge play a major role in student learning and interacting with mixed-income students allows for richer discussions among students.”²

I can imagine enormous – maybe insurmountable – logistical obstacles in implementing a model for Head Start that would attempt to “integrate” their centers with kids from various income level homes. But where possible, perhaps this approach can make a meaningful difference and promote a more truly equitable educational effort and, in turn, a more equitable society.

1Kirp, D. L. (2014). The benefits of mixing rich and poor. The New York Times, May 11, Sunday Review section, p. 4. The facts reported in this posting is derived from this article.

2Ibid.