DEFINING THE BAD

There is a practical problem for a civics teacher who would utilize federation theory in guiding his or her course content choices.  That is, federation theory would be used to identify which political and/or governmental problems are suitable for student inquiry.  Those problems would reflect a condition in our social-political/governmental environment that is in conflict with at least one federalist value.[1]  But once the problem is presented or identified by students, the fact that we live in a nation in which the natural rights construct prevails, means that students need to deal with that reality.  They, therefore, need to have a working understanding of how most Americans are likely to see the problem; how they, if at all, will define the condition or problem that students are analyzing.  With this in mind, let me suggest the following approach.

For an adherent of the natural rights construct, there is the belief that any individual has the right to do as he/she wishes as long as the person does not hurt someone else.  Of course, in real life, just about any social behavior has an effect on someone else.  Whether the effect is harmful or not is how a normal person would judge it.  I was driving around with my wife the other day and we were talking about someone and whether he did something wrong.  It occurred to me that we cause hurt all the time in just our normal course of living.  For example, my wife and I, at the time of this discussion, were spewing out carbons into the environment.  This is harmful, but while the effect is generally distributed in the local environment, the harm is of low levels.  It is irrelevant that this harm is a byproduct of how we live and how we get around.  Harm is harm.  But in analyzing this, the amount of harm is relevant in trying to determine whether I have a right to drive around or not or whether it is moral behavior.  This whole business suggested a set of questions to me; questions one could ask of any behavior or activity in order to determine how an adherent of the natural rights view would judge the egregiousness of such behaviors or activities.

Here they are:

Who or what is negatively affected by the behavior or activity? (Direction)

What level of harm is inflicted by this behavior or activity? (Intensity)

How targeted is this harm? (Focus) My driving around affects every human being on the planet.  The level of harm – I’m no scientist – is quite small.  And in terms of targeting the harm, there is no focus – I’m not focusing on any individual or group.  Therefore, while I wish I could drive around without polluting, I will continue to drive my car with a fairly clear conscience.

Let’s look at another activity.  A person runs a poker game with a marked deck.  Those negatively affected are the invitees who are victimized by the cheater.  The level of harm can be measured by the amount of money these players/victims lose.  The focus is again these victims - pretty straightforward.  What if the victims also engage in cheating practices?  Does that affect our analysis?  Is cheating cheaters okay?  This complicates the analysis.  But the situation is worth discussing with students.  The purpose here is not to pass judgment, but to provide teachers a language by which to lead an inquiry.  It is useful to know how people will tend to approach a value-related situation.  Those of us who are influenced by a natural rights view, I believe, will tend to ask these kinds of questions of those involved in a problem situation. 

I would add that if, on the other hand, a person is guided by federalist values, he/she will not limit the questioning to these questions.  They would be further concerned by the effects on the relevant community.  How does cheating at cards affect any friendship or any other sense of associations among the players?  Is gambling, as a business activity, something that should be allowed or encouraged?  Is there an anti-community effect of gambling, especially if the stakes are significantly high relative to the income of those involved?  These kinds of questions connote a concern for how the behavior or activity will undermine the levels of federation among the participants.  But this kind of concern bypasses people who are influenced by a natural rights view.

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[1] This is how I described federalist values in a past posting:

The proposed code not only holds a particular value as a trump value, but also presents a hierarchy of values. There are three levels of values: trump value, key instrumental values, and operational values. Here is a listing of these values:

•       Trump Value: Societal welfare (as experienced through societal survival and advancement)

•       Key Instrumental Values: constitutional integrity (liberty), equality, communal democracy, democratic pluralism and diversity, compacted arrangements, critical and transparent deliberation, collective problem-solving, earned trust, loyalty, patriotism, expertise

•       Operational Values (partial listing): political engagement, due process, legitimate authority, privacy, universality of human rights, tolerance, non-violence, teamwork, consideration of others, economic sufficiency, security, localism.

WORTH A THOUSAND MISTAKEN WORDS

Let me describe to you a recently published photo that appeared on various news outlets:

In the darkness, a figure is captured in an instant of dynamic motion:  legs braced, long hair flying wild, an extravagant plume of smoke and flames trailing from the incendiary object he is about to hurl into space.  His chest is covered by an American-flag T-shirt, he holds fire in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, a living collage of the grand and the bathetic.[1]

If you are an editor of a local newspaper and this picture comes to you through the wire service and it was taken on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, during the days of the recent civil disturbances, what are the chances you will run it?  After all, the disturbance is attracting a lot of attention; the picture is pretty much self-explanatory, and the image conveys meaningful information.  You might even run it on the first page, given it is dynamic – the description says it is – and it might sell some papers.  From just the description, can you think of a caption for it?  Well, here is one caption that was used by the Breitbart News:  “Rioters Throw Molotov Cocktails at Police in Ferguson – Again.”  Now does that caption affect how you see the described scene?  Does it taint your perspective?  Are you bolstered in your initial reaction of “I thought so”?  Now consider this other caption from the CBS St. Louis/Association Press:  “Protester Throws Tear-Gas Canister Back at Police While Holding Bag of Chips.”  How do you now see the scene?  The same?  I doubt it.  I tend to think the second caption is truer:  I just don’t see a rioter going about his business with a bag of chips in his hand – but that’s just me.  The point is that visual evidence can be highly misleading; one of these caption writers has it seriously wrong.  I’m sure there are some ulterior motives going on here, but even with those, if you reacted as I did in reading this account, your perceptions were highly influenced by the different takes the captions project.

Whether one caption is truer than the other, both sort of miss the point.  From all the recent incidents around the nation of cases of questionable police tactics, one thing stands out glaringly:  too many police forces are not genuinely federated – structurally and emotionally – with the communities they serve.  I don’t write this with much of an accusatory tone.  The fact that this is so is a prime consequence of what I have been claiming all along in this blog:  we are a nation imbued with a natural rights perspective, inclusive when it comes to our view of politics and governance.  From what we see, our police forces have been by and large seen as systems and a systems mentality has governed how we administer them.  By purely systems thinking – organized efforts to accomplish goals through the input-conversion-output logic which drains all subjective considerations – police forces are seen as so many figures, structures, and command chains.  Long gone is the cop on his walking beat knowing and commiserating with neighborhood bound, fellow citizens – the personal touch, if you will.  Today, police are subject to purely efficiency concerns:  how they decrease crime rates at the lowest cost.  I am not suggesting that all of that is not important, but we sacrificed a lot when that personal face was eliminated from the streets.  Throw in cultural prejudices that linger all too fervently among too many, and we have the level of indifference depicted in the videoed incidents that have sparked the recent disturbances.  I am not blaming all of this on the police.  When you constantly interact only with the criminal elements or the extreme hostilities that flare up among the citizens you deal with, you are bound to develop that thick, indifferent skin we see in too many policemen and women; hence, yet another reason to question this overall perspective and ask:  is that the construct that should guide what we teach in our civics classrooms?

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[1] Whitehead, C.  (2015).  What we don’t see.  The New York Times Magazine, May 31, pp. 13-15.  Citation on p. 14.  Meaning of the word bathetic is something that is unintentionally anti-climactic.

WHAT GOES ON THERE?

I have written of “rules of thumb” before.  I called them the product of heuristic thinking.  They are based on experience and, by and large, are usually true.  Here’s a rule of thumb, a prescriptive rule of thumb:  all non-profit organizations should have total transparency.  In order to get the tax benefits they enjoy, they should conduct their affairs totally in the open.  This goes for charities and community based efforts to improve local conditions and for churches.  And here’s a bit of further advice:  don’t give to any organization, no matter how beneficial its work might be, unless it has an open door policy as to its records and its communication.  The proviso is that such openness needs to respect the day-to-day practical demands of the organization’s operations; you wouldn’t be able to interfere with an activity simply because you need to see the previous day’s phone logs, for example.

As it is, there is little oversight of the operations.  Here is one account of the current conditions:

Last week federal authorities disclosed that four cancer charities had bilked tens of millions of dollars from donors.  Questions continue to surface about the lack of transparency at the Clinton Foundation.  Philanthropy, we’re learning, is a world with too much secrecy and too little oversight.  Despite its increasing role in American society, from education to the arts to the media, perhaps no sector is less accountable to outsiders.[1]

Solution?  Stop donating to organizations that don’t open up their records.  After all, these are not competitive businesses that have proprietary secrets concerning marketing strategies or product development.  They are organizations that might compete for donation dollars, but that sort of competition is not to bolster profits.  They are, instead, meant to help needy populations.  Openness, of course, would discourage if not make impossible mal accumulation from or spending of civic-minded contributors.  It would also discourage undue influence for political purposes that some donations might allow.  One gives a donation to someone’s foundations in hopes of incurring political favor.  Along with openness would be a prohibition of shell organizations that are set up to hide the identification of donors.

Now let me focus on the Catholic Church.  I am currently reading the accounts of the Vatican Bank in Rome.[2]  I will not make any accusations as to the intent of obvious abuses of the bank that stretch back to the 1970s.  That run of fraudulent activity that the Church’s bank was associated with could have been avoided if the Church’s dealings had been transparent.  The space here does not allow for a rundown of the felonious acts involved, but they are even linked to murders and suicides.  At best, church officials were incompetent in what they were doing, but even this could have been ferreted out if the Church had not been so secretive.  Adding to the interwoven nature of the illegal activities was the immunity the Church enjoys because the Vatican has sovereignty – it is an independent state.  Giving to the Church in Rome is like giving to the sovereign state of France or Switzerland.  One should ponder how healthy such giving is.  In any event, the Church’s “divine” mission was highly compromised by what eventually came to light as a result of the investigations that followed its financial activities of that era.

So a rule of thumb should be:  don’t give any donation to a non-profit organization that will not open up its books to the public.  Exception:  political parties and campaigns.  Why?  They are in competition and their strategies are compromised if they cannot maintain secrecy.  Also, donations to those organized entities are not tax deductible.  How about a list of their contributors, though?  Oh yeah; they should also be open to public inspection.

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[1] Callahan, D.  (2015).  Who will watch the charities?  The New York Times, May 31, (Sunday Review section), p. 4.

[2] Posner, G.  (2015).  God’s bankers:  A history of money and power at the Vatican.  New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster

NECESSARY ISSUES FOR ALL

There are a lot of issues a civics teacher can cover in the course of a year.  I have in this blog argued that one of the chief functions of a mental construct is to guide the choice of issues and social problems that will then be studied in the classroom.  Of course, not all civics teachers deal with issues; many see their charge is to simply offer factual information, usually information regarding the structure of government.  Their students, who happen to have good memories, do well.  But, and this has always been the case, intelligence – social intelligence in particular – reflects the ability to figure things out.  This sense of intelligence is more apt today with cyber memory readily available to all of us who might own a smart phone with Internet access.  Problem-solving is becoming more central in the demands we hold for students; hence, reliance on choosing appropriate problems – issues and social problems – is, in turn, becoming more important. 

Yet this phase of instructional preparation gets very little attention.  By default then, teachers, parents, and other interested parties tend to simply apply our current dispositions and biases to settle on what specific problems will be studied.  One of the main purposes of this blog is to point out the function of mental constructs in this process.  I have argued that we currently hold, as a prevailing construct, the natural rights view and that perspective has been the basis by which we analyze issues and social problems.  Not only does the construct heavily influence what issues will be entertained, but how we view those issues; what questions we will ask; and what will be deemed as relevant or irrelevant information and argumentation?  While a construct plays such important functions, it is, by and large, not questioned and is used mostly on a subconscious level.

Another main message of this blog has been that we should replace the natural rights construct with the federalist theory construct.  The introduction above reviews the main elements of federalist theory – at least, as I see them.  My purpose is not to re-argue these views, but to simply state that despite the fact there is significant differences between natural rights construct and federalist theory, there are some issues that I believe would be addressed irrespective of which of these two constructs is used to guide the content of a civics course.  Let me identify them:

The environmental degradation of the planet

The concentration of wealth and income in the global economy

National policy regarding what leads to healthy economic development

The degradation of our national infrastructure (particularly as it affects transportation)

Perhaps you can add to this list – the issue of terrorism might be considered a must – but if a teacher is going to approach civics through the analyses of issues, the above list seems to me to identify the necessary issues a teacher should include.

A curriculum guided by the natural rights construct, as I just indicated, would see these issues from a different perspective than one guided by federalist theory.  Let me illustrate by looking at the first on this list:  the environmental issue. 

A natural rights view would probably emphasize costs and imposing the gauntlet of regulations, taxes, and other liberty-limiting policies a serious approach in tackling the odious effects of pollution and a degraded natural world would entail.  I am not saying that a natural rights approach would necessarily push a conservative, pro-business agenda.  What I am saying is that that construct will view the environmental issue from the perspective of calculations regarding how addressing the environmental issue or ignoring it will affect our levels of liberty.  One can easily imagine how an environment chuck full of carbons, for instance, can limit our ability to seek our self-defined goals.  Just ask the citizens of Texas right now how they view the effects that severe weather has on their liberty.  The question is one in which we calculate how, against these liberty-limiting realities, they compare with how a vigorous governmental policy will affect those liberties.  Which is worse?

From a federalist point of view, on the other hand, instruction would point out these liberty issues, but would also view the political maneuvering that is in play, especially in terms of climate change deniers, language manipulation by the advocates of either side of the environmental debates, and the extent of vested stakes any of the involved parties have in either changing our environmental policies or keeping the status quo.  These particular items of interests are tapped because they reflect how the environmental issue affects our sense of partnership among the citizenry.  This might be a subtle difference for many, but I believe an important one.  Do you calculate detrimental effects or do you feel the human anguish involved with our partners’ fates?  I believe that a federalist approach comes closer to the humanizing questions more readily than the natural rights approach does.  What do you think?

STARK DATUM AND A MORE HOPEFUL POSSIBILITY

I have in the past commented on the weaknesses of our civics education efforts among our secondary schools.  As I have also pointed out, the research is not so clear.  A recent academic article reviews this research.  Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s article reflects this inconsistency.  As I have indicated, some of the research is not so alarming but some is.  In addition to this review, she does report on some notable civics education programs and what the advantages would be if our overall civics instruction were optimal:

A randomized field experiment concluded that involvement “in Student Voices significantly boosted students’ confidence in their ability to make informed political decisions, their knowledge about how to register to vote, and their belief that their vote matters.”  Moreover, in a randomized controlled experiment, “participation in Facing History and Ourselves programs result[ed] in:  greater engagement in learning; increased skills for understanding and analyzing history; greater empathy and ethical awareness; increased civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions; and improved ability to recognize racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in themselves and in others; and reduced racist attitudes and self-reported fighting.”  Some civics programs, such as Kids Voting USA, have been shown to create a trickle- up effect, not only increasing the knowledge level and civic dispositions of the young but enhancing their parents’ political knowledge as well.  Evidence also suggest that inclusion of civics education in a curriculum may correlate with a decrease dropout rate.[1]

It this type of instruction that would lead to what this blog has called social capital among our populace.[2]

As for whether or not our civics education has been even somewhat effective, I personally cannot give our instruction very high marks given a fairly incontestable bit of datum:  in the last midterm election 63.6% of the eligible voters chose not to participate.  Nothing can ring louder alarm bells than that disheartening statistic.

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[1] Jamieson, K. H.  (2013).  The challenges facing civic education.  Daedalus:  Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Spring, 142 (2), pp. 72-73.

[2] I have defined social capital as a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

AN ARRAY OF POWER

I’ve written in this blog about power before.  I’ve pointed out that power is the term used to designate one party getting another to do something the second party would not do otherwise.  I have narrowed the type of motivations that a second party has for doing what otherwise he/she is not motivated to do:  anticipation of a reward, anticipation of a punishment, or the feeling that by so doing this thing, he/she is doing the right thing – due to a sense of legitimacy, a sense of allegiance, or what an expert thinks is the right or prudent thing to do.[1]  These broad ideas take different forms in the real world.  Not only is this variation present in regard to specific conditions and specific relations between people, but in relation to historical times.  This latter aspect of power is what I want to address in this posting.

The situation with ISIS in Iraq and Syria hints of what I speak.  Here is a well-organized terrorist group that I have described as scary, vicious, and hell-bent on causing pain and destruction to advance its religious tenants among Islamic people.  I have also commented that its assets are limited in terms of alliances and military equipment.  Yet, with their recent advances, they are now the defunct rulers of a significant area of territory.  We don’t seem to be willing to send sufficient troops to battle ISIS directly, not on the ground anyway.  I don’t pretend to be knowledgeable enough to pass judgement as to what the US should do in this case.  I do feel the American public is ill-disposed to support an extended military response to the ISIS threat.  Its control of a definite geographic area is threatening.  It provides a base to plan and prepare 9/11 type attacks on our homeland.  After all, we justified an invasion of Afghanistan for these very reasons.  The world is complex and guess what?  We can’t rely as heavily on the “big stick” anymore as we have done in the past.

Joseph S. Nye[2] writes of this variation.  He tells us that power today – that is in the global arena – is a multi-reality.  He offers the analogy of a tri-level chess game:  three stacked boards in which we have different forms of power making their importance and effect known.  On the top board, we have the more obvious form:  military power.  This is hard power and one based on coercion – the anticipation of punishment.  At this level, the US is dominant; we can administer untold levels of death and physical destruction.  That is, we have the capabilities to do so.  But the reality of the world is that such power is hamstrung.  Nations have always been so limited, but of late, they are more so.  Our recent history in Iraq demonstrates these limitations.

The second chessboard level represents economic power competition.  Here we are very strong, but not as dominant as on the military board.  Other areas of the world are becoming more powerful when it comes to economics.  Before the financial crisis of 2008, Europe’s economy was larger than that of the US.  China, while far from matching the US on a per capita basis, overall, has an economy that is slated to overcome the US economy later in this century.  That means that those areas of the world are and will become more able to match the US in terms of exercising economic power.  Economic power can either be based on the anticipation of punishment, as in the use of economic sanctions, or anticipation of reward, as when a government issues a grant.  Therefore, economic power can be both hard and soft power.

The last board is soft power; it is all those relations between nations that governments cannot control.  This is a very messy board.  It is inhabited by a slew of actors from terrorists, as mentioned above, to hackers.  They rely heavily on ever cheaper information technology.  Sometimes on this board, power moves involve pandemics or climate change.  “On this bottom board, power is widely diffused, and it makes no sense to speak here of unipolarity, multipolarity, hegemony, or any other such clichés that political leaders and pundits put in their speeches.”[3]

Teaching about power can be a complex matter because power is complex.  As military power loses its dominance – a trend that promises to not only continue, but also to speed up – students need to be able to take in and handle nuanced politics in order to understand international settings in which both their government and organizations will maneuver.  The world is getting smaller, and what happens in far off areas of the world is more apt to influence their day-to-day existence, and their ability to function will demand a better understanding of how power is exercised.  Civics education needs appropriate language by which to instruct students about these power realities.  Hopefully, this posting can help.

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[1] I previously posted an entry entitled “Power,” but it has been deleted from the archive listing.  You can acquire this posting upon request.  See instructions above.

[2] Nye, J. S.  (2011).  The future of power.  New York, NY:  PublicAffairs.

[3] Ibid., p. xv.

WHY STRIVE FOR SUCCESS AT SCHOOL?

I am going to deviate from my usual fare in this blog and comment not on civics education, but education in general. Specifically, this posting wants to look at what goal should students harbor when approaching their school work.  Should they hold as their main goal improving their performance so that they and others can view them individually as students performing at a high level of accomplishment or should they simply aim at learning something?  It turns out, this is a basic decision, one that has consequences relative to how successful students will be.

You might point out that there is no logical inconsistency between aiming to improve performance and wanting to learn something.  The potential – and oftentimes actual – conflict is in the motivation the spurs one toward one goal as opposed to the other.  Aiming toward performance success is motivated by the desire to have oneself or others see one as smart or successful.  It seems to have a competitive side to its nature.  You want to say I’m good at this; I’m smart enough.  In itself this is not necessarily a bad thing.  The problem arises when this motivation becomes too dominant or singular in its importance.  A person so motivated might shy away from true challenges.  Why jeopardize one’s view of oneself or undermine what good opinion others might have by taking on something hard and then failing?  In the case when one starts a challenge and then meets with initial failure or unexpected problems, if performance is the goal, one is likely to jump to the conclusion that the perceived obstacle is too hard and beyond one’s ability.  Why not just give up?

But let us say the overarching goal is not performance, but learning.  If learning is the primary goal, problems and initial failures are just temporary and can be overcome.  One can try a different strategy or acquire more or different information or skills.  The aim of becoming educated then is to learn for the sake of learning.  Now, one might have further motivation:  the information to be learned can be useful for some other purpose and, yes, learning something can be a source of self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment.  But if the student can keep such motivations or rewards in a secondary mental status and keep as primary the motivation to learn, one has a greater chance at academic success, so writes Carol. S. Dweck,[1] prominent educational psychologist.

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[1] Dweck, C. S.  (2000).  Self-theories:  Their role in motivation, personality, and development.  Philadelphia:  Psychology Press.