THE TEXTBOOK EFFECT

 

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

This writer, through a series of postings, dated from May 15 to June 26, 2020, provides a review of how the established national entities of civics education have viewed that subject matter.  Those entities include leading textbook publishers and the Center for Civics Education.  That view(s) can be detected in the form of standards such organizations issue and in the content one can find in the leading textbooks adopted in the various states to be used in classroom instruction.[1] 

In general, this writer used two sets of questions to guide his study.  But before sharing those questions, it should be stated that he was attempting to test a hypothesis, i.e., current civics education, as practiced in American classrooms, is guided by the natural rights view of governance and politics.  And the natural rights view promotes several qualities:  scientific language and methodology, reductionism, objectified analysis, and a general avoidance of normative questioning and reporting.

To informally test this hypothesis, in terms of textbooks, the following general questions were used in reviewing two popular publications: 

·       Do the books convey natural rights’ descriptions or explanations of the various aspects of governance or politics?  If so, how?

·       Do they entice students by being relevant or entertaining in some way?  If so, how?

·       And do they relate to some federalist values or concerns such as political interactions that can be described as communal and collaborative? 

This first set of questions identifies a direction or a general realm of interest this writer wanted to pursue in looking at the evidence he identified.  But to actually address the hypothesis, he applied the following:

·       Do they, the textbooks, describe politics in an amoral fashion? 

·       Do they describe citizens as consumers of public services and ignore or avoid mentioning them as being federated to promote the common good? 

·       Are political interactions basically treated in isolated fashion in that only the immediate rewards and punishments are considered?  That is, do they employ reductionist foci in their descriptions and explanations? 

·       Are issues of justice or civility ignored or at best assumed to be in place as the books review various competitive situations that politics entails?

To do his review, he looked at two popular textbooks used at the high school level, Magruder’s American Government[2]and Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[3]  For each he randomly selected five paragraphs and asked the above questions to analyze the content of the books.  He reported the content of those paragraphs, their context within the books, and an evaluation of their content by informally using the above questions.

He found the samples indicate various qualities and, from them, derived several conclusions.  They are:

·       Both textbooks used basically the same tone and language.  That is, they employ a matter-of-fact reporting style.  Reflecting a scientific language, it is objectified and, in the case of Glencoe, supply a good deal of statistics to convey derived conclusions that the book is making (Magruder does not provide such quantified information to any meaningful degree).

·       They both avoid any call for students to become active or involved with the various issues identified and described in their accounts.  Instead, the focus is on the structural elements of either the national government (little attention is given to state and local government) or on certain elements in the political system that exist outside of the government (such as in political parties).

·       Without using the term, citizens are portrayed as consumers of governmental services.  As such, they ignore the “of” and “by” roles Lincoln bestows on American citizens, essential roles in a republic.  That is, they do not encourage or explain how Americans can fulfill these other partnering roles that the Constitution establishes.

·       What issues these books address are what the professional literature calls “controversial” issues.  That is, they are issues that garner a good deal of current interest among the citizenry.  They are not chosen because of some normative standard beyond their “popularity.”  In other words, they are not chosen due to some affront to any given standards of moral principles.  As such, the treatment of the issues is only concerned with justice and civility as coincidental factors, not as their justification to be included for consideration.

·       And, with the above-mentioned consumer approach, the books express an individual perspective – how each identified person is affected – and little concern is expressed in terms of collectives or communal interests.

Overall, the textbooks are true to a natural rights view with its bias for science, objectivity, and utilization of a non-normative tone and language.

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[1] Elsewhere, he has critiqued the civics standards issued by the National Council for the Social Studies.  See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).

[2] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[3] Richard C. Remy, Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).

CONCERNS IN A REVIEW

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

A recurring claim this blog makes is that textbooks, more than any other factor, determine the curriculum of secondary courses.[1]  And in American government high school courses, two textbooks dominate that market.  They are Magruder’s American Government[2]and Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[3]  And just to round what seems relevant, the choice of such books is made by school district and state officials through an adoption process.

This blog has presented over a number of postings an informal report as to the content of those books and how well the books meet federalist concerns.  This and the following postings will review the main points of that report.  If the reader cares to pursue this topic, there is an online site that presents a complete version of the report and can be found at the URL, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSQxMfz-ILTNUq-qUXwCK-VjkQ55HWCY7lj6tCmAaaH53Z2B8jQfmhb_cfvaSbXr-4U6nQb1p4wdLJB/pub .

          In terms of this review, the focus is on the language used in these textbooks.  To make this analysis, this blog has chosen to look at the 2019 edition of Magruder’s and the 2010 edition of Glencoe’s.  By looking at a random selection of paragraphs from each book, one can glean the tone and language each uses to describe and explain the various elements of the US political system.

But before commencing with this review some points should be made.  The reader should be clear about the logic the writer is employing in taking the steps he is taking.  First, he begins with the belief that the natural rights view of governance and politics has taken hold in America, particularly in its political culture.  This blog has provided evidence to support this belief.

Second, as cultural beliefs tend to do, that view has a strong influence on how the various institutions of society see politics and that includes the educational institution.  That influence is most directly felt in the nation’s civics classrooms.  And as such, that influence affects which textbooks will be deemed acceptable.

Therefore, a hypothesis one can logically draw from this backdrop is that the content of those chosen textbooks will reflect the natural rights’ view of governance and politics.  Further, one can detect that bias in the tone and choice of terminology or language those books employ.  That, in short, explains why this review looks at the random choice of paragraphs extracted from these two textbooks.

More concretely, one can ask of these books:

·       Do they describe politics in an amoral fashion? 

·       Do they describe citizens as consumers of public services and ignore or avoid mentioning them as being federated to promote the common good? 

·       Are political interactions basically treated in isolated fashion in that only the immediate rewards and punishments are considered? 

·       Are issues of justice or civility ignored or at best assumed to be in place as the books review various competitive situations that politics entail? 

These questions reflect federalist attributes that advocates of federation theory favor.

And underlying these questions, an advocate of federation theory might ask about a nagging concern emanating from yet another construct, critical theory.  Advocates of critical theory advise people to look at more cynical motives.  No, not the motives of teachers, but of school officials found at school district offices, state departments of education, and the federal department of education.  Critical theorists generally claim that such key decisions as textbook choices are highly influenced by concerns over promoting pro-business messaging.

That is, officials will not leave such choices to chance or what is in current fashion but will ensure that a free market orientation will be advanced, not by direct promotion, but by such factors as tone and language.  To cite a leading critical theorist, Michael Apple, “They [education officials] see schools as connected to a marketplace.”[4]  Therefore, if one does find natural rights’ language and tone in those textbooks, one can see that as supporting this critical theory claim.

This writer is not a critical theorist.  But that does not preclude him from agreeing with some aspects of that view.  And, in terms of this claim, he tends to see that upper education officials do demand that the nation’s instructional biases be supportive of the economic powers of the day.  Effective in promoting that message is instructional content that assumes that the interests of students are furthered by participating in governmental interactions. 

Consequently, any employed materials, such as textbooks, will communicate how people succeed in gaining their political aims and goals which often reflect economic interests.  They aim to have students’ attention be focused on how political actors advance their interests.  But while advancing one’s interests is legitimate (assuming those interests don’t counter the common good), the nation’s constitutional makeup calls for more.  Summarizing what that means, two desired attributes come to mind:  social capital and civic humanism.

That being:

·       Social capital, at the societal level, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.[5]  And

·       Civic humanism, at the individual level, refers to a political being realizing his/her fulfilment through participation in public life and a concern for public good above selfish ends.[6] 

The messaging that would encourage this sort of society and citizen cannot be left to mild or vague messaging.  It has to be promoted head on with not an insistence on their acceptance – that wouldn’t work even if it were tried – but with appropriate questioning and problem-solving exercises in which students are called upon to pass judgment on situations challenging these valued qualities.

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[1] This might also be the case in elementary school but that’s beyond this writer’s knowledge.

[2] Daniel M. Shea, Magruder’s American Government (Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2019).

[3] Richard C. Remy, Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2010).

[4] Michael W.  Apple, “Educational Restructuring and the Neo-liberal and Neo-conservative Agendas:  Interview with Michael Apple,”  Curriculo sem Frontieiras, 1, 1 (January/June, 2001), accessed May 25, 2020, http://www.curriculosemfronteiras.org/vol1iss1articles/appleeng.pdf . 

[5] Robert D.  Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[6] Isaac Kramnick,  “John Locke and Liberal Constitutionalism,” in Major Problems in American Constitutional History, Volume I:  The Colonial Era Through Reconstruction, ed. by Kermit L. Hall (Lexington, MA:  D. C. Heath and Company, 1992), 97-114. 

THE MORALITY OF AN AMORAL VIEW

 

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Can a moral view that places moral questions to the discretion of each person, in effect, project far reaching moral standards on a vast array of issues?  At first consideration, this question poses an irony.  Moral standards, one would think, propose a set of “oughts.”  They tell people how to behave.  But if the individual is to decide what any standard that he/she will accept, then any such moral theory can only hint at a moral path.  But that overly simplifies things.

          First, to give this view a quality, one can easily see this approach as a form of liberty – the ability to live by one’s choices.  Observing the natural world, one sees that animals live by such a standard.  They do what they want – their morality is to do their own thing.  Applying this sense to humans, therefore, one can call that view of liberty a natural liberty.

With natural liberty, though, one restriction seems prudent.  In order to avoid the violence, one sees in nature, one needs to insist that natural liberty be constrained by people affording other people the same level of liberty.  In practical terms, that limits one’s choices by insisting that each person respects others’ rights.  As the adage states, “one has the right to wave his/her arms up to where another person’s nose starts.”  Animals are not appreciative of any such limitation, at least, not in terms of rights.  Yes, smaller animals regularly yield to larger animals, and in effect that limits their options, but morality is not what they are considering.

          But to get back to humans, this amoral sense – one that Machiavelli described – relies on a hefty moral sense.  Admittedly, it probably is best judged to be founded on moral positions of omission rather than commission.  To sustain a society that has a prevailing natural rights view, a certain approach to contentious situations needs to be defined and maintained.  Where these situations exist moral challenges tend to be most strident. 

What method can be adopted to avoid violence when political interests are in conflict?  A look at another area of possible contention or of opposing interests can be helpful.  That would be economic competition and the reliance on what Jonah Goldberg calls the “Miracle.”[1]  That would be free markets. 

That is, the application of market values and processes can be applied to other domains or arenas without applying extensive moral guideposts.  Markets have demonstrated a means of cooperation.  They are based on each person being free to pursue his/her interests with a minimal set of rules.  For the most part this approach can illustrate how a natural rights view can allow governing, politicking, and other social processes to proceed with minimal moral overview. 

And in doing so, this purportedly amoral view turns out to be a highly extensive moral view.  This posting attempts to describe this seemingly contradictory messaging.  At its base, the main message is that a view of governance and politics, at its core, cannot avoid a moral foundation, at least, in part.

And this value commitment expresses itself in a wide spectrum of public policies.  To summarize, by casting the political arena as one solely composed of consumer-citizens – a citizenry competing for public assets – as opposed to a square – where partners are expressing their individual views of what promotes the common good – it will strongly tend to bolster what one can readily see as a moral position. 

That moral stand would see as preferable a strong disposition, i.e., a reluctance to propose or support governmental initiatives or governmental solutions to societal problems.  If people approach politics from their limited set of personal interests, their concerns for societal problems become easily subject to such thinking as “free rider”-ship in which each depends on others to solve shared problems.

In short, such a view favors right-of-center (conservative) politics and degrades left-of-center (liberal) politics as this latter orientation imposes values on people.  Note, this conservatism is of the natural rights variety, not of the religious-parochial-traditional sort. 

How does it degrade liberal thinking?  Because it judges that efforts to advance the common good through legal means, would impose authoritative expression of values on individuals.  This imposition, therefore, is antithetical to the basic value orientation of the natural rights’ moral – or is it amoral? – view.

Any resulting legislated programs or criminal laws would generally reflect some moral expression by others. No, they do not radicalize this notion, but this sort of judgement does have a strong influence on natural rights advocates.

And one can see this bias expressed in the textbooks American secondary schools utilize.  This claim needs to be supported by evidence and future postings will provide a summary of such evidence.  But assuming such evidence exists, then this market-oriented approach has several consequences. 

·       First, it promotes a self-serving citizenry which runs counter to what the founders of the nation envisioned.  After all, the goal was for a more perfect union that included an improving general welfare. 

·       Second, it encourages a view of governance and politics as being a continuous succession of isolated confrontations in which rewards and punishments (costs) are calculated in short-term time dimensions. 

·       And third, it renders the study of politics to consumer issues at the hinderance of communal interests.  For example, such views place in low priority the needs of infrastructure improvement because the rewards are in the future while the costs are present.

Adding to this “valued” bias is a realization that the view caters to the way people naturally think.  They have by nature only a limited propensity to think altruistically.  They do have a natural tendency to concern themselves with the interests of those defined under the category of Us, but that’s where the concern naturally ends including any disposition to broaden who is included in the Us. 

To extend that concern, on two fronts (who is defined as Us and what one’s responsibilities are for others), one needs to be taught to embrace these concerns or perspectives.  And by logical deduction, this counters the natural rights’ bias.  But, to some meaningful extent, this concern constitutes, in the eyes of many, what citizenship is all about.  If that is true, one can readily accept that civics should encompass these issues and that, under the natural rights bias, these issues are being ignored because they are not as proactively valued as they should be.

Instead, the prevailing value is that they should not be.  And what about the evidence?  Starting with the next posting, a summary report of the prevailing textbooks will be offered.  A point should be remembered as the blog shares this information; textbooks, for all practical purposes, define the curriculum being taught in American schools.  This dependence is not by law, but by practice.  Unfortunately, most teachers see the textbook as informing them about what the curriculum is.  That is, they see their jobs as “teaching” the contents of those books.

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[1] Jonah Goldberg, Suicide of the West:  How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics Is Destroying American Democracy (New York, NY:  Crown Forum, 2018).

MECHANICAL OR ORGANIC, WHO CARES?

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

 The adoption of the political systems model as the prevailing, basic view of governance and politics in civics classrooms[1] has generated a contentious issue.  That is:  should the model’s use reflect a mechanical view, or should it reflect an organic view?  Admittedly, among civics educators, this issue does not keep them up at night.  But upon some reflection, at least by this writer, it should.

Historically, when that model first broke through during the fifties, it utilized a highly behavioral view of political activity.  That is, it narrowed its analysis of political interactions to the immediate factors of rewards and punishments at stake in any given political act or type of action.

One should keep in mind that by its very nature, political interactions have to do with vying interests competing for some asset – usually a public asset – in which the distribution of the asset is not applicable to a market process.  For example, the allocation of a highway to one community or another, would be such a competition.  Or the competition could be of an indirect nature, for example, whether a regulation should be written one way, or another, could mean millions of dollars at stake in a given industry.

So, with a purely behavioral approach, politics was more apt to be studied through the quantification of the various factors or variables relating to the questions political scientists ask.  They took on this approach to be able to develop predictable and explanatory theories of political phenomena – much like natural scientists with their studies of natural phenomena.  They were not able to accomplish that feat and this led to the realization that many political factors are not subject to the direct quantification that natural factors or variables are.   

As the sixties came and wore on, therefore, this approach was found to be wanting.  The realization was developed that a straight or pure version of behavioral studies more resembled or could be considered a “mechanical” approach to the study of politics.  Eventually, David Easton, the leading voice in the political systems school of thought, argued for a more “organic” approach.[2]

          The original model emphasized the input-conversion-output elements of the model.  Easton explained that this stimulus-response conceptualization needed to give way to a stimulus-organism-response view.  And to do this, another element needed to be emphasized, that being feedback.  Or, stated more descriptively, the model needs to take into account more aggressively how people in the polity react to output (which is usually governmental policies).

          Either way, by political science shifting to behavioral modeling, and its overall effort to resemble the natural sciences, it, through its protocols, focuses on stripping any emotional biases from its studies.  One of the main objections to traditional – usually historical – studies of politics was their likelihood of being biased accounts to the study of political developments. 

Therefore, a prominent, initial concern in adopting behavioral methods was how to objectify political studies.  In further shifting the analysis to take into account reactions or feedback – with all the emotional factors involved both on the part of subjects and observing scientists – normative factors came to be seen as necessary elements of what needed to be studied even if that meant objectification would be less possible or less stringent. 

          The political actor can no longer be perceived in a way that is akin to a pigeon in a Skinner experiment.  Does the subject vote for a candidate (does a pigeon peck at a lever) or not?  It turns out humans acting politically cannot be reduced to this level of objectification.  And this writer’s use of political science literature has led him to believe that that research is more productive and useful with a more encompassing view of governance and politics, i.e., one that takes into account feedback.

          But how has the shift affected civics education?  This blog has reviewed civics textbooks with this question in mind.[3]  Generally, that review found that those books do little to account for feedback; it is an element that is mostly ignored.  No, their descriptions of political behavior do not reduce it to descriptions or explanations as stark as Skinnerian studies, but one can note a definite disregard for the emotions involved. 

Therefore, one can judge that what the American civics curriculum, as betrayed in those textbooks, expose to the secondary students is a mechanical view.  But a distinction needs to be made.  The political system itself, under the more organic view, is seen as an organism.  And the system is made up of organisms, that being the individual members of a system. 

But at the systemic level, the system is an analogized organ entity; the members, if one is speaking of the people, are, of course, actual organ entities.  What a federalist would judge of this construct, even after this more humanizing change, is that the analogized portion of the model falls short and is somewhat bizarre.  They would ask:  why analogize? 

To them a political system is a partnership, and a partnership is real assuming that its partners are conscious of their status and that they are partners of their own volition.  And in this, the political systems model provides a disservice.  By being the model civics adopts, it seriously undermines the constitutional arrangement that document formally establishes among the American people by portraying the union as some made up concept.  In using the resulting textbooks, the onus is on educators to make this clear.

          Now, with that off this federation theory advocate’s chest, one point needs to be clarified, civics studies governance and politics and those two processes determine how sought-after, public assets are distributed.  An organic view – and more so, a federated view – relies on a more humane perspective when compared to a mechanical view. 

Therefore, by opting for a mechanical view, civics instruction loses the dramatic quality of politics as being the “art of the possible.”  Instead, a less than full human image is presented, and with that, an inevitable, misleading governmental role is promoted.  That is, it gives government a solely agency role – i.e., it is pictured as this grand entity fully controlled by the wishes of the electorate. 

Further, that electorate is pictured as citizens who all have equal voices – not as an ideal (that would be too unobjectified) – but as a reality.  In short, these books ignore the presence, makeup, and function of power – what it is, how it is acquired, how it is exercised, how it is increased, how it is lost, and how it is maintained are questions these books mostly ignore.  Any reference to power is merely incidental to some event or condition they describe and treat it as contextual matter.

          And a textbook on governance and politics that avoids these questions, is an account that not only falls way short of what is involved, but also plays a role in setting up students to become disinterested, disappointed, and indifferent adult citizens.  Yes, a successful rendering of these books’ contents will set up students to understand what the popular press reports.  But as to the reasons of why political developments take the shape they do, they, as students today and as their adult versions tomorrow, are apt to be clueless.

          Evidence of this can be the following:  when a politician claims to set out to “drain the swamp” and that is interpreted as depopulating the government of civil servants who act apolitically, a serious level of misunderstanding is occurring.  People with that level of misperception are ripe for being subjects of unfounded arguments and believers of baseless conspiracy theories.  The reader might look around; the nation is there.

P.S.:  Happy election day; please vote.

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[1] See “Inputs, Outputs, and Feedback,” March 13, 2020, accessed November 1, 2020, http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020_03_08_archive.html .

[2] Easton, “The Current Meanings of ‘Behavioralism,’” in Contemporary Political Analysis, 11-31.

[3] A future posting will summarize that review.

REINFORCING FUNCTIONS

 

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

A funny thing about the relationship between civics education and political science is that the practitioners of both fields do not give the relationship much thought.  This is doubly true for political scientists, but at least civics teachers, to be certified, need to earn credits in political science.  But despite this apparent indifference, there seem to be two functions that relationship serves.

They take the following form:  political science provides information that civics courses use, and civics courses prepare students to expect objectified information when the topic is politics – an assumption contemporary political science favors.  To find evidence of how these functions are satisfied in civics education, one can look at civics’ textbooks. 

In practical terms, those textbooks tell civics teachers what to teach and an overview of their content is very telling as to how these reinforcing functions are performed.  Generally, the effect of these books and the related instruction are to convey to students a consumerist view of citizenship.  That is, the typical American, as depicted in these books, is a person with a limited concern about what governments are or what they do.  Their topics center on how the various entities within the polity compete to attain favorable governmental services.

That is, the descriptions are akin to describing a customer at some retail store.  This is a far cry from the image one gets from Lincoln’s refrain:  “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  It, in other words, ignores the partnership view that the Constitution establishes.  Partners do not limit their concerns to what an enterprise can provide them on a given day.

They instead have a longer-term view, and that view holds that the health of the enterprise is extremely important.  They express this concern in their views, pronouncements, and strategies about how they behave within the partnership.  If one holds to the ideal expressed in Lincoln’s statement, then one sees this lack of normative concern in civics instruction as a shortcoming. 

In general, civics textbooks do not, to a meaningful degree, advance a partnership sense of citizenship.  Not only do these books avoid normative issues, but given they are based on the political systems model, they also neglect an essential element of that model, that being the “feedback loop.”  That is, these books neglect looking at how people react to governmental policies.

To explain this element, it falls in line with how organisms react to stimuli.  Early utilization of the political systems model received criticism because it relied too heavily on the behavioralist notion of “reward/punishment” determinants or as the field calls it:  “stimulus-response.”  Simply stated, it tended to see political behavior as merely a calculated process by which a person attempts to maximize rewards and minimize punishments. 

That early criticism summarily pointed out that its approach was a mechanical view of politics.  By emphasizing inputs, conversion, outputs, the use of the model did not sufficiently provide attention to a subject’s feelings, motivations, and the other subjective aspects of a person’s awareness and reaction.

But, by shifting more attention to the feedback element, and the array of emotions that a reaction might include, that would give the model a needed organic sense or view.  As a result, David Easton eventually called for these other factors to be taken into account in political studies.[1]    

But civics textbooks ignore this feedback feature and, therefore, instead of an organic view, these books retain the model’s initial mechanistic view – machines don’t react, they simply follow the physical laws of nature.  This in effect renders these books as giving governance and politics a dehumanized portrayal as they avoid subjective information and, therefore, tend not to account for the controversies that naturally arise in everyday politics. 

The view, instead, limits itself to describing entity X seeking governmental service, Y, by performing Z process.  Missing is the more intriguing story of how the actors, reflecting on a slew of motivations, dispense rewards and punishments by governments and citizens (e.g., favorable policies by government or political donations by citizens) in an ongoing process over time.  As such, there is little in these books on how the participants of the system are either motivated or dissuaded to behave in the various options open to them. 

There are various areas in which this focus on science, described in previous postings, has meaningful effects on how civics textbooks approach their subject matter.  In relation to this just addressed issue, how and why political actors act as they do, the first of these areas has to do with how the very acts of politics are defined. 

Starting with Harold Lasswell’s seemingly flippant definition – politics is determining “who get what, when, how” – this definition promotes that above mentioned consumerist character and it loses, to a meaningful degree, the assumed overall motivation to advance the interests of the common good or the seeking of that “perfect union.”  But it took a couple of decades, starting in the thirties, for Lasswell’s view to take hold in the fifties. 

That eventuality can be marked with the contribution of Easton.  The popularization of the political systems model is attributed to him.  He commented extensively on the implications of this model, but at its base what one carries away is an explicit image of a transactional system. 

Actors are motivated by self-interest and mostly engage in tit-for-tat interactions.  They seek rewards and avoid punishments.  While in actuality, this basic pattern leads to complicated consequences – e.g., mounting advantages by those who have inordinate levels of political assets – the basic process is relatively easy to accept because under a natural rights view it is easy to understand.

And as such, it becomes a convenient framework for civics textbooks.  Here, within their covers, one finds an overall motivational view for politics, a series of descriptions of participants in the resulting competition which characterizes politics, and descriptions of the organizational set-ups in which those participants function. 

Resulting textbooks, in summary, have a recurring format:  there are the basic rules of the political game (early chapters), the input groupings (the second set of chapters), and the conversion structures (primarily the latter chapters).  What is not included are the output/feedback aspects, which are mostly ignored.  At best, a student so instructed turns out to be an informed observer of the nightly news.

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[1] David Easton, “The Current Meanings of ‘Behavioralism,’” in Contemporary Political Analysis, ed. James C. Charlesworth (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1967), 11-31.

A SHIFT IN THE CLASSROOM

 

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

When considering the role civics education plays in society, one must consider the context in which that role is played.  While this contextual relationship might be observed in any nation, the fact that the American political culture has taken a natural rights view as its dominant perspective, the political culture has influenced how civics is seen and how it is taught in a particular way.

          The effect of the natural rights view makes itself felt both directly in the content of civics’ subject matter and indirectly in that subject matter’s main source of content – that being political science.  That is, since the 1950s, that academic discipline has reflected this shift by its adoption of the political systems model and its utilization of behavioral, “scientific” methodologies.[1]  These changes have seriously encouraged civics to present to secondary students a highly structural and procedural image of American governance.  This posting describes how that has happened.

          An overall reason for this turn in political science and civics education reflects the admired advancements in the natural sciences.  And those advancements seemed to culminate with the space program that affected the imaginations of many Americans.  Their imaginations were bolstered by the dual effects of pride over US’ accomplishments, but also by fear, given the early successes by the country’s main foe, the Soviet Union.

With the launching of Sputnik, the political leaders of the US were determined to catch up to the Soviet’s early lead in space exploration.  Beginning in the fifties, they funded various initiatives among a number of institutions in American life including education.  And that commitment proved to have a profound effect not only on science and math education, but also on social studies as well.

          With this concern, the national social studies establishment attempted to promote the “New Social Studies” which called for the utilization of science protocols to instructional strategies – even to the study of history.  While these instructional coaxing proved for the most part to be unsuccessful, the content of social studies subject matter did experience a move toward presenting objectified-based content while shying away from normative issues.  The new focus became “what is” or “what was” instead of “what should be” or “what should have been.” 

This change is in line with the natural rights’ belief that normative decisions belong to the individual and efforts, especially by a governmental entity – such as public schools – should keep an arm’s length distance from such issues.  This reminds the writer of the relatively unintrusive message the Obama Administration promoted for good dietary practices it issued to the nation’s school systems in 2010 and the reaction that message caused.  The Administration was in that instance accused of conducting an indoctrinating effort. 

It seems that in the eyes of that President’s detractors, promoting good eating habits – to a nation that is experiencing serious levels of obesity among young people – crosses a line between what is legitimate, objective educational presentations, and what is illegitimate, normative or value-based presentations.

Civics is charged with teaching students the knowledge and skills they need to be effective citizens in a democracy.  What “effectiveness” means seems to be the point of contention.  Natural rights advocates limit its meaning to the structural/procedural aspects to what citizens need to know to fulfill the basic function of citizenship. 

That would include being knowledgeable about the “popular” issues of the day (the ones drawing the most attention) and how a citizen performs basic expectations – such as voting and paying taxes.  Yes, there is the aim that students at least at this point in their lives be exposed to the various structural elements of the political system (both those in and out of government).  That effort is a rundown of the system’s groups, departments, agencies, and of the major processes (such as the formulation of laws) that the system conducts.

What is avoided is any discussion about how those activities should be conducted even if a potential topic or issue can be defined as harming or potentially harming the health of the polity such as in the above example of obesity.  This limited concern – not limited material, the typical civics textbook is an amply-sized book – leaves controversies behind.

And then there is the question of what should be asked of students when they are presented the information their civics courses contain.  Whether a civics teacher uses a didactic mode of instruction – one that basically dispenses information – or inquiry – one that poses questions or problems for students to answer or solve – for a student to be an effective citizen, the student needs to reflect on the material presented or discovered.  Short of that, whatever information is dispensed tends to be quickly forgotten.[2] 

It turns out, forgetting “stuff” is what people tend to do.  Research seems to indicate that the mental exercise of encoding[3] – a necessary mental prerequisite – leads people to remember information.  The process of solving problems or seeking moral justifications or condemnations naturally depends on the mind encoding relevant information.  By calling for such mental manipulations, inquiry instructional strategies naturally lead to encoding as information is conceptualized and then compartmentalized in one’s thinking. 

Purely didactic teaching, on the other hand, does not in itself provide an exercise that demands active encoding while the instruction takes place.  Students usually are expected to take notes and, at some future time, review them and commit them to memory.  What encoding takes place is incidental to that process while inquiry sessions demand simultaneous encoding while any instruction or related investigating takes place.

So, even if a teacher primarily dispenses information, to increase the likelihood that information is remembered, much less make it meaningful, that teacher needs to find ways to have those students encode the information they are given. 

For example, a didactic lesson can begin by the teacher presenting the students with an “essay” question answerable by implementing the subsequent information the teacher presents.  This would not only introduce the lesson, but help students begin thinking of why the presented information is important according to a concern reflected in the initial question.

And this brings one to the cultural relationships entailed in civics between its main source of information and its efforts to prepare students to be effective citizens.  That is, there is a reinforcing relationship between political science and how civics is practiced in American schools.  The next posting will take a look at that relationship and how it affects the quality of that instruction in American secondary schools.

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[1] One can find an “appendix” chapter describing and explaining this development online; see  https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSjZxpifP42VVnhFduKujgUDPJMddmcsh1uRY9DvpNicdYUONOHx56r1jRg4lgxK3ckaiQMJc4Gno0J/pub .

[2] See Kendra Cherry, “4 Explanations for Why We Forget,” Very Well Mind, n.d., accessed October 25, 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/explanations-for-forgetting-2795045 , for a description on the importance of encoding in remembering information.

[3] Encoding means that a mind formulates information in a form it can translate and consequently process.  Even at this basic level, the mind must direct toward the stimulus in question some basic reflection and, of course, the more the information is reflected upon the more firmly it is encoded.  See “Encoding,” AlleyDog.com, n.d., accessed October 26, 2020, https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Encoding#:~:text=The%20process%20of%20breaking%20the,and%20later%20retrieval%20is%20encoding.