MORAL TERMS IN INSTRUCTION

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

Just to be clear, the last posted entry of this blog was a “digression,” that is, an interjected bit of information for readers who have secured a book this blogger has had published, Toward a Federated Nation.  That book, through its end/footnotes refers to supplemental chapters or essays augmenting, clarifying, or otherwise further explaining an aspect of that book.  It also does the same for an upcoming book this blogger is planning to get published.

          As for the current path this blog has taken, this posting continues what the series of postings has been addressing.  It continues reviewing a list of five elements this blogger believes a teacher preparation program should include.  The blog is up to element four.  It is,

 

Element four:  A program that couches, primarily through civics education but radiating throughout a utilized curriculum, an instructional approach in moral terms.

 

Perhaps the reader by now – if he/she has been reading the various entries of this series – has decided where this blogger stands in relation to the cultural wars.  Let him be clear; he profoundly respects and supports the constitutional provisions for the separation of church and state.  He fully supports the obstacles against proselytizing in the nation’s public schools.  But that does not mean the nation should have a civics education that pretends to be neutral on values and morals.

          For one thing, that is not what the nation has today.  Under the guise of taking a hands-off posture to value questions or positioning, current civics curricular strategies leave it to individual students to determine what values they choose to adopt or develop.  This blogger has called such a posture a natural rights position.  While ostensibly neutral, in actuality, such a curricular stand is promoting capitalist values. 

What determines “goodness” or “badness” revolves around what sells on any given day or season.  Goodness is what is popularly considered good, and badness is what is popularly cast as evil or immoral.  But if an educator believes such an approach is not only counterproductive, it is at some level dictating the nation’s lack of morality or abundance of amorality.  But what is one to do about this state of affairs?

This blogger believes that public schools can teach a more substantive moral position.  When advocating such a stance, the immediate concern one hears is whose values and morals should be adopted?  This blogger believes an American answer to such a question – especially when directed toward civic concerns – should be that of the founding fathers, expressed in their profound wisdom by what they expressed in relation to the nation’s founding documents.

To explain, one is assisted by categorizing what those patriots produced in both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  So, for example, the structure of the US Constitution makes it a compact.  This structure comes from the covenants (a form of a compact) that organized congregational churches in colonial times and, in turn, originated from Judeo traditions.

Covenants are documents that contain solemn pledges of unity in which the pledged parties swear to uphold the provisions of the covenant, irrespective of what any of the parties might or might not do.  A covenant calls on God to witness such unions.  The broader category, the compact, is such a pledge but does not call on God to be a witness. 

As the political scientist, Donald Lutz,[1] points out, an analysis of the founding documents from the time of the Mayflower Compact (which is a covenant) point out that the founding framers of the nation’s republic were very conscious of this meaning.  That is why one treats the Constitution with such solemnity.

A closer view, though, brings out a very important development.  The Declaration of Independence is a covenant.  The United States Constitution is a compact.  There is no mention of a higher power in the Constitution.  The only mention of religion, in effect, limits its influence while protecting it from government interference.  This blogger believes that the founding fathers were admonishing their posterity with the words “to promote a more perfect union” to create a moral foundation based on a secular morality.

Such a claim can be controversial.  This secular morality is not meant to interfere with the general sense of morality emanating from established religions but is to be one which the civic public could count on no matter what the personal moral beliefs of an individual might be.  While the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, establishes the basis for the nation’s law, not the nation’s general sense of morality, in doing so it also reflects who Americans are as a people, what their constitution (with a small “c”) is, and their basic cultural beliefs are. 

As this blogger, in his teaching days, tried to convey to his high school students, a national constitution is the ideals of a culture meeting the practical realities of a nation.  Central to creating a more perfect union is creating the structure, not only of government, but of a society that promotes its own survival and advancement.

The criteria defining advancement are determined by the posterity of the founding generation.  Within that mandate, one can determine from experience certain principles that need to be respected in order for survival and advancement to proceed.  These principles can be expressed in terms of values.  They would include liberty, equality, justice, loyalty, a disposition to work in communities, private property, honesty, and so forth.[2]

Civics education should be based on a definite set of values not from those in power deciding what they should be, not from religious theology, but from a non-ending study of what has led societies to survive and advance.  One reads of such a study when one considers the references that the nation’s founding generation made in its pamphlets and other written works. 

In similar fashion, one should not be shy about the nation’s moral commitment to the principles of the Constitution, particularly to its invitation – or is it its expectation – for the nation to engage in this moral process, which in part is very settled and in part is open to debate and discussion.  And with that spirit, one can approach the day-to-day challenges civics teachers face and that their preparation to be teachers should have prepared them to tackle – which is the topic of the last element and fleshed out in the next and last posting of this series.

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[1] Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton Rouge, LA:  Louisiana State University Press, 1988).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “Rekindling Concerns over Moral Politics in the Classroom,” The Social Studies, 92, 3 (2001), 113-119.

A DIGRESSION

 

[Note:  As the reader might notice, this posting is being posted outside of the usual schedule this blog follows.  Its purpose is to inform a directed reader on how to gain access to supplemental readings to which this blogger’s published works refer, highlight, or otherwise cite.  This posting will be referred to in future postings and, in all likelihood, will be amplified as this blogger adds to his published book list.

          As of this initial date, October 23, 2021, he has had one book published.  That is Toward a Federated Nation.  Hopefully, a second book is just beyond the horizon as it is in the final editorializing phases.  That second book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics, is included in the following listing.  A reader who is wishing to read or look at one of the referred supplemental works need only click on the noted URL to gain access.

            Lastly (for now), there is a "book" of the first one hundred postings of this blog.  Its title is Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  The designation, "Volume I," assumes there will be other volumes and that will be the case at some future date.  Volume I is found online and its URL is indicated below.

          By way of explaining this mode of access, this blogger believes typing the short URL to this blog site is not as burdensome as typing in the longer URLs that the listings below indicate.]

 

In the works of Robert Gutierrez there are references to online sites.  Those sites have supplemental information that further describes or explains what the works claim or argue.  If interested in these added information sources, a reader can scroll down this site, find the work he/she is reading, and then choose the specific site he/she is seeking.  For example, if the reader is reading Toward a Federated Nation and wants to read the supplemental entry regarding the Opioid Crisis, he/she only need to click – as indicated below – the following URL, https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11635&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AFhwqIF3ZhONVK8 .  That will allow the reader to gain access to the informational supplement entitled, “FACTOIDS AND INSIGHTS DESCRIBING THE OPIOID EPIDEMIC.”

 

Online sites listing factoids and insights of topics in Toward a Federated Nation

Submitted by Robert Gutierrez,

In the book, Toward a Federated Nation, a number of online sites are provided.  Each contains information relating to the various topics of that book.  Below is a listing of those sites’ URLs.  They are listed here for convenience.

Opioid Crisis

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11635&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AFhwqIF3ZhONVK8

 

History of Tort Cases

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11777&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AHB4SPIeFYPBjQY

 

Foreign Trade and Job Availability

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11686&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!ALoSywwk4uB2QlI

 

Foreign Currency Simulation

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11686&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!ALoSywwk4uB2QlI OR the PDF file, https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=CED163627385DD3C&id=CED163627385DD3C%2117469&parId=CED163627385DD3C%21104&o=OneUp

 

In the book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics, a number of online sites are provided.  Each contains information relating to the various topics in that book.  Below is a listing of those sites’ URLs.  They are listed here for convenience.

“How Effective is Civics Education?”

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=CED163627385DD3C!11783&ithint=file%2cdocx&app=Word&authkey=!AHFo6PFBnpUkePw

 

“(Online) Appendix Chapter:  The Influence of Political Science on Civics”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSjZxpifP42VVnhFduKujgUDPJMddmcsh1uRY9DvpNicdYUONOHx56r1jRg4lgxK3ckaiQMJc4Gno0J/pub 

“The Magruder and Glencoe Case”

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSQxMfz-ILTNUq-qUXwCK-VjkQ55HWCY7lj6tCmAaaH53Z2B8jQfmhb_cfvaSbXr-4U6nQb1p4wdLJB/pub

AND

“The Natural Rights’ Effect on Civics Education"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n__yYGX1AE1zc96JQdaBiVM1JhPpcee6bZ9FHZoA42Y/view

As for the “book,” Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I, that work is found at the site, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit.

WHERE THEY’RE AT

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

Presently, this blog is reviewing five elements of what this blogger believes a teacher preparation program – especially the preparation of social studies and more specifically, civics teachers – should include.  The blog has shared the first two elements and has presented a word or two concerning element three.  That element is:

 

Element Three:  A program that imparts the teaching skills that allow those perspective teachers to conduct curriculum strategies that instruct children and adolescents in the civic knowledge and skills suitable to their developmental level and to the civic challenges of their community, state, and nation.

 

Here, the emphasis is that teachers should be armed with the ability to utilize various instructional strategies.

          Those strategies can be gauged according to two dimensions.  The first is in regard to philosophic positions that one detects in the literature – from behavioral to artistic positions – and the second about how differing approaches assume levels of maturation.  The presentation will now finish its comments on this second factor.

          With maturation, especially as this factor affects challenged, immature segments of the student population, one overarching claim seems to capture one’s attention.  Without effective parental demands, curiosity about academic concerns, or access to unusually skillful teachers (the supply is limited), only relevancy seems to be left.  Therefore, a start with student-based issues (a source identified by Ralph Tyler[1]) seems to offer a reliable source of motivating material.  For example, such a strategy is depicted in the feature film, Dangerous Minds.[2]

          As with philosophic views concerning instruction, this factor of maturation lends itself to a continuum.  At one end, there is an egocentric source and at the other end there are universal sources.  Within the continuum, one has the student, then the society, and finally the subject matter or the discipline.  Underlying this ordered listing one can add the descriptive term, “potential development of the spiritual.”  That is, as one goes to the universal, this potential of spirituality increases (more on this below).

          In the previous posting, this blog suggested that one should approach these options with the disposition to seek a balance.  While a balance means that all three sources for curriculum and instruction are employed to some degree, no matter what level of maturity the student has, most curriculum projects – with their suggested instructional processes – and their materials including textbooks have betrayed a definite bias to seek input from the disciplines.

          At FSU,[3] the methods courses addressed this and instructed their perspective teachers to produce lessons that rectify this deficiency that textbooks represent.  Of course, such an approach calls on teachers to do a lot more work.  The simpler route is to simply lecture on the content in the order that the textbook presents it and use the auxiliary materials that the textbook publishers provide.

          Again, as with the philosophic options, maturation levels and the sources they suggest can be visualized as a graphic continuum.  This venue does not allow a presentation here, but the reader can use a bit of imagination to see, running left to right, the three sources listed from an egocentric end to a universal end.  On such a graphic, one can detect below it a reference to the potential of increased spirituality. 

Again, this last component simply refers to the possibility that as students develop toward the universal, they could increasingly formulate an appreciation of a life force, either religiously or secularly defined.  This sense of kindred spirit adds a motivational foundation for a civic approach to learning.  This relates not only to the content associated with civics education, but also to the content across the whole curriculum.

This seems to be a good place to end this posting – giving a chance for one to consider what it implies for all of education – and approach the next posting ready to take up element four.  That element takes a definite moral turn, an aspect of education that easily gets lost as one considers all the various aspects of that institution.

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[1] Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949).

[2] Dangerous Minds is a 1995 American dramatic film.  In an online summary of the film, one finds the following:

Former Marine Louanne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) lands a gig teaching in a pilot program for bright but underachieving teens at a notorious inner-city high school. After having a terrible first day, she decides she must throw decorum to the wind. When Johnson returns to the classroom, she does so armed with a no-nonsense attitude informed by her military training and a fearless determination to better the lives of her students -- no matter what the cost.

John N. Smith (director), Dangerous Minds (Hollywood, CA:  Hollywood Pictures Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckeimer Films, 1995).  For more of an overview, see “Dangerous Minds,” Google (n.d.), accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.google.com/search?q=the+feature+film%2C+dangerous+minds&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=the+feature+film%2C+dangerous+minds&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i299.10231j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 .

[3] The previous posting introduced the example of FSU’s teacher preparation program.

MATURING CONCERNS VIS-À-VIS INSTRUCTION

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

To remind the reader, here is the element of a preferred approach to a civics teacher preparation program that this blog is currently considering,

 

Element Three:  A program that imparts the teaching skills that allow those perspective teachers to conduct curriculum strategies that instruct children and adolescents in the civic knowledge and skills suitable to their developmental level and to the civic challenges of their community, state, and nation.

 

 

This element invites an interested party to consider a variety of instructional strategies which were reviewed in the last posting.  They were arranged according to a conceptualized continuum from a scientific/technical end to a non-scientific/non-technical, holistic end.

          Generally, that continuum points out that instruction can vary according to what one expects students’ roles can assume from being passive recipients of information to an active, discovering role to participation in relevant, artistic endeavors.  That posting made two claims regarding how teachers, on a given day, should decide what strategy to employ in conducting a lesson.

That would be, first, that whatever strategy a teacher might employ, so as to be successful; it must engage students in conducting reflective consideration of the content presented or discovered.  Second, that teachers should be familiar with this variety of options and be able to function at each one to best react to the various factors teachers face during the school year.

But there is another concern.  When this blogger was a faculty member at Florida State University, the teacher preparation program in the social science education offerings offered three methods courses:  one, was the basics and taught a traditional mode of instruction, two, a course mostly dedicated to teaching techniques in reading instruction as applied to social studies, and three, a course focused on inquiry instruction.  In this triad, the aim by FSU’s profs was to view the effort in terms of this other concern, that of developmental considerations.

That is, beyond instructional concerns over what level of engagement students should be asked to assume, the belief was that the needs associated with student developmental, or maturity levels should strongly influence what is planned.  In short, that consideration should be a meaningful concern of any civics education program. 

Of course, all discussion regarding developmental theory begins with a consideration of Jean Piaget’s model.[1]  The basic claim of that model relevant to the concern here is the notion that children gain in their ability to think abstractly as they become older or more mature.  Another developmental theorist, Lawrence Kohlberg, provides a model that depicts the developmental stages of moral thinking.[2]

The relevant claim of the Kohlberg model is that children are able, due in part to their ability to think more abstractly, to shift their moral attention from egocentric concerns toward more general and universal moral interests.  One might define maturation in terms of these two dimensions – abstract and moral thinking.  Therefore, one can begin with a realization that young people are cognitively and emotionally moving targets.

Young people go through changes, and they do not do so at the same pace or in a linear progression.  The curricular theorist, Ralph Tyler, borrowing an idea originally developed by Hollis L. Caswell and Ronald F. Campbell [3] in a famous book on curriculum development, popularizes the position that curriculum originates from three sources: the student, the society, and the subject matter or the academic discipline. 

To explain, Tyler argues that one needs to find a balance in the influence that each source exerts.  This insight is very helpful but taking these concerns one step further, one can apply the developmental ideas of Piaget and Kohlberg and conclude that the point of balance should ideally shift as students mature.  That is, in part, younger students or older immature students tend to be very self-centered with a very low-level ability to think abstractly. 

Therefore, at stages when the student is young or highly immature, the balance should actually favor the student – his/her concerns – as the primary source.  Content should revolve around issues that directly affect students such as relations with parents, student rights, the demands of schooling, etc.

As the student matures, issues of society would seem to become more engaging.  Here, issues such as poverty, war and peace, constitutional provisions, etc. can be the sources of instruction.  Finally, the more mature students should be open to issues that originate with the disciplines – history, political science, economics, etc.  The disciplines offer more powerful knowledge and are aimed at solving more universal problems.

Examples of discipline issues might include FED policy on controlling the money supply, the merits of President Jackson’s antagonism toward a national bank, the relative strengths and weaknesses between a strong executive model of governing as opposed to a weak executive model, etc. 

Applying this framework to two curricular approaches with which social studies teachers might be familiar, Project Citizen is one that is more student-centered, while We the People offers an approach that relies on societal issues and begins to incorporate disciplinary knowledge.[4]  At every level in this three stage progression – the student, the society, the discipline – the student is involved with problem solving or issue solving activities or considerations, and what evolves are the sources of those problems or issues.

The use of the progression depicted, from student to discipline, hints at a trade-off.  That is, for those who argue that instruction should be based on issues defined by the disciplines, they not only need to account for the lack of abstract thinking ability among most students, but also for the lack of institutional support facing many older, but immature students who unfortunately reflect certain segments of the nation’s population. 

Due to a variety of reasons (lack of time because of multiple demands, cultural biases that are indifferent or hostile to intellectual pursuits, or just individual indifference), low achieving students, many from low-income families, are noted for having parents who provide low levels of involvement in their children’s education.  These students are also noted for not being taught by the best teachers or being taught in academically demanding school environments.[5]

Without these supports, students are left to their own interests to define those pursuits in which they will engage.  Students need to want to learn something, a motivation that can be spurred from a variety of origins (both internal and external), before they do so. And with that – what should be seen as obvious – insight, this posting will end.  The next posting has a few more ideas to complete this blog’s commentary on element three.

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[1] See Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues (Boston, MA:  Pearson, 2004). 

[2] Lawrence Kohlberg, “The Cognitive-Development Approach to Moral Education,” in Curriculum Planning:  A Contemporary Approach, eds. Francis W. Parkay and Glen Hass (Boston, MA:  Allyn and Bacon, 2000).

[3] Ornstein and Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues.

[4] Both programs had quite a bit of popularity at the time of this blogger’s retirement in 2008.

[5] Stefan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom, No Excuses:  Closing the Racial Gap in Learning (New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster, 2003).

A VARIETY OF APPROACHES

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  The last posting finished describing and explaining the first of five elements.  This posting will begin by describing what the second element is.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

So, here is the next element,

 

Element Three:  A program that imparts the teaching skills that allow those perspective teachers to conduct curriculum strategies instructing children and adolescents in the civic knowledge and skills suitable to their developmental level and to the civic challenges of their community, state, and nation.

 

Here one gets to the practical.  What technique or methodology is most apt to engage students to be willing, able, and intelligently review the issues addressed in civics education?  Intuitively, one would guess that it would be one that has students perform, in real or simulated form, those activities that make up active civic roles in those secondary students’ communities.

          That is a format that calls on students to deal with issues that are pertinent to the civic realities of the day.  Students under such an approach could be asked to identify, define, and relate their values to those issues by investigating and forming and applying conclusions regarding them.  There happen to be many imaginative ways to go about doing these things.  Summarily, these strategies tend to follow an inquiry approach to social studies.[1]

          A review of instructional strategies tends to identify different approaches, each based on different philosophic positions and, by implication, favor varying methodological techniques.  While the literature offers listings of these approaches, this blogger bases his argument on a listing provided by Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins.[2] 

Their listing includes the behavioral approach, the managerial approach, the systems approach, the academic approach, the humanistic approach, and the reconceptualist approach.  This array, as presented by this listed order, suggests a rough continuum.      That continuum runs from a scientific/technical view to a non-scientific/non-technical, holistic view and, in between, various versions by degree of these more extreme views. 

If one were to draw this continuum, it might look like a list of approaches in the following ordered way:

Scientific/technical end of continuum

Behavioral – Essentialist approaches incorporating mostly didactic methods and emphasizing basic knowledge;

Managerial – Offshoot to behavioral approaches, emphasizing planning, rational principles, and logical steps (as in linear programming) but not necessarily stated in behavioral terms;

Systems – Incorporates a sensitivity to coordinating varying elements of social efforts, as in during the last century (mostly in the sixties), social studies promoted disciplinary (scientific based) methods of discovery;

Academic – Usually associated with historical or philosophical, deals with perennial questions and promotes the Socratic method of logical analysis;

Reconceptualist – Inheritors of the reconstructionist movement of the 1930s, with the aim of promoting justice and transforming society.  Methods used in this approach were geared toward critically challenging established socialization aims of existing curriculum;

Humanistic – Emphasizes artistic, physical, and cultural aspects of subject matter with an aim at the self-actualization of students.  Methods include a high degree of social interactions such as in small groups usually associated with student-centered curriculum.

Non-Scientific/Non-Technical, Holistic end of continuum

What has been the thrust of the literature in the field of social studies – perhaps of all education – has been to convince teachers that they need to develop lessons that call for students to participate in interactive, classroom activities.  This reflects adopting approaches associated with those listed from the systems to the humanistic end of the continuum.

          That is, it is generally ascribed that those approaches explicitly call on interactive methods and hands-on activities.  In general, there is among these approaches more of a reflective expectation on the part of the students (a necessary element of effective teaching no matter what approach is adopted).  Teachers, by and large, have been resistant to these approaches and favor the more didactic methods and essentialist content or methods that appear toward the scientific/technical end of continuum.

          They apparently have been more comfortable with what one can call traditional approaches in which teachers simply present the information that the students “need” to know.  The common teacher, in order to impart the information, gives lectures and has students fill in worksheets – or, being more innovative, might show a film.  This has been satirized in featured films depicting teachers who have yellowed, stained lecture notes or teachers who fall asleep in class while students fill in the answers to an endless stream of worksheets.

          This blogger’s take is as follows:  teaching is a very personal activity, and teachers will do what they feel most comfortable doing, but that does not relieve them from being as good as they can be in whatever approach they utilize.  But, as mentioned above, regardless of what method a teacher decides upon, if the student is going to learn, he/she needs to engage cognitively and emotionally with the content, what some might call being reflective of the material.

          Part of this engagement calls for the students to question and manipulate the information they are either given or that they discover.  Mere memorization might make the information available to the student in an end-of-the-lesson or unit test, but it will be soon forgotten if that information does not interact with information already known.  It will be temporarily stored and then dismissed – several learning theories support this depiction of long-term learning.[3]

          The point is that higher-level interactions with information do not necessarily come from inquiry, Socratic dialogues, or scientific discovery; they can come from engaging lectures and challenging worksheets.  If appropriate effort is given to preparing such activities, they can be effective. 

This blogger, though, does prefer inquiry, though an eclectic disposition – one that has teachers varying the approaches they use – is seen as necessary and advisable.  This is so because a variety of factors, including resources, time, and the need to evaluate various sorts of content are just some of the factors facing a teacher on a given day.  While to this blogger it seems to be commonsensical, given the national establishment’s commitment to the inquiry style of teaching (one not imposed at the school site), this message might be considered controversial among that professional audience.

This blog will start with this notion of variety in the next posting.  Just to remind the reader, this posting reports on the third element.  Upon completing its presentation of this element – of which there is still a good deal to go – the overall presentation has two more elements to address.  This overall topic, what should constitute a teacher preparation program, is more complex than what one would think when first presented with it.

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[1] For various classroom strategies, the reader can look at this blogger’s book, Toward a Federated Nation (available through Amazon).

[2] Allen C. Ornstein and Francis P. Hunkins, Curriculum:  Foundations, Principles, and Issues (Boston, MA:  Pearson, 2004).

[3] For example, see Morris L. Bigge and Samuel S. Shermis, Learning Theories for Teachers (New York, NY:  Longman, 1999).

LACKING WHAT’S NEEDED

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  The last posting finished describing and explaining the first of five elements.  This posting will begin by describing what the second element is.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings in this series that began with the posting on September 28, 2021, entitled “Prime Reason.”]

As this note points out, this blog continues with reviewing the second of five elements that a teacher preparation program should include.  That second element is,

 

Element Two:  A preparation program identifies both the challenge presented by the commodification of education and the popular culture that supports such commodification by describing it, explaining it, and evaluating it.

 

And as cultures tend to do, they promote some values and degrade others.  Understanding that dynamic in terms of what schools should be striving to accomplish needs to be part of what teacher preparation programs should address.

            There are those in education who fear recent developments – those pointed out by Daniel Bell and addressed in the last posting.  While this blogger has some reservations concerning Bell’s points, his overall message rings true.  With a popular culture that adopts an alluring commercial view, one hears, as legitimate prescriptions, commercial answers for the problems of education. 

In heeding such answers, is the nation bartering away its obligation to teach the young what should be taught?  When such policies as vouchers, other market mechanisms, and policies that heighten parental influence – as consumers – and limit the ability of school officials to run schools, do the more civic aims of education become compromised?

First, there is no doubt that parents need to have access to school officials to voice their concerns about the quality of the service that schools provide for their children.  They enjoy perspectives that are beneficial for school officials to hear and consider.  But the voice of a consumer is not what is needed.  What is needed is the voice of a partner in the endeavor to educate his/her son or daughter.  And that more communal role occurs, by definition, in truly federated arrangements.

Second, and here is the point at which this blogger’s experience kicks in, he believes, on a daily basis, that most parents do not respect good education per se.  What they want are credentials for their children.  They want the acquisition of those credentials to be as smooth, with the least number of hassles, as possible.

Yes, overall, they might buy more expensive housing to be able to send their children to what are perceived as better schools, but how do they measure better schools?  As the grind of daily living takes its toll, many parents simply do not want to be bothered with the on-going challenges associated with assuring that the education their children are getting is good. 

There is nothing in the popular culture that this blogger can detect that promises, encourages, or ensures that anything else is the case.  Oh, the economy may hold out rewards for those who have attained a superior education, but not as that education is taking place.  Instead, the popular culture seems to promote values, attitudes, and biases that are at best indifferent to the challenges of doing well in school if not “pushing” for a more immediate gratification frame of mind.

The popular culture also works in another counterproductive way.  Of course, students of college age are also products of that same culture.  In order to create a teacher education program that adopts this second element, college level programs need the assistance of appropriate messaging that would emanate from state government officials who support college professors as they conduct teacher preparation courses.  Such messaging should counter those counterproductive elements of the popular culture.

At the pre-college level, policies should be in place constraining schools from having to depend on the commercial interests that exploit the popular culture and its messages.  For example, this blogger taught at a high school some years ago that signed a contract with a soft drink giant to promote its drinks on campus.  The beverage they promoted was one high in caffeine.  Of course, the vending machines on campus made the drink readily available.  One can safely conclude that schools hinder the learning environment of their campuses by selling such a product.  While this practice may have become less likely of late, here it is cited as illustrating how a commercial entity might exert questionable influence.

When questioned, the principal justified the contract by pointing out that school supplies were going to be bought with the funds accrued from the deal.  In addition, the newspapers are full of stories about obesity of children a condition enabled by the lack of healthy food choices in the nation’s schools’ cafeterias.

Should schools have to depend on such deals to buy educational equipment and supplies or should the state provide these supplies without having to promote harmful products to the nation’s youth?  Is the nation bartering away its responsibilities as far as education and schooling are concerned?

And shouldn’t new teachers understand how pervasive the legitimacy of the popular culture is that supports this commercial view?  Of course, the answer given here is yes, but this blogger cannot express how difficult it is to even mention that message in public forums.  Yet, to be a viable civics education program, it must promote this messaging if it is to meet this particular challenge. 

In short, the public spirit that this blog promotes and that it wants civics education to support in the nation’s public schools sounds to a degree hollow and out of place in school settings that not only function in a popular culture of commercialism, but also have, to varying degrees, sold out to it.  In addition, even in education circles, this seems to be an incubating problem.  It’s under the surface and not being given the attention it deserves.

The popular culture which this posting addresses treats the dysfunctional aspects of the nation’s current society not as ones subject to reform, but as parts of a political and social backdrop untouchable by those who are involved.  Yes, they may lament this general condition, but little else.  One can look at current discussions and debates over civics education.  This blogger remembers before he retired, attending a Congressional Conference on civics education that was completely mute on these points.

He remembers that the assumptions of the discussions did not allow for the inclusion of these concerns and feels a bit awkward addressing them here.  Is it a state of affairs about which one cannot do anything to ameliorate the underlying factors causing these conditions?  Yes, critical theorists might speak to them, but does one have to adopt what this blogger considers such an extreme position to question this commercialization?

Without some meaningful recognition and commitment to change these conditions, the educational establishment and its classroom teachers have no hope of developing the type of civics education to which a partnered view would aspire.  Without a profound, transforming change, an educational system or even a local community might spend some money, make some noise and, as a fad, such effort will pass with little change. 

As things stand, any concerned teachers dubious of this undergirding condition are justified in being suspicious of any likelihood that things will change.  Addressing the obstacles to instituting changes in the nation’s polity, Matt Grossmann looks at how difficult it is to institute them into the American political system.  He writes,

 

Policymakers can and do collectively ignore public opinion and the direction of election results, sometimes by enacting contrary policy but most often by making no change at all.  The results of the policy process are determined by the interactions among policymakers themselves, and the public appears to have quite limited impact.[1]

 

Yet, Leslie R. Crutchfield writes of the potentials of “grass roots” politics and provides evidence of movements – such as the antismoking effort – being able to change policy.[2]  And these aspects of American politics should be addressed by teacher preparation programs.  Bottom line:  this should be addressed and those addressing the issue should be realistic, but believe that change can happen, if only through incremental advances at a time.  So, with that this blog is now ready to, and in the next posting will, share the third element.

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[1] Matt Grossmann, Artist of the Possible (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 2014), 9.

[2] Leslie R. Crutchfield, How Change Happens:  Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t (Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).