JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, III

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

This posting will continue this blog’s review of the natural rights perspective as if from one who advocates it.  And in its review of how the perspective would portray a civics subject matter, this posting begins to cast its focus on the academic study of politics.

Discipline of Political Science

          The emphasis on the individual, as expressed in this blog’s definition of the natural rights view, is reflected in the movement within the discipline of political science since the mid-twentieth century.  Political studies became a more separate study, defining itself as more of a science in the Baconian sense as it pursued behavioral questions.

          Political behavior became the discipline’s object of interest.  Toward the end of the century, this perspective had a broadening turn to look at the processes of decision-making and the impact of values and qualitative judgments.[2]  A short descriptive history of this development provides insight into how the discipline influenced what is being taught in secondary schools today.

          Under the natural rights moral perspective, governmental or collective actions are seen as legitimate only when they pursue outcomes where individual efforts cannot meet the requirements facing a group or community.  As Michael Sandel points out, it is a view of governmental action that takes on a consumer perspective.[3]  Also, Robert Dahl wrote some years ago, “a political system is any persistent pattern of human relationships that involve, to any significant extent, power, rule or authority.”[4]

          Led by David Easton[5] and his development of systems analysis, the discipline began to analyze political processes, in behavioral terms.  Systems theory became the prominent perspective in that discipline, first in the 1950s and 1960s as a heavily behavioral movement and then in the 1970s and 1980s as what Easton called a post-behavioral revolution[6] or, as this blogger would argue, opened the discipline to those issues that are vibrant at a given time – an even more market orientation.

          The former period attempted to apply research techniques and theory building processes of the natural sciences.  The latter “revolution” was to apply those techniques and to incorporate, in their analysis, societal problems which were political in nature.[7]  Easton writes of this development,

 

Unlike the great traditional theories of past political thought, new theory tends to be analytic, not substantive, general rather than particular and explanatory rather than ethical.  That portion of political research which shares these commitments to both the new theory and the technical means of analysis and verification thereby links political science to broader behavioral tendencies in the social sciences and, hence, its description as political behavior.  This is the full meaning and significance of the behavioral approach in political science today.[8]

 

          Whether used as the highly scientific mode or under a perspective which emphasized the political and social issues of a period, the systems approach has been a more behaviorally based mode of analysis as compared to that used by traditional political scientists.  Whatever the emphasis in the discipline, American social studies teachers have taken a systems approach, one that is bent toward a structural-functional form of analysis.

          One can detect this approach by simply reviewing the textbooks that public schools utilize in teaching civics at the middle-school level, or American government at the high school level.  This blogger, in his book From Immaturity to Polarized Politics,[9] provides an evaluative review of the two leading high school textbooks that demonstrate this attachment to the systems approach. 

He agrees with William Callahan, who in 1990 observed, “Traditionally … civics courses in American schools have been more narrowly defined.  They have focused almost exclusively on the structure and function of government, particularly at the federal level.”[10]  That judgment still holds today in American classrooms.  And by doing so, those courses offer secondary students the opportunity to acquire the information they need to compete in that “market” known as governance. 

No, people don’t directly use money in this market – although money plays a role – instead, one uses the currency of power.  That is, those structures and functions with their accompanying processes that are highlighted in secondary courses have to do with power.  More directly, that means the main attention falls on how individuals and groups influence one another.  Power is defined as the ability to make binding or authoritative decisions over how to allocate values.

Influence is defined as having the ability to steer, to some degree, those decisions in a manner seen as beneficial by individuals or groups exerting this ability.  In essence it is that ability to get someone or group to do something that person or group would not do otherwise.[11]  These activities – as they become of interest to civics instruction – are conducted in the context of a system, a conglomeration of parts (in the form of offices, agencies, and their personnel) that, to some minimal degree, are organized and interactive.

The political system is characterized by people holding and espousing competing political values.  Each party has the right to participate (each is equal before the laws that govern this process).  These competing values, in turn, seek to prevail in the form of policies and advancing social, economic, and political interests.

Most of the time, but not necessarily, values are exclusive of one another so that not all can be satisfied (usually due to limited resources).  The main function of the political system, therefore, is to make the decisions that resolve the differences between or among these values and preferences and their respective parties.[12]

And with that overall view, this posting will end.  Given this last descriptive element, hopefully it gives readers a good sense of how the application of a market model is justified.  The next posting will further this introduction of the natural rights view and its political systems approach to the study of political science about how that view has affected civics education.

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[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of postings begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] Stephen L. Schechter and Jonathan S. Weil, “Studying and Teaching Political Science, in Teaching the Social Sciences and History in Secondary Schools:  A Methods Book, edited by James C. Schott and Laurel R. Singleton (Belmont, CA:  Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1996), 137-170 AND for a more detailed review of this history see Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022), especially its Appendix Chapter.

[3] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996) AND one detects this bias or view – a view that casts citizens as “customers” – mostly by the language used to describe governmental delivery of services, e.g., see “Customer Experience,” Partnership for Public Service (November 2021), accessed August 7, 2022, https://ourpublicservice.org/our-solutions/customer-experience/.

[4] Robert Dahl, Modern Political Analysis (Englewood, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1970), 6.

[5] David Easton, The Political System (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1953) AND David Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life (New York, NY:  John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1965).

[6] John G. Gunnell, “Political Theory and Political Science,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell, 1987), 386-390.

[7] Of more recent development is the adoption of critical theory by many, if not most, political scientists (and other social scientists).  Generally, the theory applies broad Marxian ideas and ideals to the study of social phenomena. 

Because such theories aim to explain and transform all the circumstances that enslave human beings, many “critical theories” in the broader sense have been developed. They have emerged in connection with the many social movements that identify varied dimensions of the domination of human beings in modern societies.

See “Critical Theory,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (March 8, 2005), accessed August 8, 2022, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/.

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

[9] Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics.  Available through Amazon.

[10] William T. Callahan, Jr. “Introduction,” in Citizenship for the 21^st Century, edited by William T. Callahan and Ronald A. Banaszak (Bloomington, IN:  Social Studies Development Center, 1990), 2.

[11] Robert Dahl, Who Governs:  Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1961).

[12] Easton, A System Analysis of Political Life.

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, II

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

The last posting began a general defense of the natural rights view.  It presented the basic definition and rationale for the view that centers on the belief that humans, within a natural state, have the rights to do what each deems preferable as long as those behaviors do not interfere with others having the same rights.  So central is this belief that it is given a moral standing among its advocates. 

          That moral claim further points to another defense, that being the judgment that for a person to have a moral duty which is universally held, it must be recognized not only by the individual, but also by the general population of rational human beings.  Along with this recognition, there must also be a generally accepted reason to act upon any entailed duties.

          Jeffrey Reiman[2] claims that only the ideal of individual sovereignty satisfies this requirement:

 

Since people’s ability to act according to their own judgment is vulnerable to the ability of others to block them in so acting, everyone has an interest in principles that maximize each one’s ability to act according to his or her own judgments as far as this is compatible with a like ability for everyone else.  Thus, everyone has an interest in the ideal of individual sovereignty.[3]

         

Individual sovereignty is seen as the only sense of duty to satisfy the requirements of a universal duty.

          And Reiman last listed defense of the natural rights perspective is that since death is final and life a one-time experience, human beings are ends in themselves.  They, therefore, feel the imperative duty to themselves.  That takes the form of them seeking the potential of living the life they define as meaningful.  In that, each recognizes and endorses the truth of that imperative for him or herself and supports the equal opportunity for all others to do likewise. 

This last notion adds an equality element to the natural rights view, but as a derivative set of concerns.  As such, if situations pit a conflict between liberty and equality, liberty should prevail.  As to what level equality should be given prevalence or priority in determining behavior, along with all other concerns, are left to individuals to decide.  It would be just another expression of people’s liberty or freedom.

          American political culture has developed to prize, above all other moral claims, the belief that all should be allowed, on an individual basis, the right to pursue what is meaningful to their lives.  Government’s primary responsibility is to protect the individual’s ability and right to maximize that potential.  The nation’s political debates are over whether the social and economic environment of the nation is conducive to individuals having that opportunity.

          Modern day politics, the politics between what is currently called liberals and conservatives, is over defining the conditions that relate to that opportunity.  A current journalistic service recently listed twenty-five issues that are capturing the interests of the public, including academics.  In the top ten, one can consider seven of them to be “individual rights” issues. 

They are gun control, abortion, religious freedom, vaccine mandates, privacy rights, free-market capitalism, marijuana legalization.  Of an extended connection, one can add global climate change (to the degree it refers to one’s energy consumption behaviors).[4]  For some time now, analysis of the political issues of the day – including foreign relation issues – in America are defined in terms of individuals’ economic opportunities.

While there is some debate over when and if this view has attained dominance in American political thinking, most commentators treat this dominance as an assumed condition in today’s political culture.[5]  This posting is being written in the aftermath of an election in Kansas, a generally viewed conservative state with strong religious ties, ties that would lead one to expect a strong vote against abortion rights.

Yet, Kansans overwhelmingly voted against a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution that would have overturned a constitutional protection of abortion rights.  If it had passed, one could have interpreted such a vote as reflecting a limitation to a natural rights bias.  But that was not to be by a significant number of votes.[6]

This secular moral argument – of the natural rights view – serves as that view’s basic assumption regarding the relationship between the individual and the state.  Government and civics instruction in the nation’s secondary classrooms should incorporate – or better stated, continue to incorporate – this view when establishing the role of that relationship.  What follows in this blog is an analytic description of the natural rights perspective as it affects civics and as it assumes this central role for the individual.

This blog’s next posting will continue with the subject matter commonplace in curriculum development by addressing the discipline of political science.  For an extended accounting of the ways political science has an influence on civics education, readers are directed to this blogger’s recent published book, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics [7] – available through Amazon.

[Reminder:  Readers are reminded that they can have access to the first 100 postings of this blog, under the title, Gravitas:  The Blog Book, Volume I.  To gain access, they can click the following URL:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit  

OR click onto the “gateway” posting that allows the reader access to a set of supplemental postings to other published works by this blogger by clicking the URL: http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/ and then looking up the posting for October 23, 2021, entitled “A Digression.”]

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[1] This presentation continues with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of the natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.  This series of posting begins with “Judging Natural Rights View, I,” August 2, 2022.

[2] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate, edited by Cornelius F. Delaney (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, Inc., 1994).

[3] Ibid., 27.

[4] Evan Thompson, “25 Controversial Topics:  Position Paper Guide,” The Best Schools (March 3, 2022), accessed August 3, 2022, https://thebestschools.org/magazine/controversial-topics-research-starter/.  Also see E. J. Dionne, Jr., They Only Look Dead:  Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era (New York, NY:  Simon and Schuster, 1996).

[5] For example, there is a revised extended concern over views challenging individual rights and increasing concern over collective rights.  See Aaron Rhodes, “How ‘Collective Human Rights’ Undermine Individual Human Rights,” The Heritage Foundation (June 25, 2020), accessed August 3, 2022, https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/report/how-collective-human-rights-undermine-individual-human-rights.  For background, see Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism:  A Double-Edged Sword (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1996) AND Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent:  America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

[6] One can make the case that abortion rights also reflect the federalist concern over individual integrity; that being denied the right to abortions abuses the ability of a woman to act upon what is generally accepted as an element of a person’s integrity.  That would be to have control over one’s body.

[7] Robert Gutierrez, From Immaturity to Polarized Politics:  Obstacles in Achieving a Federated Nation (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas Civics Books, 2022).

JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, I

 

An advocate of natural rights continues his/her presentation[1] …

This first entry in supporting the natural rights view – as it would be used to guide civics curricular content – centers on William Schubert’s commonplace, subject matter.  In terms of subject matter, the natural rights/liberalism approach would transmit the following:

 

·      Teach a view of government as a subservient institution which attempts to satisfy the collective interests of individual citizens.

·      Teach the philosophical basis of government’s role as defender of individual rights.

·      Convey the legitimate needs of government to engender levels of support that maintain political stress within the political system – in the form of competitiveness – to manageable and even useful degrees.

·      Portray a realistic account of political structures, processes, and functions that allow students to internalize practical information about government to facilitate their interactions with governmental agencies and offices in pursuit of their political goals and objectives.

·      Express the technical nature of political activities with ample respect for expertise held by professional participants of the political system.

 

By accomplishing these elements, the natural rights argument claims that the subject matter advances good citizenship and natural liberty.  And liberty takes on a moral standing.

The Morality of Liberalism

          According to Jeffrey Reiman,[2] the natural rights perspective (he uses the term liberalism) is, at its core, a moral conception.  That is, the natural rights approach, in its most fundamental sense, is a standard for right and wrong behavior.  As such, Reiman explains, it is not a version or supplement to other views of governance such as promoting caring policies or community. 

Those that adopt a natural rights view advocate a moral standard that instead promotes what is required from human beings (assuming they are sane adults) to conduct themselves in such a way that maximizes the scope of everyone’s freedom.  Freedom is seen as the ability to control individuals’ lives according to their own judgment.  Any extension of their freedom that reduces the freedom of themselves or others is ruled as immoral behaviors.  This principle Reiman calls individual sovereignty.

He contends that the role of education is to prepare children and adolescents to make voluntary moral choices when they become adults.  Children and adolescents are not judged mature enough to be given the level of freedom as defined by this view.  So, a qualifier to the general argument, then, is that underaged individuals are not totally subject to this moral standard.

Another qualifier is those situations in which, because of human fallibility, people are not acting in line with their real judgments.  For example, people who are about to commit suicide in reaction to traumatic incidents or bits of information might, on reflection, choose not to kill themselves.  Reiman would allow for what he calls paternalistic coercion. 

That is, it permits as moral for people to intervene by preventing those suicides but only in obvious situations when the good judgment by the distraught person would find it extremely difficult to practice reasonable judgment.  Of course, such cases would seldom occur.

As far as government’s role under such a moral principle or standard, Reiman argues that its interference in social and economic activities is justified only in those situations when society, in the guise of government policy or otherwise, does not allow for individual freedom.  Ironically, government is to only act to advance freedom by prohibiting those actors or policies that stand in the way of such freedom.  These conditions, in turn, Reiman deems to be an empirical and measurable condition and not to be determined merely by opinion.

Further, Reiman writes,

 

Rather, the ideal of individual sovereignty is a standard against which economic systems are to be judged.  Free enterprise economics with little or no governmental involvement will only pass muster by this standard if they yield societies in which people in fact have the maximum compatible individual freedom, and this will be an empirical matter of what actually happens in such economies compared to the alternatives.[3]

 

Reiman provides a standard by which to distinguish between moral requirement and subjugation.  “To show the validity of a moral requirement, then, we must show that they are binding on people who disagree with them.  We must demonstrate their capacity to override the contrary judgments of their recipients.”[4]  Or stated another way, if moral judgments stand because they can, not because they should, they are not moral requirements, but subjugations instead.

          In such cases, the natural rights argument holds that subjugation is immoral and that subjected people are not morally bound to obey those judgments.  The only exceptions would be if people can prove beyond reasonable doubts that moral judgments are moral requirements irrespective of people’s judgments, which would be deemed impossible to do.

 

The point here is a simple one, but, I think, quite far-reaching in its implications.  Any moral requirement must be a matter of right not might.  To establish this, we must show – show, not just believe firmly – either that the requirement is true beyond a reasonable doubt, or that it is needed to restrict to a minimum the role of might in human affairs.  This shows that the liberal ideal has an advantage over all others.  Unless and until one of those others can be proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, only the liberal ideal can satisfactorily rebut the suspicion of subjugation.  It is only one that can withstand the charge of being might not right.[5]

 

          This posting will end on this note.  The next one will venture into the question as to whether people have responsibilities to others, and if they do, when would that be.  To this blogger, the basic claim of natural rights advocates is that humans have the right to do as they please if they do not interfere with others having the same right.  Short of that, there are little to no responsibilities assuming those involved, either in terms of acting upon or receiving the effects of such interactions, are adults and sane.

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[1] This presentation begins with this posting.  The reader is informed that the claims made in this posting do not necessarily reflect the beliefs or knowledge of this blogger.  Instead, the posting is a representation of what an advocate of natural rights view might present.  This is done to present a dialectic position of that construct.

[2] Jeffrey Reiman, “Liberalism and Its Critics,” in The Liberalism-Communitarian Debate, edited by Cornelius F. Delaney (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, Inc., 1994).

[3] Ibid., 22.

[4] Ibid., 23, emphasis in the original.

[5] Ibid., 24-25, emphasis in the original.

A PROTOCOL FOR JUDGING THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW

 

With this posting, this blog begins an extended description, explanation, and justification for the natural rights construct as would be presented by an advocate of that view.  Each of the following postings will make a note of this attempt to give an advocated review of this perspective. This is in the tradition of presenting a dialectic argument.

          If readers are new to this blog, a short word on how that argument has historically progressed.  In the late 1940s, after years of challenging the dominant view, parochial/traditional federalism, the natural rights view was vibrant enough to overtake it.  Since then, the natural rights view has become stronger and solidified in its position of dominance.  One can get a sense of this by watching old films on TMC and comparing them to today’s films.

          Before the 1940s, those films tended to have plots in which the storyline would have characters either promoting or abusing the common good.  This wasn’t always the case, but a definite trend can be detected.  Not all films agreed about what the common good was, but one can see the concern. 

Two films from 1939 can be cited:  Gone with the Wind and Let Freedom Ring.  Each one tells a tale in which a self-centered ambitious character or entity leads to unhappy results.  In the first case, it is the self-centered ambitions of a Southern belle and in the second it is the ambitions of a corporate entity (the railroads).[1] 

Today, such plots would be considered unrealistic, and characters or entities are much more likely to be portrayed as naturally seeking self-defined goals with little to no concern for the common good.  Hopefully, readers agree.  In any event, one can search and cite other evidence, but for the purposes here, this will do.

The last posting left readers with a reminder that, as with the parochial federalist treatment, this judgment will employ the commonplaces of curriculum – identified by William Schubert[2] – to categorize its different elements.  The commonplaces of curriculum are the subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.[3]  Each of these divisional categories will be first introduced and generally explained and then further divided into subcategories. 

In the case of subject matter, the subcategories are the morality of liberalism, the discipline of political science, the political systems approach, the structural-functional model, the viability of the systems construct, and its methodology.  The category, the student, will be divided into the subcategories of personal student interests, student social interests, student economic interests, political student interests, and pedagogic student interests.  This “student” review will attempt to cast light on how this view affects these aspects of students’ lives.

The category, teacher, will be divided into the subcategories, teacher effectiveness and teacher knowledge.  And the category, milieu, will be divided into the subcategories, expectation of schools, school’s socioeconomic base, and youth culture.

Each of these subcategories is identified by employing an analyzing process derived from Aristotle’s categories of causation suggested by Joseph Schwab.[4]  These Aristotelean categories will be used to suggest specific questions of inquiry.  They include the state of affairs, interactions, situational insights, and the capacity to act morally. 

That is,

 

·      The state of affairs refers to the actual conditions found in schools, as opposed to abstracted or hypothesized relations between factors or variables.  Of particular concern will be dilemmas caused by adherence to one construct as opposed to another. 

·      Interactions refer to social encounters affected by the respective constructs.

·      Situational insights are interpretations of encounters gleaned from analyses of practice. 

·      Capacity to act morally will be assessments of practices judged according to good citizenship and social capital. 

 

These categories will be used freely to suggest questions for the analysis of this presentation.  The next posting will proceed with this blog’s positive presentation of the natural rights/liberalism construct.  Again, that presentation is through the opted “eyes” of one who would support that construct.

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[1] Readers are reminded that the popularity of films is a very good indicator of how the American public feels about various topics since their success is dependent on regular people spending their money to watch them.  So, if a film garners a viewership, that film is very likely to reflect public sentiment in some fashion.

[2] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[3] They can be defined as follows: 

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum. 

·       Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.  

[4] Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility.

FROM PAROCIAL FEDERALISM TO NATURAL RIGHTS

 

This blog, with the last posting, completed its outline of the parochial federalist view of governance and politics.  It did so from the perspective of an advocate for that construct.  In doing so, it showed the merits of incorporating it as the central construct for the teaching of American government and civics at the secondary level.

          The emphasis has been to both explain the construct as a republican theory that reflects the commitments of the founding generation of Americans around the time of the American Revolution, and as a structural foundation, in which compacts have brought layers of governmental arrangements together in a non-centralized structure which respects the integrity of each level.

          Combined, the construct is not only interested in the factual elements of the nation’s governmental system, but also in the normative questions or responsibilities and duties that citizens are expected to accord that system.  As such, the construct is seen as directly addressing the perceived levels of disaffection and dis-attachment characterizing many of today’s youth in how they meet those responsibilities and duties.

          In addition, the blog provided a critique of that construct by this blogger that emphasizes the narrowness of its view when it comes to identity factors.  The construct, through its influence on the American public and demonstrated through the years of its dominance, contributed to dysfunctional racism and xenophobic attitudes that undermined its claims of support for equality and liberty.  Such influence proved to be very costly in terms of human life (including a heavy death toll in a civil war), property loss, and in its effects to dash human ambitions.

          This blog now transitions from the thesis of an overall dialectic argument to the antithesis – which is currently situated in a thesis position.  That would be the natural rights construct.  It will be described and explained as a current dominant view.  As with the parochial federalist view, it will be presented by a sympathetic eye – as if this reviewer is an advocate.  He will do the best he can in that endeavor.

            Its full title is natural rights/liberalism perspective and the following approach, as just indicated, will be presented as if it should be the foundational construct for the teaching of American government and civics at the secondary level.  In general terms, the reasons for this argument will be that this perspective legitimately and viably promotes the interests of good citizenship and natural liberty.  That argument employs the language of freedom often voiced by many of its advocates as a gift from God.

That is, liberty is being defined as the freedom to do what one wants to do while respecting others to have the same and being amenable or supportive of a prevailing sense of transactional interactions with others.  Within these broad parameters, schools’ curricular treatment of government and politics will promote an approach to government that leaves such determinations over duties and responsibilities to individuals.  All reasonable and legal options from which to decide will be considered legitimate and in the purview of the individual. 

Therefore, this basic curricular choice avoids any attempt, either directly or by suggestion, of any preference for political values, ideals, ideas, other than for liberty, to the individual student.  For it is up to individuals to determine the type of citizens they will seek to be, only restrained by legal boundaries.

As with the parochial federalist review, this presentation of the natural rights perspective will attempt to answer the same research questions.  Overall, the concern is:  does the natural rights view provide a legitimate and viable way to study government and politics at the secondary school level, i.e., in middle schools and in high schools?  There, the targeted courses would be civics and American government, respectively.

              This overall question leads to subsidiary questions.  They are concerned with those issues associated with the comparison between the natural rights perspective, dominant today, and the federalist perspective, which is promoted in this blog.  These views, in many ways, are at odds not only concerning how governments should be described and explained, and how politics should be conducted, but about how people should behave in accordance with that governance and in their – especially political – interactions with each other. 

With that, therefore, the following subsidiary questions are offered:

 

1.    How has the construct guided/evolved in the teaching of American government and civics?

2.    What have been the salient consequences of that development?

3.    To what social arrangements should the development of this construct lead?

4.    How can desirable social arrangements – a la the precepts of the construct – come about?

 

In addition, they steer one’s attention to how Americans should proceed into the future – the espoused aims for those upcoming years. 

Through a description of the historical development of the effects of the two opposing perspectives, a clear comparison will be attempted.  This analysis will be guided by the above subsidiary questions as they relate to the commonplaces of curriculum.

The commonplaces of curriculum were developed by William Schubert[1] and include the subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.[2]  Each of these commonplaces will serve as the divisional categories of the following postings in much the same way they organized this blog’s review of the parochial/federalism construct.

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[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).

[2] They can be defined as follows: 

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum. 

·       Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.