FOCUS

As I indicated in my last posting, I want to present a content analysis of the government textbook, Magruder’s American Government.[1]  The book will be from here on referred to as Magruder’s – that’s what we in the business call it.  Again, my purpose is to see how much the book encourages a student in one direction or the other between thinking in a collectivist fashion or an individualist fashion.  This will not be anything like an extensive review; one, I believe, is not needed.  For my purposes, by asking a few questions about a few topics of content, we can get a good sense of where the book’s emphasis is along this dimension.  The questions guiding this analysis are:  what is the assumed motivation of a student in his or her reading of the book’s content?  Is it to further the student’s role within collectives or is it to advance his/her knowledge of what is useful to advance personal political/governmental ambitions?[2]  Does the book cover the needs of organizations or other arrangements or does it focus on what the individual needs to know to advance private concerns?  The content choices are developing community (better known as community development), placing a demand on government, influencing local governmental policy, and describing or explaining a governmental agency – such as Social Security.  I have chosen these topics because they relate directly to social capital.  In turn, social capital refers to a societal quality which is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

Let me start by sharing the book’s table of contents.  Remember, we are interested, as I pointed out in my last posting, in how much the author of the book, William A. McClenaghan, dissects the subject matter.  Here are the chapter titles and number of pages in each chapter:

Chapter 1 – Principles of Government, 26 pages

Chapter 2 – Origins of Government, 38 pages

Chapter 3 – The Constitution, 26 pages

Chapter 4 – Federalism, 28 pages

Chapter 5 – Political Parties, 30 pages

Chapter 6 – Voters and Voter Behavior, 32 pages

Chapter 7 – The Electoral Process, 30 pages

Chapter 8 – Mass Media and Public Opinion, 28 pages

Chapter 9 – Interest Groups, 26 pages

Chapter 10 – Congress, 28 pages

Chapter 11 – Powers of Congress, 34 pages

Chapter 12 – Congress in Action, 34 pages

Chapter 13 – The Presidency, 36 pages

Chapter 14 – The Presidency in Action, 26 pages

Chapter 15 – Government at Work:  The Bureaucracy, 30 pages

Chapter 16 – Financing Government, 26 pages

Chapter 17 – Foreign Policy and National Defense, 38 pages

Chapter 18 – The Federal Court System, 26 pages

Chapter 19 – Civil Liberties:  First Amendment Freedoms, 32 pages

Chapter 20 – Civil Liberties:  Protecting Individual Rights, 34 pages

Chapter 21 – Civil Liberties:  Justice Under Law, 34 pages

Chapter 22 – Comparative Political Systems, 32 pages

Chapter 23 – Comparative Economic Systems, 30 pages

Chapter 24 – (Florida edition) Governing Florida and the States, 34 pages

Chapter 25 – (Florida edition) Florida’s Local Government and Finance, 31 pages

There are 180 days in the school year.  Many weeks of the school year are not made up of five days.  For example, Thanksgiving week is only three days.  Many schools operate under the assumption that every course taught can follow the same format in that tests are assigned a specific day of the week so as not to overload a student with too many tests on the same day.  So your test day in biology would be on a Monday, social studies on a Friday, language arts on a Wednesday, and so on.  The natural approach is to divide your course by units that last a week and attempt to cover a chapter per unit.  That means a chapter needs to be covered – given the practical constraints of the calendar – in a week’s time.  Now put yourself in the shoes of the average high school student – a person who cares next to nothing about the topics covered in Magruder.  And then there is the fact that government is one of six courses you are taking.  Government in Florida is offered usually in the senior year and some of your other courses might include pre-calculus, physics, and world literature.  So figure in applying to colleges and the general exhaustion of being at this type of schooling for twelve or more years.  And for the teacher, this is the challenge if you choose to accept it:  teach American government in such a way as to promote social capital using the above content.

My first reaction to the above list of chapters is that the above content puts almost all of its emphasis on the structure and working of the central government and how it is influenced – only two chapters, at the end of the text, are dedicated to local government and most of that attention is at the state level.  Social capital is promoted by participation in governmental affairs.  For most of us, effective participation is limited to involvement with local government – usually city or county government, not national government.  Why?  Most of us do not have the resources to affect national policy, but we do have the resources to influence local politics and policy formation.  So if the goal is to promote participation which in turn encourages social capital, shouldn’t the emphasis in our government education be directed to the local level?  That’s what makes sense to me.  The above distribution of attention, on the other hand, I judge to be geared not to participation, but observation.  If successful, the above content seems to me to be geared to informing the average citizen so that he or she will be knowledgeable enough to view the national news, understand it, and perhaps vote for national policy makers from a knowledge base that can translate personal preferences to those voting decisions.

What I will outline in the next few postings are exceptions to this general observation of Magruder’s.  Let me emphasize that the exceptions are just that; they make up few entries in the textbook and are easily lost and ignored, given the overall challenge of “teaching” an almost 800 page textbook in fewer than 36 weeks.  In the next posting, I will specifically address the topic of community development.

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[1] McClenaghan, W. A.  (2013).  Magruder’s American Government (Florida Teacher’s Edition).  Boston, MA:  Prentice Hall/Pearson.

[2] By political/governmental ambition I do not necessarily mean a pursuit of a career in politics or government.  I am referring to any desire one might have in which government action is necessary to fulfill.  This can extend from filling in a pothole to receiving a Social Security payment.  Of course, it also includes getting a government job.

A TEXTBOOK BIAS

If you want to know what the content of government courses in the US is, just pick up a copy of Magruder’s American Government.  This text is the overwhelming choice of most schools and school districts.  In the upcoming postings, I will go over some of the book’s content to make my case; i.e., the natural rights construct is the guiding perspective determining the content of its pages.  Let me be clear, as stated previously in this blog, that educators would not use this terminology to describe this book, but I contend that, whether conscious or not, this bias exists and the effects of such a promoted view of government are real.

What I will report is a content analysis.  Specifically, I will review the book and ask:  what is the assumed motivation of a student in his or her reading of this content?  Is it to further the student’s role within collectives or is it to advance his/her knowledge of what is useful to advance personal political ambitions?  Does the book cover the needs of organizations or other arrangements or does it focus on what the individual needs to know to advance private concerns?  I expect that these issues are not addressed directly, but I hypothesize that the language used by the text assumes a particular tone or direction, one that basically says that when you happen to want or “need” some service from government this is what you need to know.  But the demands of encouraging a citizenry that supports social capital need to be more proactive in encouraging a disposition to support and bolster the values associated with social capital.  Let me remind you of how I am using this term, social capital:  social capital, as a societal quality, is characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.  I believe the above questions address the type of concerns associated with social capital.  By answering them, we can get a good feel of whether American government texts promote social capital or not.

Before beginning this analysis, let me first add some context.  One critique I have offered is that curricular offerings today have relied on a view of politics that can be described as the structural-functional approach.  This is an outgrowth of a political science construct known as political systems model.  Early in this blog, I reviewed the basic elements of political systems and I emphasized how in mid-20^th century, political scientists were taken by this model as a way to incorporate more scientific methods into their research.  In terms of what I am focusing on, textbook content, I feel I should draw your attention to what I perceive is a serious problem with the approach that text writers and publishers use in determining that content;  that is, these text producers opted for a view of governance and politics that furthers reductionism or reductive language. 

Let me explain.  The basic notion of reductionism is to conceptually dissect any aspect of reality on the belief that by doing so, one can look at the separate elements making up that reality so that after each element is viewed, one can add them all together and understand them.  Let me use David Brooks’ words to describe what is being promoted:

This way of thinking [reductionism] induces people to think they can understand a problem by dissecting it into its various parts.  They can understand a person’s personality if they just tease out and investigate his genetic or environmental traits.  This deductive mode is the specialty of conscious cognition – the sort of cognition that is linear and logical.

The problem with this approach is that it has trouble explaining dynamic complexity, the essential feature of a human being, a culture, or a society.  So recently there has been a greater appreciation of the structure of emergent systems.  Emergent systems exist when different elements come together and produce something that is greater than the sum of their parts.  Or, to put it differently, the pieces of a system interact, and out of their interaction something entirely new emerges.[1]

To the list of emergent systems Brooks identifies, he can add governments.  The structural-functional approach that textbooks adopt, including Magruder’s American Government, portrays a view of government very much in this dissecting mode.  As result, we have a view of government more akin to what one uses to view a machine, when what is needed is a view that sees government and politics as an organism.

The next few postings will look at this shortcoming more closely.  In order to be somewhat efficient in this effort, I have chosen several content topics to zero in on:  community development, placing a demand on government, influencing local governmental policy, and describing or explaining a governmental agency – such as Social Security.  I have chosen these topics because they directly relate to social capital.

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[1] Brooks, D.  (2011).  The social animal:  The hidden sources of love, character, and achievement.  New York, NY:  Random House, pp. 108-109. 

POSSIBLE: A COMMUNITY OF TOLERANCE

Let me wish all a happy new year.  May 2015 bring peace and prosperity to all, but may it have enough discord so that all bloggers like myself have something to write about.  You do need to keep us off the streets.

You might have noticed this space has not been active since last July.  I begged whoever reads it to allow me a respite.  And a respite I have taken and enjoyed.  A lot has happened since I have posted and I must comment that our president went through a string of misfortunes leading up to the mid-term elections.  Since then, his luck has changed.  The economy is doing well, a development that began before the election but upon which Democrats could not seem to capitalize.  As we know, the Republicans have taken over both houses of Congress and the next years will see little cooperation between the executive and legislative branches of our central government.  The Republicans also did well at the state level.  What that means, among many effects, is that austere forces will prevail in terms of government spending.  In turn, that will be a dampening influence on our overall economic comeback.  Yet other forces might overcome this soft spot – hopefully so.

On this first posting back, I want to comment on an argument that might be seen as countering much of what this blog has promoted.  Richard Dagger[1] expresses the notion that community, while a positive thing, can more or less be excessive and that is not so good.  He also believes that too strong a sense of community has a stunting effect.  How?  As the shared sense of community grows, a population might easily develop and feed into exclusivity.  That is, a recurring problem is in social arrangements in which the people tie themselves individually as members of a community which in turn fosters among themselves an “us versus them” concept or construct.  This, in turn, marries the individual to the norms of that community to the point that its members discard other views and discourage or, might even seek, to abolish any tolerance for any diverse view or way of life.  Intolerance might even take on an authoritative posture as the group might legislate against any symbolic or behavioral expressions of different ways.  The most obvious occurrence of such a policy was the Jim Crow laws of the South in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1960s.  We still suffer from the remnants of those intolerant policies.  How many of our current problems between the police and African American males, for example, are a product of this tension?  But even to a lesser degree, everyday disdain for the unusual or foreign can function – or dysfunction – in such a way as to cause narrowness and bigotry.  Further, it can stunt the individual from realizing potential within himself or herself as would any other limitation.  By its very nature, intolerance is just another example of putting blinders on to the realities of life, to the opportunities life offers.  In Dagger’s words:

Membership is usually defined not only inclusively – that is, in terms of who the members are – but also exclusively, by ruling some people out.  Thus one may appeal to membership in an effort to exclude as well as to include people.  A self can be so situated, so imbued with a sense of membership in a community, that he or she will fail to acknowledge the claims to membership made by those he or she considers to be outsiders.[2]

But is this necessarily so?

I have chosen this topic for my first posting as a way to ease into the main theme of this blog:  the nation could benefit from a more heightened sense of community and that a means to that end is to establish in our secondary schools a civics curriculum that enables and even encourages a more communal approach to the study of governance and politics.  In addition, that approach should be pervasive throughout the curriculum – both in the explicit and the implicit elements of the curriculum.  To do this, one needs a well-thought out mental construct to guide the choices one makes when choosing the content of such a curriculum.  I am proposing, through this blog, a federation theory construct and much of what this blog has stated are descriptions and explanations of what that choice entails.  The issue Dagger poses in his book is a legitimate one:  can you have too much of a good thing – so much that it becomes a bad thing with serious consequences?  Yes, you can, but that is why I am introducing a version of federalism that addresses this very problem and one that is addressed by contemporary communitarian writers such as Michael Sandel and Amitai Etzioni.  They have described their positions as being sensitive to the problem of intolerance and Dagger’s representation of their efforts is, in my estimation, too critical of their efforts.  That aside, under the auspices of federation theory, the individual is given the latitude to be a self-defining participant in the grand partnership we call citizenship.  As a matter of fact, he or she is obligated to be as open and as much a seeker of truth and beauty as he or she can be.  This is not only for his or her own well-being, but for the well-being of the community.  There is no either/or here, at least not necessarily.  Both the interest of the community and those of the individual are mutually served when the individual is disposed to question and criticize common or conventional wisdom.  A citizenry so populated is more open to innovation and improvement.

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[1] Dagger, R.  (1997).  Civic virtue:  Rights, citizenship, and republican liberalism.  New York, NY:  Oxford.

[2] Ibid., p. 52.

A RESPITE

This is, according to my accounting, the 400^th posting of this blog. The blog began on September 6, 2010. I would have continued it no matter what the readership was – this has been a selfish endeavor and I have enjoyed it. I plan to continue enjoying it for the foreseeable future, but I have decided to take a respite from it for a short while. Due to personal reasons, I am going to stop making my twice weekly entries for a month or so. As a parting gesture, I want to discuss a purpose of this blog with you.

My wish is that those of you who read the blog, at least the parents among you, would see it as an instructional source. That is, what you ascertain from reading it might help you associate with your child's civics or social studies teacher, and might better equip you to address the issues with which that professional deals. Of course, this is not every parent's interest, but among all parents there may be a sizable number of you that, once engaged, can make a difference in a particular school – a change for the better. And, naturally, this type of engagement is right in line with the central conceptualization this blog promotes, a federalist approach to our social interactions. That public school which your sons and daughters attend belongs to you. When you visit it, it is not like visiting a retail store or even visiting a professional office, such as your doctor's office. In those other places, you do not own the facility; you are a guest. But the public school is your place – collectively.

Of course, this doesn't mean you can disrespect the professionals there, but it does mean you can have a direct say in what goes on there, along with the rest of the community. Unfortunately, too many parents do not take up the role of caretakers and involve themselves only when an issue arises concerning their own children. Perhaps part of the reason for such reluctance is a lack of knowledge about what is being attempted in the school; hence, a role for this blog and others like it.

What I have promoted has never been presented as the “true way.” Instead, it has been a suggested way – one presented with reasoned, I hope, argument. I don't know who reads it, but I gather that there has been a core of repeat visitors to this site. I sincerely thank you for your interest. Perhaps I have another 400 or more postings in me; I plan to write them and share them with you. For now, though, I will bid you a short adieu.

DELVING INTO A LOCAL CLAIM

I have in this blog promoted a federalist approach to the study of civics. I have argued that a liberated federalism mental construct should be utilized to guide the content of civics instruction. In doing so, I believe one would have to displace the natural rights perspective which functions presently as the fundamental mental approach to the subject field. These mental approaches have been described and explained over the life of this blog. The reader is more than welcome to use the archival device offered on this website page – just to the right of this text. I have also suggested a wide variety of topics a teacher or material developer could incorporate in designing units of study or lessons that would reflect a federalist perspective. In this posting, I will add one more topic, but what distinguishes this topic is its uncanny connection to federalist thought. The topic is local governance over energy policy.

One of the main tenets of federalism is the argument that as much politics and governance should be done at the local level. This bias should be exercised within any parameters imposed by the federated commitments to which localities have agreed – as in the agreements US states have entered into when becoming part of the constitutional framework of the US government. This, in our history, has caused a bit of confusion and manipulation. The states agreed to the political rights guaranteed by the US Bill of Rights, for example. From time to time, certain state policies have offended the provisions of the first ten amendments to our constitution. The states have, on those occasions, claimed states' rights to pursue those policies. But the courts – interpreters of the Constitution – have seen to it that the states have been maintained within their proper roles. At times this process has been slow but, overall, the appropriate state's leeway has been respected and states have had their legitimate rights protected while keeping them true to their commitments.

Associated with this concern has been the relationship of the state government and its more local communities. Here, the concern is for what is called “home rule.” I have written about this concern in the past, but a more extensive treatment is called for – a topic for a future posting, perhaps. Here, though, I want to encourage incorporating home rule issues in instruction. To promote it, let me suggest a look at a development that is going on right now and promises to be more and more important to our national discourse.

In the state of New York, a court decision by that state's State Court of Appeals promises to have an important and far reaching effect on the national energy policy. In a 5 to 2 decision, that court ruled that local zoning provisions could be used to ban fracking practices by oil and gas corporations. Apparently, across the country in several states – New York, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina – local communities, concerned with the potential hazardous environmental and health related effects of fracking, have pushed for and have instituted zoning restrictions on energy companies extracting oil and gas by this process. Fracking uses hydraulic fracturing of shale rock and horizontal drilling to get at oil and gas deposits deep under the earth's surface. The practice, it is claimed, has been responsible for pollution of water supplies and other environmental problems which, in turn, have led to certain health problems. The process promises to make the US energy independent and is heavily backed by the energy industry. That industry claims the practice is safe, but environmental groups have condemned it as not being safe. So a heavy duty political battle has ensued which has even included an anti-fracking, feature film being released. But what I find so compelling as a federalist issue is this development: a New York court upholding local community rights to ban these large corporations from going through with fracking by using local zoning laws. And nowhere, it seems, is this more illustrated than in the town that is the subject of the lawsuit that led to the court decision.

This decision was rendered as a result of the Denver based energy company, Anschutz Exploration Corporation, suing local jurisdictions, Dryden and Middlefield, New York. Those local communities put in place zoning restrictions against Anschutz exploring for gas using the fracking method. Apparently, those regulations demonstrate the power of local people in determining their fate and illustrate a basic federalist claim: it is at the local level where an individual or group with limited political resources can make its wishes known and acted upon. In the case of Dryden, the zoning provisions followed local elections where the issue of fracking was front and center. The decision is readily seen as a victory for these local forces. You can get an appreciation for this by reading the language of the majority decision:

We do not likely presume pre-emption where the pre-eminent power of a locality to regulate land use is at stake. Rather, we will invalidate a zoning law only where there is a “clear expression of legislative intent to pre-empt local control over land use.” … [A]t the heart of these cases lies the relationship between the State and its local government subdivisions, and their respective exercise of legislative power. These appeals are not about whether hydrofracking is beneficial or detrimental to the economy, environment or energy needs of New York, and we pass no judgment on its merits.¹

In other words, the exclusive focus of this decision is the federalist concern over local governance.

This development, while it has to do with a state court decision, is not limited to New York state. As indicated above, other communities in other states have also adopted such zoning restrictions. It just so happens that the New York court is the first to issue a decision regarding these restrictions. An important aspect of the New York decision is the court is not getting into the merits of fracking, per se. Instead, the court limited its legal reasoning to the principle of home rule. The majority decision pointed out absent state law specifically protecting the energy industries against such bans or legislation that legally establishes an energy policy that includes fracking, leaves it to local zoning commissions to be able to prohibit the activity. Of course – and this has already been mentioned by industry spokespeople – the well-heeled interests will target the state legislature to get their interests protected. Will this counter effort succeed in undoing what the zoning regulations have tried to protect? Perhaps, but that process will be interesting to watch and analyze and will reflect a lot of what makes our politics tick. It will bring to bear an awfully rich faction, one that has not been shy in spending its resources to advance its interests, against less resourced people. It will also add to or detract from this very American tradition of local governance. Will local communities rise to the challenge? If yes, how will they do it? If no, what obstacles will do them in? I can't think of a more federalist centered issue and one that promises to highlight the most determinant factors affecting our domestic political process. Civics educators and concerned parents: this is a rich deposit of material to explore and exploit.

1Reported in Mufson, S. (2014). Frustration for the fracking industry. Portland Press Herald [Portland, Maine], July 3, A section, p. 2. The facts reported in this posting are derived from this article.

SAY AH AT A PRICE

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

Dear Friend,

The world is now divided in two.

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

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

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

Pay or die.

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

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

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

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

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

A COMPLEX WEB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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