THE ACTION PART OF THE DEAL

The last posting made a connection between dialogue and action.  Simply stated, the connection is that talking leads to collective action.  But one needs to be careful.  Talking does not necessarily lead to action and, if it does, it does not necessarily lead to the action one would judge beneficial or logically derived from such talk.  In other words, talking is usually a precondition, but other factors are involved in getting people to act in ways the collective says they should.

          In its treatment of change, this blog reviewed many of these factors from mental domains (the real, the ideal, the physiological) to the sociological/political environment of a family, an organization, a community, or a nation.  The one message that one can derive from that review is that change or social action can be very complex.  In terms of change, those who are dedicated to facilitating change need to be conscious of that complexity and understand that there is no sure recipe for success.

What a debate does, in a competitive format, is to allow a person to voice concerns over obstacles standing in the way of implementing a plan.  Students, in determining in what action they want to participate, can review their own feelings, those of their fellow students, and those of the community or other significant people who would be involved in such an effort.

With that warning, this posting shares some ideas of what kinds of actions students can initiate and work to accomplish.  The reader is reminded, that the unit under development calls on students to study an international issue, that of foreign trade.[1]  A challenge with such an effort is how does such a unit get students to meaningfully act on an issue that does not immediately make itself known locally.  Yes, some of the consequences can be locally felt, but the actual trading processes do not.

This challenge will be addressed in an upcoming posting.  This posting will look at the types of issues or topics over which secondary students can address and act.  Based on the work of Jerome Bruner and others, the argument for students being actively involved in developing and implementing political-action plans has been made.[2] 

Examples that have been given are political issues such as poverty and racial relations.  Bruner described this type of learning as having student investigate, first hand, the “occupations” or ways of life of those who live in their communities.  This is in the tradition laid down by John Dewey and described earlier in this blog.  To summarize the philosopher’s concern, most of what schools usually do – exposition and “book learning” – isolates students from real life and lacks the ability of instilling “the spirit of service.”[3]

In the literature of educational studies, such action-learning is generally called experiential education.  There is empirical evidence to suggest that experiential education succeeds in many of the aims that federation theory highlights.  That is, by students going out and dealing with the people affected by social and governmental policy and practice, they more readily engage emotionally and develop a sense of self in relation to the concerns they are investigating and upon which they are acting. 

That would be a sound foundation to instill social capital.  An insightful description of this effect, of overcoming a more self-centered view, is offered by Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing:  “while most students identify themselves as citizens, their grasp of what it means to act as citizens is rudimentary and dominated by a focus on rights, thus creating a privately oriented, passive understanding.”[4]  To usher them out of this self-serving and unengaged view, nothing is more effective than political participation, especially when it is focused on relevant, local concerns.

That insight can be traced to the writings of Tocqueville in the eighteen-hundreds, a favorite writer of this blog.  More specifically, voting and giving money is not enough; what is called for is political action.  William Damon further concludes that nothing is more effective in terms of moral education than programs “that engage students directly in action, with subsequent opportunities for reflection.”[5]

More to the point, these actions can include the following: 

·        showing up for and taking part in political meetings;

·        scheduling and putting on political meetings which can be platforms to express political opinions or demands;

·        organizing and carrying out fund drives;

·        canvasing an area to gather signatures in support or against bills or other initiatives;

·        seeking to attain membership on political boards;

·        joining or starting a political club;

·        participating in debates or other deliberations over a social and/or political issue relevant to student lives; and

·        starting an educational plan that leads to an occupation that has public value.

This writer is aware of a couple of organizations that are dedicated to advance students in the pursuit of these types of activities.  They are The National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC) and SOS Outreach.[6]

          But what about the school itself?  Can it be a more accessible and perhaps a more realistic environment by which experiential learning can take place?  When one considers a school in these terms, the name John Dewey again pops up.  His writing included a vision which characterized a potential role for schools; i.e., one cannot think of a better location to encourage students to engage.  They attend this place 180 days a year.  It is where their friends are.  It is where political decisions affect them directly.  This is how Dewey saw a school site or, better stated, a school community.

He, therefore, thought of it as the ideal place to encourage and facilitate students being involved and creating a more democratic site.  And more importantly, if it is democratic enough, it can create a democratic culture – a way of doing things that reflect the values of those who attend that school.  As such it can be the site for political, experiential learning to take place.  As Theodore Sizer points out, the school site and how it is run can do more to teach democratic values than any other source.

There have been several writers who have addressed this potential source of experiential learning.  For example, Sizer writes:  “Students learn much more from the way a school is run,” … “and the best way to teach values is when the school is a living example of the values to be taught.”[7] This quote hints at the type of concerns over which students could investigate and deliberate. 

This can include every day concerns such as student discipline, school physical maintenance, social problems among students like bullying, instances of sexism or racism, or, with deference for expert input, questions concerning curriculum.  In choosing actual policies in which students could have a say, a teacher needs to give that choice some reflection.  Schools are not experiments, they are places where public business is conducted with real consequences.  So, the areas of operation that students should be invited to express their input, perhaps given a degree of decision-making discretion, deserves serious thought.

This writer was at one time the faculty advisor for student government at a middle school.  He and another teacher wrote a plan, called “Brainstormers,” that created a new model for student government.  Part of the innovation was to get administration to hand over “authority” over one aspect of school life. 

That aspect was extracurricular activities.  The central student body council determined what extracurricular activities could be scheduled and where they could take place.  Of course, any decisions were subject to oversight by administration, but, on a day-to-day basis, that oversight was not felt.  The aim was to identify that segment of campus life that students could handle and was age-appropriate for them to determine with real consequences.

Hopefully, the reader can find such a potential opportunity to socialize students to democratic life as a viable way to teach civics.  At this point, the writer, unlike many of his prior colleagues, does not see this as being “the way” for all schools or all teachers.  He has previously written about how a teacher needs to be of a certain type of teacher who feels comfortable with such experiential teaching techniques. 

Further, when one talks of a school-wide effort, the supportive philosophy needs to be widely shared among that school’s faculty and staff.  If a teacher, who wants to engage in experiential learning strategies, stands alone in terms of these ideas in a faculty, he/she needs to be conscious of that fact and plan accordingly. 

But, if he/she is committed to apply this experiential learning approach, with a bit of creativity, this writer believes the opportunities are there in most schools.  He/she should begin by contacting supportive organizations that can provide supportive ideas and resources.  Perhaps this blog can be but one such source.

---

[1] That development has been the topic of the past various postings; if the reader is new to this blog, he/she might review a few of those postings.

[2] “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013/2007, accessed on October 1, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/civic-education/ .

[3] Ibid.

[4] Pamela J. Conover and Donald D. Searing, “A Political Socialization Perspective,” in Rediscovering the Democratic Purposes of Education, eds. Lorraine M. McDonnell, P. Michael Timpane, and Roger Benjamin (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000), 91-124, 108.

[5] “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[6] The writer is not recommending membership in these organizations.  His knowledge of them is limited to his awareness that they exist and is mentioned in related sources of information.  One such source is “Civic Education,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

[7] Thomas R. Sizer, Horace’s Compromise:  The Dilemma of the American High School (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1984), 120, 122.

SOME GENERIC ELEMENTS OF DEBATES

Before sharing the first new sentiments of this posting, the writer wants to reemphasize something – this blog is developing a unit of study in real time.  Therefore, the writer begs the pardon of the reader when he indicates that he wants to change the name of the approach he is simultaneously developing.  That name is historical dialogue.  Initially, his thoughts were guided by the notion that he wanted to steer away from a political science based approach to the study of civics.  Instead, a historical approach is more effective when dealing with secondary students and the overall goals of civics education.

          These goals include students engaging themselves with the content of the course on moral and emotional levels.  History, with its stories of human interaction, including political actions, are more apt to be able to identify those conditions with which students can relate.  On the other hand, political science is scientific, in that it reduces reality to factors or variables and to testing those variables as to whether some have predictive power over others.  Such study is noted for its objectivity and consciously avoids language that elicits emotional response.

          The writer has determined that while political science studies can be utilized in the study of civics, those studies can be cited as the need arises.  In the main, though, history should be the discipline that a civics course should look to for the stories and descriptions of related events. 

For example, in the present unit that this blog is developing, the history of foreign trade and related legislation – Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and the North American Foreign Trade Act – provides a representational account of how American thinking over foreign trade has developed during the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. 

By reviewing this history, students need not engage in highly abstract information to get a sense of how that thinking has evolved.  The review of this history is not meant to have student engage in forensic debating, but to engage in deliberative debating.  The question is not what should have happened in the past, but what should happen in the future.  Forensic questions are useful in a history course, deliberative questions are on which civics courses should focus.

With that thrust, the term, historic dialogue, was deemed to be appropriate for what the unit of study was aiming student to do.  But there is one more goal, that while a dialogue based course can assist, does not address directly.  That is, students should engage in some action or, stated another way, they should engage in action learning. 

As John Dewey espoused, experience is the best teacher.  It is the intent of this developer, therefore, to include an action component.  That component will have a political character to it.  So, perhaps the term to describe this approach might be historic dialogue and political action.  The writer will keep working on it.

As for this posting, its main purpose was to finish a description of the overall progression a civics course might take that, in turn, depends on the approach being developed.  In the last posting, this approach’s first two stages where described.  Those two stages are discussion and argument.  The third is debate.  The obvious logic of this progression reflects the evolution students are to take from having them expressing opinions, to devising arguments, to improving on the soundness of those arguments, and now, to engaging in a more formally structured argument or debate.[1]

This blog, in the upcoming postings, will more thoroughly develop what a teacher would instruct students to do as they prepare and engage in a debate.  But the reader should keep in mind that this deliberative process is geared not only to determine who argues more effectively, but to determine what action students will take in response to the issue under study.

To begin, when students reach the level of sophistication in which they can take part, effectively, in a debate, they should have already been introduced to certain elements of debating.  For example, one thing that characterizes the progression from discussion to debate is that the give and take among students becomes more targeted as the course advances. 

Early in the course, students take part in discussions.  These sessions are about individual issues, e.g., gun control.  Then during the argumentation stage, the give and take is over various policy choices.  At that point, the discussion focuses on specific action a government, an organization, or an individual should take.  When it comes to debating, this approach calls on students to decide what action should students take. 

The challenge, though, in this progression is that as the course advances, its issues are projected toward more national or international issues.  For example, the unit of study being developed here, the last unit of the course, is about international trade.  So, if the action component of the unit calls on students to think of something students can do that reflects their sense of what should be done, there are limited actions a student can take that addresses this global topic.  This is a challenge the developer will try to resolve.

Another point can be made.  To engage in a debate, that is sufficiently focused, is to find that aspect of the issue that, by its nature, serves to separate those aspects debaters agree upon and those that they do not.  By doing this, debaters can get at debating without wasting a lot of energy just repeating with what all the participants agree.  Instead, the debate zeroes-in on what is under contention.

In terms of foreign trade, for example, it is safe to say all or, at least, most students agree that foreign trade should advance American interests.  But perhaps students disagree as to whether the US should manipulate their currency or should the US set higher tariffs on more products.  Of course, such narrowing is part and parcel of devising potential policy and, so, the natural tendency is for debating to not be over a total issue area, but on a policy choice. 

The point at which students agree, just before shifting over to disagreement, is called the point of stasis.  By the time students get to the debating stage, they can be taught what a point of stasis is, its function, and what to look for in determining what it is in the given topic being considered.  This developer has not done the actual development of an appropriate lesson plan for this aim, but he feels that identifying a point of stasis can be part of the instruction during the argument stage of the course.

Another advancement that can be developed during the earlier portions of the course – before the debating stage begins – is to have discussants or students who argue to add nuance to either the question under consideration or to their opinions or arguments.  An example might be:  instead of just saying, “I believe that everyone should be allowed to say what they want to say,” they could say “I believe that adults should be allowed to say what they want to say as long as their speech does not endanger someone else’s safety.” 

In other words, to be nuanced is to add qualifications and reservations so that what is said better reflects what a person really wants to express or argue.  In the above example, by being nuanced, the person avoids saying that immature or irresponsible remarks – that can be dangerous – are okay; not what the speaker intended to say.  And this goes for the question upon which the debate is based.  Nuanced questions help prevent debates from being derailed away from what they were meant to be.

The final aspect of a debate that should be reviewed is an element that they have.  Discussions and arguments are not competitions, but debates are.  And, in determining which side of the competition wins there is the addition of a third-party judge.  Why?  Because debates do not have, as in many games or sports, any unequivocal point system.  In baseball, for example, every time a runner crosses home plate, that’s a run and whatever team has the most runs wins.  It’s not so obvious with debating.

Later postings will address how good debates accrue “points.”  But for now, the point (intended) to be made is that a debate is judged by a third party, a judge or a panel of judges, and a winner is declared – with accompanying reasons for the resulting determination.  There are various consequences to this addition.  Among them is that by having a third party, the presentations tend to be addressed to the judge(s) and, consequently, will be less likely to escalate emotionally.  Debaters are more apt to keep their give and takes to expressing useful arguments.  They tend to be reasoned, more logical, and with emotions in check.

So, debates are noted for being on message (with a point of stasis identified), nuanced, and judged by a judge or a panel of judges.  There are other structural elements that a debate contains, but for now, this account has laid the groundwork so that the reader can delve into some of the elements that make for good debating.  The next posting will pick up on these aspects.

---

[1] This review of debate relies on Professor Atchison’s course.  See Jarrod Atchison, The Art of Debate – A Transcript Book (Chanilly, VA:  The Great Courses, 2017).

OPINIONS AND ARGUMENTS

With the last posting, this writer completed his review of content which he will use in the development of a unit of study for a civics high school course.  That course, at least in Florida, is entitled American Government.  It is a semester course and shares the senior year, social studies requirement with another course, economics – each is a half credit.  This blog has been, in real time, going through the various steps a teacher might take in developing a unit.  The topic of this demonstration is foreign trade and how that trade affects the availability of jobs in the US.

Previously, this blog identified a potential course outline – its list of units in order of presentation.  To remind the reader, here is that outline:

•         The individual – short term interests vs. long term interests

•         The family – the effects of divorce

•         The neighborhood – responsibilities toward problem children

•         A small business – treatment of employees

•         A labor association (such as a union) – efficiency and quality issues vs. worker interests

•         A large corporation – product safety

•         A local government (either city or county) – zoning or racial/ethnic divisions

•         Law enforcement agency – judicial rights applicable to an accused

•         White House – leadership that advances social capital

•         Congress – the extent that money (donations) is influential

•         The courts – the role of interpreting constitutional principles as expressions of social capital

•         Society during wartime – special demands on citizenship

•         International associations – levels of interdependence between nations

As the reader can see, each unit is listed by stating its main area of concern (e.g., Congress) and a related issue that, if studied, would target addressing a social capital related issue.  This blog has made the claim that federation theory is primarily focused in advancing social capital[1] and civic humanism.[2]  Therefore the above issues are judged to reflect related concerns of these societal qualities.

The current unit being developed was seen to potentially be logically inserted in the “large corporation” slot or the “international associations” slot.  The decision was made to situate it with the latter issue or, as the last unit of the course.  The course, as a semester course, lasts eighteen weeks.  There are thirteen units which means at least four of the units can be two weeks in length, while the remaining units would each be one-week long.  The extra week would be reserved for administrative purposes.

As pointed out in a previous posting, this demonstration is introducing a new instructional approach the developer calls historic dialogue.  Overall, this instructional strategy progresses through the course by working through the following development:  discussion-argument-debate.  As this unit under discussion is the final unit of the course, it is assumed that students would be at the debate level.  This posting, though, will describe briefly each of these stages – two in this posting and the last one in the next posting.

Discussion stage, at the beginning of the course, simply has students expressing their opinions concerning the issues the content highlights.  So, for example, in the second unit, if the teacher uses the identified issue, divorce, the teacher would bring up a suggested policy change in the divorce laws – possibly making it more difficult to secure a divorce. 

Perhaps the old state of New York standard can be discussed in which divorce was only granted if one of the parties engaged in an extra marital affair.  This was changed in 2010 to allow for “no-fault” divorces.  Given the divorce rate is presently at 40 to 50 percent nationally, and all the disruptions that causes, should the divorce laws change and become more stringent.  This could make for a spirited discussion.

At this point, the purpose would be to get students comfortable with expressing an opinion allowing for little to no criticism.  Students could just express what they think without having to defend their positions or, if they do, briefly.  A historical study of New York’s law could accompany this discussion and be beneficial as it would expose how law can affect family relations.  Also, the discussion is limited to one option:  should the old New York law be reestablished?  Yes or no.

The next stage is argumentation.  Here the student, who is now hopefully comfortable with expressing opinions, is further encouraged to engage in an argument.  The focus now shifts in having students, in their consideration of an issue, entertain two or more options.  The question becomes:  which of the two or three policy options should be implemented?  These can be policy positions or legislative bills (or a part of a bill) or suggested actions.  Class arguments can be conducted with the teacher being highly conscious of detecting illogical arguments such as the fallacies this blog reported on several postings ago.[3]

The object is for students to begin building argumentation skills.  This calls on a regimen of critiques aimed at improving student skills and is spurred by hearing, understanding, and applying critical evaluations of their arguments.  Students should be, during this stage, instructed on the basic components of a sound and meaningful argument.

Soundness is composed of applying the demands of the various components that make up a sound argument as identified by Stephen Toulmin’s model.  That model is composed of a conclusion, supportive factual information (datum statements), warrant statement(s), backing of a warrant statement(s), qualification(s), and reservation statement(s).[4]

Meaningfulness reflects how qualitatively the argument relates to federalist values and how many people are affected by its provisions.  So, for example, if a policy affects the equality status of millions of people, that is meaningful.  Students, in the experience of this writer, tend to lack an appreciation on how policies can affect citizens, especially if the issue involved does not directly affect them.  Teachers should strive to get their students to become more sensitive to these effects.

This ends this initial description of the instructional strategy this unit will implement.  In parting, the reader should consider that to this point, this account has briefly reviewed the first two stages of the historic dialogue approach to teaching civics.  What remains is the third stage, debate.  That will be the topic of the next posting.

---

[1] This blog, using the writing of Robert Putnam, defines social capital to mean a societal quality characterized by having an active, public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a social environment of trust and cooperation.

[2] Civic humanism is defined as a collective bias which holds that we, as citizens, are in a partnership in this polity.

[3] See posting, “Fallacy Types,” August 29, 2017.

[4] See posting, “Toulmin’s Elements of a Logical Argument,” August 22, 2017.

TO BE PRO MARKET OR NOT

With this posting, this blog completes a development phase for a unit of study in a civics course at the high school level.  This is a demonstration for purposes of sharing with the reader what a teacher might consider in devising a civics unit using federation theory as a guiding perspective.  The series of postings so dedicated reports, in real time, the writer’s effort to identify the content of the unit.  That content consists mostly in a listing of insights – sixteen to date.  This entry points out the two final insights.

          The seventeenth insight is:

In trying to nurture domestic businesses – so that they can bolster their prospects in foreign trade – the national government invests in education, invests in infrastructure, and subsidizes research and development.[1]

Lesson idea:  This insight is alluded to in other previously identified insights, but it is felt that its explicit value – advancing the competitive abilities of a nation’s businesses – needs to be stated clearly and unequivocally.  The aim here is to have students make the conceptual distinction between these set of policies and those that distort market mechanisms. 

This nurturing approach, it might be argued, also distorts market mechanisms in that they are government operations, but there is a difference.  These nurturing strategies do not artificially affect the demand or supply of the goods that are bought and sold in foreign trade markets. 

But when a nation, for example, manipulates that nation’s currency (one of several activities that a government can do to affect supply and demand), it directly increases the demand for its exports – by making them cheaper – and lowering the demand for imports – by making them more expensive.  This is not nurturing, it’s “stacking the deck.”

As such, this latter strategy – what might be called anti-competitive strategies – is by some accounts unfair.  The question becomes:  should the victim of such nefarious policies counter them with similar moves?  If so, does it lead to just a circular anteing up of such actions; e.g., higher and higher tariffs or more manipulation of currencies or more direct subsidies?

In terms of instructing this insight, it can be added to how the thirteenth insight is taught – see previous posting – where students research anti-competitive strategies such as subsidies.  The teacher can ask students how nurturing strategies are similar and dissimilar to anti-competitive strategies.

The eighteenth insight is:

In international trade, if a nation’s products are losing favor among customers, then its national currency will lose value.  Why?  Because one needs that nation’s currency to buy that nation’s products and if less people are buying its products, they need less of that currency – lowering its demand. 

When the value of a currency goes down, though, then it takes less of another nation’s currency to buy that first currency.  This, in effect, lowers the final price of that first nation’s products.  They become cheaper and, therefore, will be in more demand as time goes by. 

The opposite happens when a nation’s products become more favored by customers.  Currency value of the nation goes up, those products become more expensive, and the demand for the products goes down. 

In short, if currencies values can float according to market forces, they will act to stabilize the balances of trade/payments among nations.  But when a nation manipulates its currency, that policy aborts the market from arriving at such a balance.[2]

Lesson idea:  Teacher can devise a simulation activity in which goods are sold using artificial currencies.  There can be three nations and each nation sells one or two products.  Each nation has a currency and this currency needs to be “bought” by foreign actors to buy that nation’s product(s).  The simulation is set up so that demand for the various currencies are established by the money sellers determining how much of another nation’s currency is needed to buy that currency. 

To simplify the simulation, product prices are fix and the only variation occurs with the prices of the currencies going up and down.  Also, to simplify the simulation, a “central bank” can be the agent that buys and sells currencies.  The details of such a simulation need to be worked out.  For example, the simulation can take on a game structure with winners and losers.

That ends this phase in which the developer identifies the content of this foreign trade unit along with the various lesson ideas that might lead to actual lesson plans.  He will next address the instructional structure the unit will take.  This will be done in the next posting.

---

[1] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust:  How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).

  

[2] Ibid.

RESTRICTIVE OR LIBERALIZED

The development of a unit of study continues with this posting.  The reader who has not been reading this blog of late should know that it is, in real time, reporting on the development of a unit on foreign trade and how that trade has affected the availability of jobs in the US.  To date, this account has identified twelve insights regarding this topic and has reported on lesson ideas for each of the insights.  This posting picks up on this development.

          The thirteenth insight is:

Often in American discourse concerning international trade, it is portrayed as a zero-sum competition.  This is the case due to the loss of manufacturing jobs to other countries.  But there have been positive results due to this trade.  For example, in the last two decades there has been more people rising out of poverty, worldwide, than ever before.  Unfortunately, this has been accomplished by nations ascribing to “beggar thy neighbor” strategies.  To heighten their exports, nations, such as China and Japan, have subsidized their companies, instituted restrictive regulations to discourage imports, and have manipulated their currencies.  In short, they have distorted market forces, but the irony is, in the extreme, these policies hurt these countries long-term interests such as in consumer demand.[1]

Lesson idea:  Teacher writes on board the following strategies:  restrictive regulations, subsidizing businesses, and manipulating currencies.  For each strategy, students investigate and answer these questions:  how is this strategy done?  How does it lead to short-term advantage?  How does it pose long-term disadvantages?  How does it distort market forces?

The fourteenth insight is:

In counter distinction to the distorting policies utilized by Asian countries and identified in the thirteenth insight, European countries use more pro-market strategies.  They rely mostly on nurturing their businesses and training their workforces.  This approach is particularly seen in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland).[2]

Lesson idea:  Students, using the same questions as were used for the thirteenth insight, investigate the significance of this insight.  What needs to be spelled out is:  how does a national government “nurture” domestic businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector?  There are other insights in this unit that provides information on this account. 

What seems to be central to a nurturing approach is a strategy that avoids direct subsidy and instead focuses on creating a fertile environment of entrepreneurial factors.  See internet site:  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/12/6-ways-governments-can-encourage-entrepreneurship/ .  Another country that can be added to a list of nurturing countries is Germany.

The fifteenth insight is:

In the US, while the federal government is mired in debating its proper role, state governments have become very aggressive in competing for jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector.  South Carolina is a good example of this.  Some strategies are aimed at luring such jobs from other states.  This approach is particularly true in the south where they rely on being “right-to-work” states (a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act that diminishes the bargaining position of labor unions).  Of course, such moves do not help the over welfare of the American economy.  Other strategies include tax incentives (mostly tax reduction plans); but best of all are investments in infrastructure (highways, bridges, communication facilities, schooling and training facilities, etc.).  Also in this pursuit of businesses and investment are larger cities. 

In the extreme, subsidies can prove to be hurtful by its diversion of public funds from needed public services and reliance on “right to work” provisions can hurt manufacturing workers as they lower wages and weaken legitimate union representation.[3]

Lesson idea:  Students are assigned the reading, “Government Subsidies for Business,”[4] by Marc Davis and prepare to discuss the question:  State governments should provide businesses subsidies:  yes or no?  The teacher should be prepared to play devil’s advocate; i.e., argue the opposite of what students argue.  So, if the student argues it is good for state’s economy to subsidize a business (it provides jobs), the teacher can point out it also siphons public funds away from needed services, such as education.  A source of information concerning “right to work” laws is an internet site that presents AFL-CIO’s position on this legislation.  See https://aflcio.org/issues/right-work.

          Sixteenth insight is:

With President Trump threatening, during his campaign, to institute protectionists polices against such countries like China, there have been some worrisome reactions to such a move.  The argument goes that it is a bit short-sighted to blame China, for example, for the loss of jobs in the US.  A more significant factor are the advances in technologies.  This includes advances in artificial intelligence, automated and electronic manufacturing and management.  The result has been higher levels of efficiency and productivity through the ability of companies to eliminate manufacturing sector jobs.  The implication is that if the US engages in a trade war with China, this will hurt Americans.  A better solution is increasing exports to China especially in high-tech products such as in aviation technologies.[5]

Lesson idea:  this insight is favoring trade with China and can be used by those who favor globalization.  The teacher can ask students to assume the role of a labor leader in the US.  As established in another insight previously cited, labor leaders have been generally against liberal foreign trade policies.  What arguments can a labor leader make that would rebuke the general thrust of this insight? 

Students, from the perspective of a labor leader, formulate a list of supportive backing statements for more restrictive policies against trade with China and other nations that are emulating China’s strategy; e. g., South Korea and Vietnam.  Following are two factoid statements that relate to this insight and can be used in this activity.

·        There has been a reduction in average labor needed to produce a car from .1 in 1999 to .07 in 2014.  This reflects the manufacturing processes have turned to the use of machines and robots to do what workers did in the past, at least, in the auto industry.  Similar developments can be found in the machine and chemical industries where job availability have grown slowly and, in some cases, has declined in recent years.[6]

·        China has an increasing demand for high-tech civil aviation, machine tools, integrated circuits, and other high-tech goods and will reach $600bn by 2020.  This is a fraction (1/2) of the current (2015) trade deficit with China.  But this calls on the US to ease high-tech trade restrictions to China.  The fear is the stealing of intellectual property.[7]

It is anticipated that this phase of this development – identifying the unit’s content – will be completed in the next posting.   Then the development will shift its focus to the instructional strategy for the unit.  The development marches on.

---

[1] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust:  How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Marc Davis, “Government Subsidies for Business,” Investopedia, accessed September 21, 2017, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/11/introduction-to-government-subsidies.asp .

  

[5] Wang Wen, “A US-China Trade War Would Cause Huge Damage and Benefit Nobody,” Financial Times, March 27, 2017, accessed September 22, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/3b49cd2a-10ad-11e7-b030-768954394623 .

  

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

THE FACE OF GLOBALIZATION

This posting continues what this blog is currently doing; that is, it is developing, in real time, a civics course of study on foreign trade and how that trade has affected the availability of jobs in the US.  To date, the blog has identified nine insights and related lesson ideas that potentially will make up the core of the course.  Of course, this is not a real unit; this exercise is for demonstration purposes.

          The tenth insight is:

Assisting the transfer of jobs abroad has been the rise of transnational corporations.  These corporations are global in operations and have increasingly acted beyond the legal authority of national governments in that they can readily shift assets from country to country.  Some make a distinction between multinational corporations (MNCs) and transnational corporations (TNCs).  The difference is a technical one; if the entity has identifiable headquarters in particular nations it is an MNC, if it doesn’t it’s a TNC.  In either case, their rise in economic and political viability has been made possible by liberalized economic policies since World War II, a lessening of nationalistic perspective in Western countries in favor of global perspectives, and freer market operations.[1]

Lesson idea:  Have students name a few products they like or find they buy regularly.  Teacher makes a list of these products.  The students are assigned to “Google” them and see what companies produce them.  Are these companies owned by other companies?  Where are these companies headquartered?  In how many countries are those companies doing business?  In other words, how expansive are these entities?  Hopefully, the student can begin to gain some understanding how transnational or multinational corporations have become central to the US economy and the economies around the world.  Discuss what political consequences such expansion can mean to the politics of any single country.  A film that is futuristic that taps into what the existence of transnational corporations can lead to is the 1978 offering, Rollerball.  Interested students might be assigned to see this film and report on its story line and its theme to the rest of the class.

          The eleventh insight is:

Globalization in trade has lowered consumer prices and increased the spreading of technology.  Often this has been to lesser developed nations.  The anticipation of these benefits played a significant role in encouraging lawmakers to pass legislation, like the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, that has made possible the resulting globalization of trade.  The voice that has consistently had major concerns over such developments have been the labor unions who predicted accurately the subsequent loss in manufacturing jobs to foreign countries.[2]

Lesson idea:  The fight over the North American Trade Agreement in the early nineties is a good case study of this insight.  Students could construct a timeline of that debate as a class effort.  The teacher on the black/white board draws a long line and underneath, toward the bottom of the board, writes in the name of every sixth months that covers the years from 1990 to 1994.  Students begin to fill-in the timeline with events that made up the debate over whether NAFTA would be established and become the international set of rules governing trade among the US, Mexico, and Canada.

          The twelfth insight is:

The Peterson memo, identified in a previous posting, warned the Nixon Administration of the impending global, competitive economy and that further recommended the nation’s federal government take an aggressive posture concerning investment in plant and equipment, research and development, public infrastructure, and better education and training of America’s workforce.  The memo was given a cold reception by Nixon’s State Department.  State saw it as too dismissive of the need to establish better relations with other nations, too nationalistic, and an encouragement to Congress to pass higher tariffs and restrictive regulations on foreign trade.  Some argue that State’s reaction was an example of Marshall Plan thinking being extended too long.[3]

Lesson idea:  The class or a group of students role-play a group of advisers who advise a leader of a European nation, say West Germany, or Japan back at the time the Peterson memo.  They illustrate or act out the advice they would give the leader as they “digest” the arguments contained in the memo.

          These three insights will do it for this posting.  Next, the developer wants to add a concept to the list of ideas this unit has identified as suitable for having a conceptualization exercise.  To date, the concepts, comparative advantage, productivity, and balance of trade/payments, have been highlighted.  To this list, he wants to add the concept, currency manipulation.  This can be added to the type of lesson identified for the other three in which students, using inductive reasoning, develop a list of attributes and form a definition.  To each one of these concepts, students can be asked:  what is the significance of this idea?

          With that, this entry describing the development of this course is completed.  There will probably be one or two more postings dedicated to this development.

---

[1] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust:  How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) AND Wikipedia, “Multinational Corporation,” accessed September 18, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_corporation .

[2] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust:  How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global Economy.

[3] Ibid.