A NATURAL RIGHTS CURRICULAR DIRECTION

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

This posting continues to answer the question:  what are the current elements of the nation’s civics curriculum?  The point has been made that the cultural bias toward the natural rights view has affected the general view Americans have of governance and politics and, in turn, that has mostly defined the nation’s civics curriculum.  That bias has seeped into forming a loosely held commitment to a value orientation, one that holds as its main concern the protection of the citizens’ rights. 

And how they tend to define rights follows a simple principle:  each has the right to live one’s life as he/she chooses with the only proviso that he/she not interfere with the rights of others to do likewise.  Perhaps the reader intuitively, without reflection, agrees that that can serve as an ultimate value.  A review of tort law – that law that is concerned with harm due to negligence – seems to support this perception.  A principle of that law is “no duty to a stranger;” one can literally allow a flailing baby in a puddle to drown without facing any legal repercussions.[1]

Beyond asking about what civics curriculum is, this blog will begin to ask:  what should that curriculum be?  And, how one can approach that question from the perspective of curricular content?  Included in these questions is the concern over what the civic role of schools should be.  Since it is impossible to totally segregate these topics – moral outlook, perspective of politics and governance, and elements of a civics curriculum –the depiction of civics content goes directly to how civics instruction meets its central charge to promote good citizenship.

Most non-academic writers in the field of civics education, such as civics textbook writers, have adopted a natural rights view and what this blog is about to present is meant to provide evidence of that claim.  That evidence illustrates that these writers have promoted, either intentionally or unintentionally, certain normative messages that reflect this bias toward individual rights identified above. 

And to an advocate of federation theory, those textbooks promote a less than optimal message.  They ignore those elements of governance that either rely on communal obligations or provide communal opportunities.  Instead, such curricular material misses those opportunities that inform students or guide them in learning about or experiencing the ways in which citizens engage in partnering efforts, ones that exemplify a federated citizenry. 

It is not that these elements are totally avoided, but they are presented as background or incidental information that are neither asked about nor highlighted as being beneficial attributes of a federated arrangement – for which the US Constitution, in its structural arrangements, encourages.  That constitution was written by a generation guided by federalist principles.

As repeatedly stated in this blog, a natural rights-based approach does not perceive governance in these terms – it sees it as a transactional arrangement:  services for taxes.  Since the writing and ratification of that basic law, the nation drifted away from that federalist posture to one that holds the natural rights view as dominant.

 But to see what constitutes the content of the nation’s civics classrooms, one just needs to pick up copies of the textbooks prominently used.  At the high school level that would be either Magruder’s American Government[2] or Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.[3]  At the middle school level there are three popular texts:  Civics Today:  Citizenship, Economics, and You,[4] Holt American Civics,[5] and Civics:  Government and Economics in Action.[6] 

There is nothing much that distinguishes the five from each other.  Those in high school use a bit more sophisticated language and examples that are more fully developed, but essentially all five provide the same sort of information.  They all take a structural approach to describe government. 

There is little explanation in those books about the political aims of people beyond the immediate demands or the immediate concerns of various localities or groups of citizens.  Yes, they might address some contentious issues like water pollution, but one does not get a normative sense at what is at stake in such issues.  And what one also does not get is how such an issue reflects the imbalance of power among the various affected parties.  As stated earlier in this blog, one gets the misleading notion that in terms of influence everyone is equal.

As this blog has described the systems/structural-functional approach in previous postings, these textbooks are written in a language that does not have much in terms of the prudence citizens exhibit by promoting and enhancing an interdependence among themselves.  But despite this fairly “clinical” view of government and politics, the books still convey a central moral message: that of natural liberty.

Previous postings point out that the natural rights view descends from the political theorizing of Niccole Machiavelli.  He saw politics as amoral – does current civics curriculum treat politics similarly?  To be clear, the conveyance of a moral message, either by commission or omission, would be inherent in the adoption of any construct and that includes the natural rights construct.  Moral implications are unavoidable. 

But because of the adoption of the classical liberal position – the natural rights view – avoids any commitment to a set of values other than natural liberty, that is still a value commitment.  In other words, this whole situation represents a serious irony. 

This attempt to avoid values is a fool's errand.  Any value position, however limited, will entail many preferences in a variety of situations and conditions.  The natural rights perspective is not immune to this general observation.  By augmenting liberty as an ultimate value, this approach to civics guides it to promote market values.  And with that, this guidance is not as benign as one would initially think. 

At minimum, such a bias would tip the scale toward market solutions toward a vast array of issues.  A priori, that might not be bad in all cases, but as a general dispositional point of view, guided instruction would tend to eliminate many options especially if any them calls for energetic governmental responses to certain conditions.  Therefore, this bias is not as politically neutral as it claims to be.

This basic posture – the prioritizing natural liberty above all other values – has many concrete consequences.  They range from ignoring serious challenges to the political society of the US to resulting in an instructional approach devoid of the very humanness politics entails.  The next posting picks up this concern.

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[1] Edward K. Cheng, “Torts,” Law School for Everyone – a transcript book (Chantilly, VA:  The Teaching Company/The Great Courses, 2017).

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

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

[4] Richard C. Remy, John J. Patrick, David C. Saffell, and Gary E. Clayton, Glencoe Civics Today:  Citizenship, Economics, and You (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill/Glencoe, 2008).

[5] William H. Hartley and William S. Vincent, Holt American Civics (New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2003).

[6] James E. Davis, Phyllis Maxey Fernlund, and Peter Woll, Civics:  Government and Economics in Action (Upper Saddle River, NJ:  Pearson Prentice Hall,  2018).

MECHANICAL OR ORGANIC; WHO CARES?

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

This posting continues this series’ account on the effects the natural rights view has had on civics education.  Prominently, among those effects civics has portrayed a more objectified view of government and politics.  Previous postings reveal that political science, under the influence of the political systems construct, imposes a mechanical or an organic view on how the political system is described and explained in the nation’s classrooms. 

Has the way political science, the discipline, defined or observed its subject matter affected how civics education treats its subject matter?  After all, political science is the main source of information for that secondary subject.  As it turns out, political science has experienced meaningful changes since 1950.

The practitioners of that discipline, in effect, shifted from one image of politics to another; the first reflects the behavioral revolt and the second, the post-behavioral revolt (both reviewed in previous postings). That discipline went through more than one basic shift during the twentieth century and one those shifts, the second, had to do with this concern of how one could analogize governance and politics.

As for calls emanating from the post-behavioral shift, to update the way one views political systems – not as machines but as organisms – one can observe that the treatment most teachers use is machines.  They do not consciously do this but in effect that is the way they tend to view their subject matter.  But for the sake of discussion, one can concede that the better way of perceiving this subject is to look at a political system as an organism. 

If teachers were to take this organic view seriously, what does that mean in their attempts to teach students about the realities of governance?  David Easton's political systems model does address such organic elements as community, regime, and authority as integral parts of the political system.  But these elements are presented in a typical civics classroom by way of explaining how a system provides expected services. 

The political system makes authoritative allocation decisions about sought-after benefits.  The context in which these allocations take place are within the social makeup of particular groups, e.g., laws concerning gun control, or of the society as a whole, e.g., national defense policies.  Those collective settings, when viewed more organically, encourage a study or merely an observation toward a more humane perspective than what one can garner from a mechanical view. 

But within this organic view, a sense emerges; that is, that the “organism” is mostly governed by external forces which are bombarding the system with a plethora of inputs.  Therefore, this “organic” view does not alter the operative assumption that, to a meaningful degree, the system has a passive character – one of agency.  As such, the system is incapable or highly limited in its ability to voluntarily initiate action.  

To be a bit more concrete:  Imagine a single cell organism floating in a fluid.  It is attracted to positive sustenance and avoids discomforting elements.  That is how the political system is viewed “organically.”  It is not viewed as having even self-motivating capabilities of a flea or an ant.  One can observe, such a view does provide one an explanation for the apparent hypocrisy of which too many politicians can be accused. 

They simply seem to seek the immediate reward or avoid the immediate punishment.  After all, politics is defined by some as the “art of the possible.”  And the possible is determined by what the accumulated political forces in the environment contain at a given time.  As Easton indicates, as one might be drawn to behaviorism in psychology, one would perceive government as issuing chosen outputs with the expectation of being rewarded by those who operate within the system and have the requisite levels of power.[1] 

This leans toward a highly deterministic view of politics in which the political system, like the organism just described, is merely responding to stimuli in its environment.  While political behaviorists were not so crude as to be purely deterministic, the influence of such views are more than just inconsequential.  They have lent themselves toward encouraging the presentation of political and governmental realities in detached and almost inhuman fashion. 

It also presents a system incapable of truly leading the populace.  It merely responds to political pressure.  At a minimum, this approach can not be judged (at least by this writer) as one that encourages a populous to seek to establish and/or maintain a federated relationship among its members – its partners – and with the government.

Secondary textbooks, assuming one buys into this organic image, capture an essential aspect of this view.  In their pages, a vision of government emerges as something out there and while it responds to the electorate, it is not part of the electorate, much as pointed out in a previous posting, a department store and its customers are two separate elements. 

For example, in terms of feedback, as those in authority hear and see how people are reacting to past policies and actions, those in government can adjust or correct perceived “mistakes.”  Does one want an example?  Consider how the various state governments are currentlyreacting to the covid 19 crisis. 

Not only does the image presented in textbooks relate to a system devoid of any leadership potential by those in government, but the picture it presents is also misleading.  They do not sufficiently take into account the factor of power among the populous.  Not all stimuli have the same effect.  That is, as described earlier in this blog, not all participants in the system are equally capable of exerting influence, i.e., not all of them have the same power.

Government is thereby a service-rendering entity for some more than others, not an extension of the people as a whole.  This is not portrayed as a reality, but the lack of equality is not alluded to as an ideal.  Textbooks present an image where all seem to be equal in this process.  This blog in short order will provide the evidence to back up that claim. 

Let this writer remind the reader that the role of textbooks cannot be overstated.  Again, most teachers depend on textbooks to basically make their curricular choices.[2] This following quote captures the effects that textbooks and other supportive materials have on what is taught not only in civics, but across the whole curriculum:

Instructional materials represent the resources that teachers use to develop student understanding of subject-specific concepts and skills in the enactment of the curriculum.  Such materials include textbooks, workbooks, laboratory manuals, manipulatives such as three-dimensional solids, laboratory supplies and equipment, videos, laser discs, CDs, software, and websites.  Developed by many different entities, instructional materials often become critical, defining components of instructional programs … In particular, commercial publishing firms with K-12 divisions dedicated to producing and selling school textbooks are central players in shaping what most teachers teach … Educational material production is “big business” … Thus, although publishers can and do produce materials in response to particular educational changes, decisions to invest in such developments are always tempered by estimates of the potential demand for materials supporting those changes.  Accordingly, curricular content specified as important by textbook adoption policies in large states has great influence on the content of commercially available texts.[3]

Research into this concern has been consistent.

While this quote mentions other sources than the textbooks, one should remember supplemental materials are part of the textbook product.  That is, the textbook companies provide to schools these supportive materials of what their textbooks describe and explain.

          To point out the obvious, these “big businesses” have an interest in assuring that the content of their books, especially those that relate to civics do not pose challenging messaging to the system in which they operate.  The natural rights view is well ensconced in how the system operates at the school site.

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

[2] Stephen J. Thornton, “Teacher as Curricular-Instructional Gatekeeper in Social Studies, in Handbook of Research on Social Studies Teaching and Learning, edited by James P. Shaver (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1991), 237-248.  While this citation is dated, there is no reason to believe the point made is not as true today as it was in 1991.

[3] “Chapter 4, Curriculum As a Channel of Influence:  What Shapes What Is Taught to Whom,” in Investigating the Influence of Standards:  A Framework for Research in Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, edited by Iris R. Weiss, Michael S. Knapp, Karen S. Hollweg, and Gail Burrill (Washington, DC:  National Academy Press, 2002), emphasis added.  This report is a product of the National Research Council’s Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education.

CHANGE IN SUBSTANCE ONLY

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

In previous postings, this blog describes the efforts social studies leadership undertook through what was called the New Social Studies.  By way of a quick reminder, that initiative was timed shortly after the Soviet Union’s launching of Sputnik, the first man made orbital satellite.  Generally, the reaction took many forms including one in which various American institutions promoted a significant push in the nation’s schools to emphasize science. 

In the social studies – including civics courses – that materialized in what was called the New Social Studies.  There, not only was the scientific method highlighted but the various subjects became more objectified and lacking in normative concerns.  This mirrored shifts in various social science disciplines like political science and its adoption of the political systems model (also described in previous postings).

          The leadership in social studies aimed its efforts at convincing teachers to implement an instructional strategy known as inquiry, which in turn heavily relied on the scientific method.  Overall, that leadership failed at getting teachers to adopt scientific modes of study to their teaching.  But that does not mean the effort totally failed.

          In terms of what this current series of postings aims to accomplish, the reader should take into account two areas in which the national concern for science did have large impacts.  One area was how the various social sciences changed.  In political science, this development coincided with what Harold Lasswell started in the 1930s.  That political scientist caused a stir mainly with his proposed definition for politics.  He defined this central concept or factor as follows:  “who gets what, when, how.”[1]

He writes in the preface of his famous book the following:

The interpretation of politics found in this book underlies the working attitude of practicing politicians.  One skill of the politician is calculating probable changes in influence and the influential.

          This version of politics is not novel to all students of social development.  Yet it is constantly in danger of attenuation.[2]

The general thrust of his book portrays an elitist account of politics in general, but with a focus on American politics.  A reader of this work walks away, to the extent Lasswell is successful, with a sobering view of politicians devoid of sentimentality or much hope for a shared sense of communality.  As its title suggests, politics is a no-nonsense business of government that determines the distribution of public assets.

          Initially, Lasswell’s work did not have the influence it would eventually have.  That latter development begins in the 1950s and with the nation’s shift to more scientific concerns in the 1960s.  No political scientist garners more credit for this change than David Easton.[3]  Reviewing Easton’s main contribution, in terms of this series’ aims, his work facilitated political science’s shift toward a more scientific approach of study. 

          Those who deal with this matter identify Easton’s introduction of his model for the study of politics as central.  He introduced the political systems model in the early fifties.  Again, that is reviewed in previous postings, but generally the model describes a system noted for its depiction of a circular process. 

That is, it denotes citizens (individually or through some interest group arrangement) feed demands and supports into the system.  The system then converts those inputs into outputs of public policy usually in the form of laws and regulations.  Once issued, the output is subject to review by the populous that then engage in feedback, that is, communicated judgements that then can be new demands and supports.  This, again, is described in previous postings.

A side note should be emphasized:  if one approaches the typical civics teacher and asks about the political systems model, he or she will probably not know what that is.  Even those who received a degree in political science might not be familiar with the above language.  The political systems model no longer enjoys the dominance it once enjoyed, but among all political science programs, it is still quite influential.  In addition, most civics teachers received a degree in history or took a concentration in history, not in political science. 

The point here is that Easton’s work led to a more “scientific” approach to political science.  And in how this development affected civics, the subject matter became more objectified, less concerned with justice, and less aimed at promoting a civic society.  Instead, it became more of a report about how participants pursue self-interest within structural elements of government.

Initially, political systems approach with its related behavioral studies were meant to imitate the natural sciences in their approaches.  Those engaged with this effort anticipated successes in social sciences that those natural sciences experienced starting in the nineteenth century and straight through the twentieth century.  But alas, no such success was being achieved. 

Consequently, the political systems approach broke down into various derived approaches like cybernetics, public opinion studies, conflict theory studies, political sociology studies, comparative politics studies, political economy studies, etc.  In addition to this diverse, more specific areas of research, older methodologies are currently held in higher regard than they were in the late twentieth century.

They include philosophic and historical methods.  In addition, more recently, one finds hermeneutics studies (interpretive analyses) enjoying respected standing within the discipline.  But all of that has little to no effect on civics instruction.  Instead, that instruction has maintained a structural view of government and this blog in upcoming postings will give the reader an adequate taste of what that subject material looks like.

Through the developments associated with Sputnik and the coincidental influence of Lasswell and Easton, authors of civics textbooks took up the mantle in what they chose to include in their books.  One can make a general observation – and this blog will do so in more detail in the near future. - that by simply reviewing what the currently utilized textbooks contain one gets a good view of what and how civics is taught today. 

Currently, that would be looking at such best-selling textbooks as Magruder’s American Government or Glencoe United States Government:  Democracy in Action.  But as for the leadership of social studies, there has been a lingering effort among professional, teacher organizations to uphold the New Social Studies’ instructional format as being progressive and interactive.[4]

This is promoted to replace traditional teaching methods that have students receive instruction in a more passive fashion and known as didactic methods.  Inquiry, on the other hand, calls for students to employ interactive modes of study in which they discover information and form conclusions regarding civic problems.  Practically all teachers ignore these calls for change in teaching methods. 

This reluctance to change might be offset with all the new technologies that have befallen the typical classroom, especially in the more affluent school districts.  Easy access to the Internet probably encourages teachers to assign research topics, but in the understanding of this writer, the general process of dispensing information is still through lectures and demonstrations.

An Internet review of the prevalence of didactic teaching practices reveals that there are those who defend and promote the didactic style of teaching.  This blog’s position on this issue is that didactic teaching, while it can be used to solicit from students’ higher levels of thinking, the usual result is that students are expected to recall (a low level skill and highly dependent on an individual’s inherent ability to remember) information. 

While a lot of what is argued in this blog can be said to favor interactive, open, or student-centered instructional approaches, it does not rule out the ability of some teachers to be effective “didactic” teachers.  When this writer taught, didactic style was the prevailing form of teaching.  Since the technology factor is at play, it is difficult to say what prevails today, but from the evidence to which this writer is privy, he believes didactic teaching still dominates.

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[1] Harold Lasswell, Who Gets What, When, and How (New York, NY:  McGraw-Hill, 1936).  Current distributor of this book is Papamoa Press.  Also access through online site, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Politics_Who_Gets_What_When_How/UlekDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover , accessed April 16, 2020.

[2] Ibid., n.p. (Preface).

[3] 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).

[4] See National Council for the Social Studies, Preparing Students for College, Career, and Civic Life C3.  This writer has a critical review of these standards in recently published book.  See Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020).

FACTORS OF REALISM

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

Secondary civics textbooks capture an essential aspect of their subject matter, i.e., they describe a role that governance and politics play in citizens’ lives.  In their pages, a vision of government emerges as something out there responding to the wishes of the electorate through a political process of competition.  What is noteworthy, it does this by merely describing it in general terms without categorizing what is being described.  Mostly, the text will point out entity X gets Y but without revealing, in sufficiently descriptive language, how that happens.

That is, these books have a deficiency.  While a review of the typical civics textbook consists of chapters or “units” dedicated to the various input entities that engage in feedback on a regular basis, the language it uses does not feature a feedback loop.  These entities can be individuals, interest groups, or political parties.  The textbook depicts these entities not as integral parts of the political system, but as customers in relation to a department store. 

That is, feedback is an information loop communicating people’s reactions to government policy.  One might attribute to that loop, as political systems language does, a self-correcting mechanism for the system.  In short, as those in authority hear and see how people are reacting to past policies and actions, those in government can adjust or correct perceived mistakes; those being mistakes as perceived by those who have requisite power. 

While the image of citizens portrayed in textbooks might be of entities seeking satisfaction, it avoids the language of what that implies.  In line with this instruction, most people out there are not informed or do not care about the great majority of policy decisions.  Their concerns are limited to their personal demands.  This detaches citizens from the operations of government. 

Again, using the above analogy, the textbook image is of customers of a department store, and as such, they are not integral parts of that “store” and, therefore, do not worry to any extent about the general workings of that operation.  Likewise, these customers are not depicted as essential parts of the government and, therefore, they do not worry over the general workings of that institution.

Instead, these entities provide the demands that government is set up to satisfy; without those demands, government has no purpose.  As such, this view expresses a limited role for each entity.  Each is to express only those demands relating to that entity’s affected interests.  

But the assumptions underlying the US Constitution call for an alternate view of this relationship between government and citizen.  Those assumptions place each citizen as a partner with every other entity (citizens and interest groups) and partners concern themselves with the health of the enterprise be it a department store or a government. 

It might be unrealistic to expect each entity to know about what the concerns of every other entity are.  Furthermore, one cannot keep up with the way that each entity expresses those concerns.  But each partner can be expected to conceptualize what the federated expectations from each are.  That includes the standards each entity should meet in making its demands.  And that awareness to any level of formality should begin with appropriate instruction in a civics course of study.

But as this blog has made clear, federation theory does not guide current civics efforts in schools.  The natural rights view does.[1]  And it can be said that that view does hold reality as a necessary quality in whatever political concern is at hand.  So, with that in mind, one can hold certain requisites as needed in any review of the political landscape – even in terms of a natural rights view. 

It is, therefore, obvious and more realistic that a depiction of governance should describe feedback as those activities that inform the system of sought-after corrective policy changes.  Those are changes more in line with the desires of influential members of the citizenry – or stated more descriptively, to those who have more power.  But that is a realistic depiction of what goes on and, unfortunately, it is not currently captured by what those textbooks describe or explain despite the fact they are guided by the natural rights view.

Those with power are those in the environment who can administer either meaningful rewards (for example, campaign funds) or meaningful punishments (for example, the withholding of campaign funds).  To have power, one needs either ownership or control of one or more motivating resources that are effective in the political arena. 

It can be access to reward, punishment, legitimacy, expertise, or referent resources.[2]  But the language and the description of typical textbook accounts avoid such revealing information.  As a matter of fact, the model, as presented in those textbooks, says little about whose inputs have meaningful influence.[3] 

On the surface, one is easily led to believe that all participants are equal, not in a theoretical sense, but in reality.[4]  The closest those accounts come to describing how influence works is the way they describe the effect that numbers of votes have on a politician.  While having the ability to deliver votes counts, it is but one source of either reward or punishment.  Limiting the description of this important aspect of politics in this fashion is, of course, to be inaccurate and misleading.

For a more telling account of how the government responds to different constituents, one can see E. E. Schattschneider’s book, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America.[5]  In that account, Schattschneider reviews how different constituents of varying levels of power go about planning to win political competitions.  While this source has out of date descriptions of particular entities, its basic description and explanation of how the mechanisms of government operate still holds up fairly accurately. 

Another influential book that addresses the relative strength of constituents is Theodore J. Lowi’s book, The End of Liberalism:  The Second Republic of the United States.[6]  Lowi makes a convincing argument about how well-funded entities and interest groups have taken over the competition for government allocated benefits.  One can observe a constant stream of commentators on TV today making the same point – a particularly virulent issue today as the federal government has set about to dole out funds during the current Covid 19 emergency.

To interject a quick point and possibly mix the metaphor, a casual review of the civics textbooks used in our schools will give the reader more of a mechanistic view than an organic explanation – the one that includes a feedback loop.  What begins as a highly objectified approach, thanks to the political systems model’s effect, it becomes even more so and therefore less about what really affects average citizens.  They are accounts of politics and government devoid of passion and, one may judge, interest.

Before this posting leaves this topic, one last point should be made, or better stated, remade.  Most teachers depend on textbooks to basically make their curricular choices.[7]  The ironic part of this is how few pages of a textbook the average student actually reads.  Perhaps, the most expensive purchase that the public treasury makes is what school districts spend for those pages.  These books only serve to tell teachers what to teach.[8]  This blog will further develop this theme in future postings.

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[1] In this regard, the difference between a natural rights and federation theory is that natural rights view merely reports the reality involved while federation theory would have students consider how that reality affects the equality of those involved.  The former avoids normative questioning and latter engages in them.

[2] John R. P. French, Jr. and Bertram Raven, “The Bases of Power,” in Current Perspectives in Social Psychology, ed. Edwin P. Hollander and Raymond G. Hunt (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1967), 504-512.

[3] A good political question is:  why is this lack of candor the case?  This, one can suppose, is a political question.  Applying the message of this posting, one can further wonder, who’s political power is at play insuring this editorial decision.

[4] To interject a federalist message:  Government, according to the messaging of these books, is thereby a service rendered to entities with governmental demands, not to entities that are extensions of the system or the community that has a governing body – which reflects a federalist ideation of the governing process.

[5] E. E. Schattschneider, The Semi-Sovereign People:  A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).

[6] Theodore J. Lowi, The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979).

[7] Stephen J. Thornton, S. J. (1991).  Teacher as curricular-instructional gatekeeper in social studies.  In J. P. Shaver (Ed.), Handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 237-248).  New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company.  While this citation is dated, there is no reason to believe the point made is not as true today as it was in 1991.

[8] A promising development is offered by the professional organization of social studies teachers, the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS).  It has issued a set of standards that through their implementation would question this depicted role of textbooks.  For further description of this possibility see Robert Gutierrez, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementation of National Standards (Tallahassee, FL:  Gravitas/Civics Books, 2020) – available through Amazon.  Chapter 1 of that book critically reviews the NCSS’ effort.

DIDACTIC METHOD RULES

[Note:  If the reader has taken up reading this blog with this posting, he/she is helped by knowing that this posting is the next one in a series of postings.  The series begins with the posting, “The Natural Rights’ View of Morality” (February 25, 2020, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-natural-rights-view-of-morality.html).  Overall, the series addresses how the study of political science has affected the civics curriculum of the nation’s secondary schools.]

The last posting reviewed the effects of the New Social Studies on that portion of the curriculum.  That initiative was an effort by social studies educators to jump on the federal government’s science bandwagon in the 1960s.  In general, the effort was to introduce scientific methods into the study of various social studies subjects.  That includes history, government/civics, and economics. 

Here in this blog, the concern is over government/civics, to be referred to as simply civics.  That subject is directly charged with imparting the knowledge and skills associated with citizenship (a responsibility that all social studies subjects share to some degree). 

          The last posting left off with a challenge that any reform in curriculum faces.  That is, teachers reluctantly giving up on how they do their jobs.  Most reform efforts from the last century into this one has emphasized changes in instructional methods.  Teachers who feel comfortable with using one approach – usually didactic methods – will not readily shift to another promoted method – usually an interactive approach called inquiry.

The important concern that transcends both instructional approaches is that to be successful either way needs for students to be reflective about what is being taught – i.e., not having students merely recalling the subject matter but thinking about it.  This might be more challenging when a teacher uses didactic methods since that method emphasizes the dispersal of information without calling for any mental action in response unless the teacher calls for it – it’s a demand that is not essential to the method, but can be made a part of it.

An online review as to the prevalence of didactic teaching practices today reveals that there are those who defend and promote this style of teaching.  Editorially, this writer argues that didactic teaching, while it can be used to solicit from students’ higher levels of thinking, the usual result is that students are expected to recall information (a low level skill and highly dependent for its success on an individual’s inherent ability to remember).  

But this writer can personally testify that even honors students who were exposed to didactic teaching could not recall basic information about a subject in the subsequent year.  He would, for example, ask ten basic American history questions – a subject taught in the eleventh grade – to twelfth grade honors students that they could not answer.  For whatever reason school officials require American history for graduation; this evidence seems to indicate that the reason is not being met.

While a lot of what this blog argues can be said to favor interactive instructional approaches, it does not rule out the ability of teachers to be effective “didactic” teachers.  When this writer taught, didactic style was the prevailing style of teaching and his ongoing communication with educators today indicates that is still the case.  The only proviso one might interject today is the effect technology might currently be having on instruction.  It is difficult to say, without any reservations, what teaching method prevails today, but common observation does not indicate that inquiry has taken over.

What can have an influence on instruction along with how lessons are taught is what is taught.  And that goes for civics as well as any other subject.  Relevant to this posting is how political science has affected civics content.  With the behavioral turn, explained previously in this blog, one has a more objectified view of government and politics.  This blog, with next posting, turns to that influence.  And to do that, it will look closely at the central determiner of what teachers teach.  That is the textbook.