IT’S ALL IN THE PRESENTATION

 

This posting continues with this blogger’s ideas concerning an ideal civics teacher preparation program that directly addresses the current state of poor citizenry in the US.  He argues that such a program should include five elements.  The last posting started with element one and it is,

 

A viable teacher preparation program needs to make clear that civic preparation is not only a foundation of civics education or even social studies, but also of all public education and of responsible private educational programs as well.

 

In supporting such a bold claim, that posting utilized the ideas of prominent educator, R. Freeman Butts, and several prominent historians, Allen Nevins, Henry Steele Commager, and Samuel E. Morrison.  They, in turn, cite the founding fathers and how they considered the need for public education.

          The crux of the argument is that it is only the general need for a viable and engaged citizenry – one necessary to maintain a republic – that justifies taxpayers being called upon to foot the bill for such an expensive endeavor.  For example, early on, there was the hesitancy among the rich to contribute to such funding since they would not be sending their children to such schools. 

But even in the case of private schools, the promotion of good citizenship should play a central role, since even the rich or other segments using private schools are expected to play their role in maintaining and even promoting the common good – that’s in everyone’s best interest in the long run.  Some might argue that a disregard for this imbedded relationship is a major cause of the nation’s current maladies.

There have been, through the years, attempts to delineate or identify what schools should offer and what their aims and goals should be.  A review of these offerings will indicate the relative position that civics education has enjoyed through the years.  Beginning with the Spencer Report in 1859, in which Herbert Spencer attempted to answer the question, “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?” he listed five realms.

They are:  (1) direct self-preservation, (2) indirect self-preservation (obtaining food and shelter), (3) parenthood, (4) citizenship, and (5) leisure.[1]  Following this conceptual path, the National Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education issued in 1918 its famous Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.  These principles are (1) health, (2) command of fundamental processes, (3) worthy home membership, (4) vocational education, (5) civic education, (6) worthy use of leisure, and (7) ethical character.[2]

Through these publications, one starts to sense a slight shift in emphasis.  While citizenship is still prominent, a more consumer orientation – one in which the student and his/her parents are seen as consumers of this public service – took hold.  Then, in 1938, the National Education Association (NEA) issued a report entitled The Purpose of Education in American Democracy, which seemed to re-ignite an, albeit modest, awareness of civics education.

This NEA report’s list of aims is (1) self-realization, (2) human relationships, (3) economic efficiency, and (4) civic responsibility.[3]  In this case, the historical context of that time seems to have played a role.  One can speculate that the level of interdependence which the Depression imposed on people encouraged a more communal set of aims.

More recent efforts to list aims and goals for education have maintained a lukewarm level of importance attributed to civics.  One can denote a more subordinate concern for the subject and a castigation of the field as being impractical and being sacrificed to the more utilitarian expectations of education – those of preparing students for the job market and other personal concerns. 

That is, educational aims and goals express a greater concern for the welfare of the individual students than for the health of the society.[4]  Education priorities have taken an even more consumer orientation, leaving the more civic concerns of the founding fathers far behind and mostly out of sight.  This blogger submits that that change is at the center of the nation’s civic/political problem that is tearing apart the general health of the republic.

On a more specific level, in the very field of social studies, amid concern and debate about how central the teaching of the social sciences and history disciplines should be in pre-college curriculums, social studies began in 1916 with a strong emphasis on a civic focus.  Social studies subjects were meant to assure that American children were amply prepared to take on the responsibilities of citizenship.  This was seen as particularly important in the midst of the vast immigration that was taking place in the early twentieth century.

A bit later, the disciplines of history and of the social sciences were to be supporting components of such an effort.[5]  This was, at that time, and is still controversial among both members of those organizations and those who nationally set the policies affecting social studies.  The professional organizations representing those academic fields that, it so happens, supported the birth and growth of social studies, were and are still supportive of such an emphasis.

Many in these organizations, such as the American Historical Association, wanted and still argue for a discipline-centered approach for social studies, an argument they “won” without being aware of it.  Most actual offerings in social studies are organized around textbooks that are often authored by experts in the fields of the social sciences and history but then go through the “neutering” process known as the textbook adoption process at state levels (a process that has garnered the critical attention of Diane Ravitch[6] among other commentators). 

The sum total of this reaction by academics has been misplaced.  What historians, for example, such as what the late Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. riled against, is basically inaccurate.  Social studies, as it was first defined, is not what children and adolescents experience in America’s schools.  What they experience is excessively structured material presented in textbooks written in horribly boring style and content, which has little to do with any preparation for citizenry in a meaningful way or enticement of students to pursue those subjects at higher levels.

These presentations are full of platitudes about the sacrifices of previous generations (which would be useful if couched in realistic settings with vivid, dramatic descriptions of how those sacrifices unfolded) or the abstract depictions of national institutions – such as the presidency.  For example, American government is taught as if it were a mechanical engine with parts and certain processes, devoid of the human quality that might engender any interest on the part of the student.

The only substantive topic given emphasis in the typical government textbook is that of individual rights.  Per se, that would be good if not for how exclusive that attention is and how clinical the language tends to be.  A recent review of one of the popular textbooks revealed three chapters dedicated to rights and the only reference to community in the index referred to local community standards as they related to censorship.

With that bit of criticism, this posting will stop describing this element.  The next posting will review the significance of the comments that this and the last posting conveyed relevant to the overall goal, the elements of a teacher preparation program.  Again, this first element of teacher preparation program is to instill in teachers a sense of how central civics is to what should be the purposes of a public-school education.

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[1] Herbert Spencer, Education:  Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (New York, NY:  Alden, 1885)

[2] Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, Bulletin 35 (Washington, DC:  U. S. Office of Education, 1918).

[3] Educational Policy Commission, The Purpose of Education in American Democracy (Washington, DC:  National Education Association, 1938).

[4] See, for example, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Committee on Research and Theory, Measuring and Attaining the Goals of Education (Alexandria, VA:  ASCD, 1980) AND U. S. Department of Education, National Goals for Education (Washington, DC:  U. S. D. O. E., 1990).

[5] R. Freeman Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform:  Perspectives for the Public and the Profession (Stanford, CA:  Hoover Institution Press, 1989).

[6] For a summary description of Ravitch’s critique see Jay Mathews, “Why Don’t We Fix Our Textbooks?”, The Washington Post (March 22, 2005), accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56501-2005Mar22.html .

PRIME REASON

 

While the challenge of promoting civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions is an ever present one, there currently seems to be an increased need to address this challenge.  For years, there has been an ongoing release of studies documenting the lack of these attributes or abilities that one associates with good citizenship among not only young people but citizens in general.

This has only magnified with the currently, often-cited polarization one finds in the American political landscape.  Surely, this reflects less than stellar accomplishments by the nation’s civics education programs.  And one can say, with the exception of recent reports in some segments of young people around the country, that things are not getting better.[1]  Here is what the journalist, Rebecca Winthrop, wrote in 2020,

Americans’ participation in civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of government.  Without it, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people will not last.  Of increasing concern to many is the declining levels of civic engagement across the country, a trend that started several decades ago.  Today, we see evidence of this in the limited civic knowledge of the American public, 1 in 4 whom, according to a 2016 survey led by Annenberg Public Policy Center, are unable to name the three branches of government.  It is not only knowledge about how the government works that is lacking – confidence in our leadership is also extremely low.  According to the Pew Research Center, which tracks public trust in government, as of March 2019, only an unnerving 17 percent trust the government in Washington to do the right thing.  We also see this lack of engagement in civic behaviors, with Americans’ reduced participation in community organizations and lackluster participation in elections, especially among young voters.[2]

This sort of concern and findings by a variety of academic and journalistic sources have been often cited in this blog.

          So, from less civic engagement in community efforts to acquiring political knowledge, both of the nation’s founding principles and of the civic challenges of the day, to voting and performing other civic activities, the level of engagement is wanting.  Within this context of how civics education efforts should be conducted, this blogger’s task – as he sees it – is to argue for those in charge to institute various elements of a reform effort in civics education. 

Naturally, besides what goes on in the classroom, that focus would include what the preparation of teachers should include to meet the challenges that civics education confronts today.  To meet the aims of imparting civic knowledge and skills and encouraging a disposition prone toward civic engagement, how teachers should approach these educational aims, what they should be able to do, and how  they should be prepared to do their jobs need to be considered. 

In order to meet the above concerns, one is apt, in typical business style, to collectively find the components of the teacher preparation process, narrow one’s focus to those portions of the process dedicated to preparing teachers to handle relevant civic factors, identify what’s wrong, and go about devising plans and allocate resources to fix the problem(s).  Sounds logical enough, but is it enough?

In addressing this topic, this posting does not count on its writer’s academic credentials but instead on his being a veteran classroom teacher of twenty-five years.  While the years of his service are a bit dated (1972-2000 – with some of those years having him do some other things), he feels they still provide relevant insights as to what is happening today – the reader will be the judge as to whether he is right. 

What he learned from that teaching experience – the constructed beliefs he developed – allows him to feel he can add to the discourse about what is ailing civics education.  No doubt the challenges facing civics are daunting, not only due to a lack of resources, but also due to a multitude of factors affecting the general situation.  With that in mind, what follows is his take on what should constitute an ideal teacher preparation program which emphasizes civics education. 

That is, what should such a program include as its elements?  Warning:  transcending all of these factors and elements is a holistic aspect that defies systemic linear thinking and planning as just described.  He hopes his presentation over several postings captures that sense and communicates it to the reader.  His goal in describing and explaining his specific plan is to convey an element, provide a rationale for it, and then speculate and react to what the reader might respond to the given element. 

This general order of presentation will be followed as the individual elements are addressed.  When all of the elements are “covered,” he will then make some general comments as to the holistic nature of the concern.  But before starting, the reader should also be advised that the elements will not be divided by postings.  For example, this posting begins its comments on element one and will continue with element one in the next posting.  How the whole presentation will appear or be divided is still being considered.

So, here is the first element,

Element One:  A viable teacher preparation program needs to make clear that civic preparation is not only a foundation of civics education or even social studies, but of all public education and of responsible private educational programs as well.[3]

          In terms of this element, it is helpful for one to step back a moment and ask why one supports public education.  What serves as the ultimate or trump value justifying all the expense that public education represents?  Different perspectives would probably elicit different answers to this question.

          One way to address this question is to look at the origins of public education; that is, what was the original intent of having public education?  According to the educational historian, R. Freeman Butts,[4] it was to support the development of a civic minded citizenry to meet the inherent needs of a functioning republic.  And supporting this notion are the thoughts of the historians Allen Nevins and Henry Steele Commager. 

They state:  “The Founding Fathers knew that their experiment in self-government was without precedent, and they took it for granted that it could not succeed without an enlightened electorate.”[5]  They go on to cite the efforts of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, George and his son DeWitt Clinton to establish an accessible school system in their respective states. 

And another historian, Samuel E. Morrison, more explicitly states the original purpose of public schools in the following way:

 

Opposition to free public education came from the people of property, who thought it intolerable that they should be taxed to support the common schools to which they would not dream of sending their children.  To this argument the poor replied with votes, and reformers with the tempting argument that education was insurance against radicalism.[6]

 

All other reasons than that of preparing responsible, civic minded citizens (such as preparing an educated workforce, keeping youngsters from competing for jobs and off the streets, advancing the career ambitions of individual citizens, etc.), while not necessarily exclusive of the main goal, are at best secondary.

          Yes, the expense of public schooling needed to be justified to others besides the rich and these practical and utilitarian reasons were advanced by the likes of Horace Mann[7] and others, but the main justification was the promotion of civic education.  Butts further writes,

In re-examining the stated purposes used to justify the development and spread of the common public school in the mid-nineteenth century, I believe that the citizenship argument is still valid.  The highest priority for a genuinely public school is to serve the public purposes of a democratic political community.  Those in favor of “excellence” or “back to the basics” [cries one commonly heard at the time Butts wrote these words] should be reminded that citizenship is the basic purpose for universal literacy.  If the fundamental purposes of schooling are to be confined to preparing for a job or developing individual talents, these might well be achieved in private schools that select students for particular destinies.  But the faith of the common school reformers, as of the founders, that the civic tasks can best be performed by public schools that are characterized primarily by a public purpose, public control, public support, public access, and public commitment to civic unity was soundly based.[8]

 

So, the first element is for involved and interested parties to see the main function of public and even private education is to promote good citizenship – all else follows from this fundamental aim.

And with that general support for a civic foundation, this posting stops and gives the reader an opportunity to mull over this role of civics or for this central rationale for public schools.  The next posting will pick up this first element, elaborate on it and, given the space remaining, continue with the others.  In all there are five elements.

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[1] There have been reports of an uptick in young people becoming more politically engaged.  For example, see David Lauder, “Essential Politics:  Young People’s Political Engagement Is Surging.  That’s a Problem for Republicans,”  The Los Angeles Times (April 23, 2021), accessed September 27, 2021, https://www.latimes.com/politics/newsletter/2021-04-23/surge-political-engagement-youth-problem-for-gop-essential-politics .

[2] Rebecca Winthrop, “The Need for Civic Education in the 21^st – Century Schools,” 2020 Brookings Policy (June 4, 2020), accessed September 26, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/bigideas/the-need-for-civic-education-in-21st-century-schools/ .

[3] These comments will directly address public education, but a lot of what will be stated will also apply to private or sectarian educational efforts. 

[4] R. Freeman Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform:  Perspectives for the Public and the Profession (Stanford, CA:  Hoover Institution Press, 1989).

[5] Allen Nevins and Henry Steele Commager, A Pocket History of the United States (New York, NY:  Washington Square Press, 1986).

[6] Samuel E. Morrison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1965).

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

[8] Butts, The Civic Mission in Educational Reform, 130.

STARTING IT OFF

 

For readers of this blog, it might be interesting to know that this blog has been online for quite a few years.  This posting approaches the 1100^th entry; just fifteen more to go.  Perhaps some might be interested in looking at the first of these postings – say the first one hundred of them.  This blogger plans to make them available online where one can read them at leisure or print them and have them in book form.  They will be presented in book form and as such, they will be preceded by an introduction.  To perhaps entice the reader to look for this rendition of the first 100 postings, this posting will share that version’s introduction.

            Before presenting the “Introduction,” here are a few words regarding this version of the postings.  They are edited to match the editorial style that the blog currently utilizes.  Hopefully, some the phraseology is smoother and more polished than it was originally.  They do set this blog on its course by reviewing many of the assumptions this blogger has relied upon all these many years.  The first topic he addresses in the first set of postings is the importance of civics education.

            So, here is the Introduction:

INTRODUCTION

Unfortunately, civics education does not enjoy the gravitas that other academic subjects seem to enjoy.  This book contains the first hundred postings of a blog dedicated to civics education.  The blog, Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, attempts to first point out not only why civics should be considered with more respect, but why it should be considered a lynchpin for all of education, especially public education. 

Its author, a retired educator, hopes the reader can begin reading this book with at least an open mind to reconsider his/her own sense of what role civics should play in the overall education of the nation’s youth.  The blog addresses an array of issues its writer sees that affect civics’ actual role and/or its potential role in the lives of the students who take either civics in middle school or American government in high school.

Beyond its lessened importance in the eyes of most, there is the basic view of the subject – not only by the citizenry but by those in charge of its presentation in American schools.  The argument presented here is that that view of the subject’s content – of how civics presents American governance and politics – falls short of representing and explaining what the founders of the nation – those responsible for the Constitution and its ratification – set out to establish.  That aim was a federated union of not only the states, but of the citizenry as well.

          While the various postings of this blog elucidate what that general aim was, one can summarily describe it as establishing a union in which the citizenry entered a grand partnership.  That is, “We the People …” established the resulting polity and that “we the people” were meant to maintain ownership of it.  That would be what James Madison would later describe as a government instituted by choice as opposed to by accident (with a resulting ownership by a nobility or some self-anointed elite class) or by force (with a resulting ownership by a “strong man or woman”).

          The blog’s author argues that that agreement was motivated by an amalgamation of influences that the history of the American people had experienced by the late 1700s.  In sum, those influences affected their political beliefs, values, and biases.  In this, one needs to remember that when one decides to act in a situation where choices are available, two forces are at play:  what one believes should happen and what one sees as the reality of the situation.[1] 

          And the founders were not immune; they strove for what they believed should happen, their espoused theory, but within the parameters of the factual conditions presented to them and while they were not infallible, they collectively held a highly functional theory-in-use.  Given the importance of what they were about, one can readily assume the founders were keenly aware or conscious of both realms.

          That is, the founders were disposed to exert the energy or effort to figure out what was best to do, and given their subsequent political careers, what was best for the nation apart from their individual interests.  And, as when those types of situations concern either government or politics or both, real far-reaching consequences could and did ensue. 

Those points in time need to be treated with the utmost respect.  Surely, whoever or whatever taught the founders their civic lessons and taught the citizenry, those involved with the ratification of the Constitution, could not have been more important to them and to their posterity.

Is it hyperbole to ascribe this sort of importance to what one learns – way back when – in a civics classroom?  Collectively, it is, and the nation is experiencing how a poorly conceived civics program affects the governing health of a people.  Polarized politics and its effect on the current governance of the US attests to that belief.    It behooves Americans to understand what has happened in recent years and to become an active citizenry to determine what the right course of action this polity should take from this point onward.

          This simple notion of an involved citizenry being sufficiently informed of what constitutes politics and how that level affects the collective – no, better stated, communal – health of a people should be respected.  Unfortunately, that seems to be ignored or belittled by the current efforts in the nation’s civics programs. 

This current situation is not seen by the common fellow as unfortunate, unusual, or out of place.  Why?  Because it is much in line with how Americans view governance and politics – that being each can be uninhibited or encouraged to either become proactive, totally indifferent, or anything in between these dispositional orientations. 

Much of this blog’s message concerns the current political culture that the nation sustains.  It, that shared perspective, has and continues to support a natural rights view.  This is explained in the first 100 postings, but to define what natural rights means, it is a view of governance and politics that features, as a trump value, natural liberty.

          It is a view that holds the right of each to determine his or her behavior as long as each does not inhibit or interfere with others having the same right.  Since such a claim encompasses a large array of behavior, it is more useful to think of this right as a large set of various rights from speech, movement, advocacy, employment, religion, entertainment, etc. 

While one might, without reflection, adhere to this view of rights, one should know that not all people who support republican governance agree with this view.  Another rivaling view is a view known as federalism.  And one can make the claim that the founders held to this other view. 

 Stated another way, the founders employed another view of liberty in establishing the polity they created.  They did not adhere to natural liberty but to a form of federal liberty.  And they arrived at that view, as alluded to above, from an array of influences. 

Those influences included the Puritanical religious ideals (congregationalism, engagement, localism, and a covenantal foundation), Enlightenment thinkers (not just Locke and Hobbes, but Hutcheson and Reid, among others), a developmental history that allowed a great deal of independence from the British Parliament, the formation of local governance, and the values developed through English constitutional history.  The bottom line is that they believed a republic needed to encourage certain values among the populace.

Hopefully, this introduction stirs the curiosity of whoever reads it and that he or she continues to read the postings that follow.  The intent is to follow this volume with subsequent volumes of the postings that appeared after the first 100 postings.  To date (mid-2021), that’s approaching 1100 postings.

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[1] This distinction refers to what change theorists might call espoused theory – what should happen – and theory-in-use – what conditions prevail in the situation.  See Kenneth D. Benne, “The Current State of Planned Changing in Persons, Groups, Communities, and Societies” in Planning of Change, eds. Warren G. Bennis, Kenneth D. Benne, and Robert Chin (New York, NY:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 68-82.

A PANTHEIST IN THE MIX

The purpose of this posting is to review, in a few words, the effect of Ralph Waldo Emerson – known to his acquaintances as Waldo – on the Transcendentalist movement in the US.  This account will be spotty but hopefully cover the importance of Emerson in advancing and, at times, inhibiting federalist values.  He initially set out to do his work in religious venues – he trained to be a minister – but in time he left that behind.

          Probably his most utilized stage was that of an essayist.  Originally, his efforts usually appeared as lectures that he then converted into written form.  His overall messages portrayed him as a champion of individualism and as a social critic.  As such, he portrayed an uncanny ability to foresee developments as he repeatedly set out to dispense good advice in relation to countervailing societal forces. 

In that effort, he described how and why those forces did what they did.  For that, he enjoyed an expansive audience that grew not just across the nation but extended into Europe.   From his 1500 or so lectures, one can find the core of his thinking in the first two published collections of his essays, those being Essays:  First Series (1841) and Essays: Second Series (1844).  A few of his well-known essays include “The Over-Soul”, “Circles”, “Experience”, “The Poet”, “Self-Reliance”, and his most famous piece, “Nature”. 

And underlying his main themes was his transcendent view and reliance on the role of intuition in determining one’s knowledge and the direction one takes in life.[1]  As a cited source puts it, using Emerson’s words,

… he explicitly identifies Transcendentalism as a form of philosophical Idealism. Emerson wrote:

As thinkers, mankind have ever been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, The senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell…Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude. Everything real is self-existent. Everything divine shares the self-existence of Deity…[Kant showed] there was a very important class of ideas or imperative forms, which did not come by way of experience, but through which experience was acquired; that these were intuitions of the mind itself; and he denominated them Transcendental forms.[2]

          

On more political topics, he espoused the potential of the individual and of his/her freedom to seek those potentials.  This individualism should not be seen as the one seen in the twenty-first century.  It was more a concern for the integrity of a person and his/her challenge to overcome his/her weaknesses or other obstacles in life. 

And in true Romantic spirit, he extoled the virtues of nature.  Some would consider his philosophic bent to eventually become a pantheist or pandeist.  He is quoted as saying, “In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.”[3]  His political contributions gained steam during the Civil War years. 

An antislavery person, he initially shied away from entering that arena.  But probably as a reaction to the number of his friends and family members being outspoken critics of the institution, he eventually joined the fray.  Besides a series of lectures opposing slavery in 1837, he began taking a more active role in 1844.

Beyond giving speeches, he hosted John Brown in his home in Concord.[4]  During the war he met with Abraham Lincoln and upon meeting him, changed his estimation of the President.  His initial concern with Lincoln was that he was not as committed to ending slavery as he was in saving the Union.  His face-to-face meeting convinced him that his judgement was not accurate and became one of Lincoln’s great admirers.

So, on the pro-federalist side of the ledger, Emerson strove toward inclusion of blacks into the political partnership of the nation.  In that, he had no hesitation in promoting his belief in the need for a civil war and seemed to consider it as a rebirth of the nation.  On the not so federalist end of the scale was Emerson’s attraction to Thomas Carlyle.  Apparently, the Scot had a profound effect on Emerson. 

As alluded to earlier in this blog, Carlyle was a strong proponent of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon “race.”  In this, one can sense an exclusionary trait and the degree to which Emerson shared this belief is not clear.  Emerson wished for Carlyle to visit America and served as a sort of agent for the historian on this side of the ocean.  The two kept up an ongoing correspondence until Carlyle died in 1881.[5]

In this blogger’s opinion, Emerson did much to secularize American thought.  His opposition to slavery helped bring an end to that scourge on American federalism.  His travels, both domestic and in Europe, led him to meet just about everyone of any note in the literary as well as the political world of his time.  Early on, while living in St. Augustine, Florida, he even met a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Achille Murat. They became close friends as they discussed the heady topics of the day such as religion, philosophy, sociology, and politics.[6]

That stay in Florida was where Emerson witnessed slavery firsthand and noted that on one of his outings to a Bible Society meeting, there was a slave auction taking place nearby.  He is quoted as expressing, “One ear therefore heard the glad tidings of great joy, whilst the other was regaled with ‘Going, gentlemen, going!”[7] 

          The history of Emerson’s time and his influence betray much of American culture of the 1800s.  While his family’s background spanned the European experience in North America up to his time, he helped further define what the espoused political values of his countrymen should be.  In his efforts, he was more a force for liberating the prevailing federalist thought than adding to its parochialism.  In that, he helped Transcendentalism as a movement stay true to the nation’s basic moral stand in defining its political proclivities.

          Eventually given the title, Sage of Concord, he is judged to have upgraded the art of lecturing.  Reported are the later thinkers and writers who were influenced by Emerson’s work, and they include William James – who happened to be Emerson’s godson – and Nietzsche.  And despite his anti-establishment religious turn, he is credited by some as having a great influence on American theology.  With the focus this posting gives this great American lecturer/essayist, the blog ends its review of the Romantic/Transcendentalist movement in the US.

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[1] David Boersema, “American Philosophy,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:  A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource (n.d.), accessed September 20, 2021, https://iep.utm.edu/american/#H2 .

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal entry, April 7, 1840.

[4] Len Gougeon, Virtue’s Hero:  Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform (Athens, GA:  University of Georgia Press, 2010). 

[5] Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson:  The Mind on Fire (Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press, 1995).

[6] Peter S. Field, Ralph Waldo Emerson:  The Making of a Democratic Intellectual (Lanham, MD:  Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 

[7] Richardson, Emerson, 76. 

CARLYLE AND COLERIDGE

 

In the attempt to describe how Romanticism affected American political views in the early to mid-eighteen hundreds, this blog next looks at two British writers who had significant influence on those Americans.  They were Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  The first is primarily remembered as an influential historian and essayist and the second as a poet.

         Carlyle’s writing has been judged as reflecting a recurring balance between the Romantic thrust for both emotions, such as a love for freedom, and what was known to be historical and political fact.  But within that general aim, he was drawn to the heroic struggle.  This admiration for struggle, per se, seemed to take priority over any of the issues that such struggles represented. 

In that, the “great man” seemed to be his main topic for analysis.  One of his most famous pieces betrays this emphasis, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.  That was a book that shared a series of lectures about how important heroic leadership was to history.[1]  One can sense in Carlyle an anti-democratic bent and that his ideas – not necessarily his writings – lent to the march toward dictatorial leadership in the twentieth century.

Along with this level of hero-worshipping, he also promoted a nationalism.  He is thought of as a strong protagonist of Anglo-Saxonism – Carlyle saw the Anglo-Saxon “race” as being superior to all others.  “Thomas Carlyle was perhaps the first notable Englishman to enunciate a belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, and, as he told [Ralph Waldo] Emerson, among the members of this select race he counted the Americans.”[2] 

Apparently, this sense of kinship, albeit reserved (Americans were seen as formless in their Saxon character), served to solidify whatever affinity he and Emerson shared.  Carlyle’s nationalism had some complexity in that it ascribed a role to the Norman invaders of the eleventh century.  The Normans added order to the English national structure in Carlyle’s thesis.

Added to his unfortunate – in that they were anti-democratic – views was his antisemitism.  He refused to support the extension of the franchise to Jews in 1848.  He argued that Jews were two-faced in seeking the vote when their true homeland was Palestine where they should go.  Of course, he also expressed common stereotypical attributes to Jews, such as being excessively materialistic and using their wealth to lead to corrupt practices.  To varying degrees, his thoughts and biases had their effects on those Americans who extended him credulity.

As for Coleridge, he is most known for his literary masterpieces.  The titles, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are well entrenched in the British literary canon.  He left readers a timeless instruction that when they are reading literature, to engage in a “suspension of disbelief.”  Considered by current biographers as a bipolar person, he suffered from recurring physical challenges which originated with a serious case of rheumatic fever and other diseases as a child.

Unfortunately, during his time he was treated with laudanum which led to a lifelong addiction to opium.  All of this, it is believed, set the stage for his constant suffering from anxiety and depression.  This fits convincingly with his best-known metaphor, the albatross around the neck featured in the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

He also knew and had an effect on Emerson, the American essayist.  Along with many early supporters of the French Revolution who would eventually become a critic of that disruption.  Eventually, he became politically a conservative more in the line of thoughts expressed by Edmund Burke.  Today, he is credited with influencing John Stuart Mill.  His political thinking centered on three themes.  They are:

1.     “The idea” or function of institutions as opposed to shortcomings being central to how institutions should be judged.[3]

2.    Social stability or “Permanence” as Coleridge stated this concern in that what he emphasized was community and national education.[4]

3.    British history depicted as organic, natural growth with an emphasis on common law as exemplifying this growth.[5]

In these studies, Coleridge took on an internal – inside the social matrix – vantage point instead of an external, unfamiliar, objective view.[6]

          As one can see with these two British writers, Emerson, in America, takes on a central role in the popularization of Romantic sentiments.  As in Europe, it was a many-sided belief system and highly individualistic although through various angles.  Also mimicking the Romantics from across the ocean, Americans had intense levels of moral excitement, support for individualism, and the promotion for the importance of intuitive thinking or perception.  They also adopted that Romantic attraction to nature as a source of goodness while seeing society as the source of corruption.

          Within these broader themes, American Romantics sought a bit of freedom from strict religious dogma and practices as it reinvigorated their rebellious spirit from the previous generation.  They tended to reject Calvinistic beliefs in predestination and a more liberalized view of what humans’ relationship to God should be.

          For example, people could and should have less restrictive religious sanctions put on them.  All of this was philosophically in tune with the transcendentalism the last posting reviewed.  In that, reason is at least diminished, and intuitiveness enhanced.  Also, customs and traditions came under scrutiny as their value was questioned relative to the more modern conditions of those days.

          Generally, on the political front, Romanticism encouraged Americans to spur a level of concern for the poor and those considered oppressed.  This was further emphasized by expounding ideals supporting freedom – extending to the relief of exploited people – and the promotion of social progress along equalitarian grounds.  And here one finds its most pro-federation message.  That is, it prized the federalist sense of civic responsibility for fellow-citizens and that was even extended, among many transcendentalists, to the slave population. 

          Now, this story is ready to focus on Emerson, the topic of the next posting.  He was not the ideal Romantic, but he employed many of their assumptions.  If he accomplished anything along Romantic lines, he gave definitional substance to individual integrity, a central concern of federation theory.

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[1] Eric Bentley, The Cult of the Superman:  A Study of the Idea of Heroism in Carlyle and Nietzsche, with Notes on Other Hero-Worshippers of Modern Times (London, UK:  Robert Hale, 1969).

[2] Robert Frankel, Observing America:  The Commentary of British Visitors to the United States, 1890-1950 (Studies in American Thought and Culture) (Madison, WI:  University of Wisconsin Press, 2007), 54.

[3] Andy Hamilton, “Coleridge, Mill, and Conservatism:  Contemplation of an Idea,” in Coleridge and Contemplation, ed. by Peter Cheyne (Oxford, UK:  Oxford University Press, 2017), 143 (source did not have total pages).

[4] Alan Ryan, J S Mill (London, UK:  Routledge, 1974).

[5] Pamela Edwards, The Statesman’s Science (New York, NY:  Columbia University Press, 2004).

[6] John Skorupski, Why Read Mill Today (London, UK:  Routledge, 2006).