THE DEGRADING TENDENCIES OF CAPITALISM

 

[Note:  This posting is a continuation of a series of postings that addresses what a civics teacher preparation program should include.  The last posting finished describing and explaining the first of five elements.  This posting will begin with describing what the second element is.  If not read, the reader is encouraged to check out the previous postings of this series that began with the posting of September 28, 2021, and is entitled “Prime Reason.”]

So, the argument in this series of postings has been that prospective civics teachers should be encouraged to see the teaching of their subject not only as the main component of social studies but of all public (and this blogger would argue, of private) education.  That claim constitutes the first of five elements of an ideal teacher preparation program.  It is now ready to go on to the second element, but a bit of background information would help.

          Education for the masses cannot be just another consumer service (as the current trend seems to be); it must be a collective (or better stated, a communal) endeavor for the benefit of the collective/community if it is to encourage civic-minded citizens to emerge.  That outcome is what justifies the expenditure of public funds to further the education of individual students.

An effective teacher preparation program, one that leads to a state certification, and this goes beyond perspective civics/social studies teachers and includes all state certified teachers, needs to instill this distinction between a commercial view and a collective/communal view.  The first occurs when students and parents are considered consumers and the second when the ultimate beneficiary of educational systems are the societies that they serve.

          With that line of thinking in place, one can proceed to the second element and it is,

 

Element Two:  A preparation program identifies both the challenge presented by the commodification of education and the popular culture that supports such commodification by describing it, explaining it, and evaluating it.

 

What follows speaks to an evaluation of such a culture.

As the commercial view becomes ever more intrusive into the activities of an advanced capitalist nation, the popular culture is geared more toward immediate gratification.  Such a development manifests itself in a popular culture more and more characterized by sensationalism, short-term decision-making, and shallow interests lacking in the concern for human problems.[1]

          Daniel Bell provides a related developmental pattern that rings true to this blogger.  It begins by pointing out that capitalist systems start, at least in western countries, with an ascetic spirit commonly thought of as the Protestant ethic.  During the initial stage in which, for example, this ethic takes hold, as in the US, not only is hard work promoted, but also a high sense of frugality and a shunning of acquisitiveness became accepted wisdom.[2]

          Capitalism then proceeds to a stage that embraces modernism.  During the second developmental stage, there is a rejection of the past and instead, a commitment to endless change (at times for its own sake) commonly on an ongoing basis, and an over reliance on science ensues.  All human concerns fall subject to structural reduction, i.e., explanations made up of mechanistic relationships between independent and dependent variables – what this blog has pointed out as being called reductionism.

          This development did not totally replace the biases of the original Protestant based bourgeoisie, but instead created a tension between the more fundamental elements of society and its modern elements – such as when segments fight over what some consider over-materialism.  And against this backdrop, a third phase springs up which in the US took place in about the mid twentieth century mark.

          This third development rejects the formality and structure of the modernists and through an emphasis on language rejects the authority of theories and texts.

 

On the vulgar level, PoMo, as postmodernism is now [or is it, was] called, is the creed of pastiche and parody, of the idea that anything goes, of the enthronement of popular and low culture, and of exhibitionism – in body art, performance art, the cross-dressing of a Madonna or the androgynous appearance of a Michael Jackson, and the transgression of the blasphemous – all of which is intended to, and does, shock “traditional” bourgeois morality and has given rise to a political reaction and a set of cultural wars that has tended to polarize the polity.[3]

 

Bell goes on to point out that accompanying these tensions has been the divorce between morality and law.

          Due to a string of historical developments, religion lost its hold as ultimate arbiter of moral questions.  Law then became a matter of process, not substance.  That lost substance, when heeded, played a vital role in integrating society.  All of these trends and tensions, in the opinion of this blogger, have left the nation with a brand of capitalism in which the market, as opposed to moral traditions or common folk wisdom, determines legitimate pursuits. 

Among those who have adopted a postmodern perspective – which it now functions to provide the basis in how, among many people, things are judged, includes just about anyone with a beef as in raiders of the Capitol with Viking getups and other paraphernalia.  At times, as on January 6^th, such expression can become quite serious in intent and in its consequences.

          It is not that the popular culture is that different (although this blogger believes it is), but that what is important, among other important changes, is the legitimacy that is ascribed to current assumptions, heedless passions, and the icons that are a part of this newer perspective – and this, while originally limited to the liberal end of the political spectrum during Bell’s day, has today infected the right as well.

One can interpret and include the broad rejection of science among many in the “red” states as witnessed during this current pandemic.  And these are not messages lost on the nation’s youth that one confronts in classrooms.  If consumption of products indicates anything, when these cultural messages are found represented in those products, then they are being readily accepted by those young people.

To be clear, this blogger, in terms of economics, unlike Bell, is a believer in capitalism.  He sees the socialist approaches to economic concerns as based on unrealistic assumptions regarding human nature.  He wishes that reality were different, and he finds much to admire in Marx’s writings, but overall, unfettered Marxist proscriptions have led to disastrous results in many countries. 

But as with any other ideology, an adoption of capitalism that is not accompanied by effective checks will also lead to catastrophic results.  For example, two periods of near limitless capitalism, the 1920s and 1980s, led to dramatic economic calamities:  the Great Depression and the Great Recession.  For the most part, the New Deal reforms – a reaction to the first of these – during the 1930s can be judged to be such checks on pure capitalism. 

And something that cannot be stressed enough is that a public school system run by the state in the name of the state is another such check.  As pointed out by a respectable source, the Oregon Supreme Court in the 1950s, stated:

 

Education is a function or duty not regarded as a local matter.  It is a governmental obligation of the state.  Few of our administrative agencies are creatures of the organic law [meaning constitutional law].  But, as to schools, the constitution mandates the legislature to provide by law “for the establishment of a uniform, and general system of Common Schools …”  It is a sovereign power and cannot be bartered away.[4]

 

And with that sobering note, this posting will end.  The next posting will have more to convey concerning this second element.

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[1] Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York, NY:  Basic Books, 1996).  While Bell, deceased sociologist of some repute is known as a Marxist leaning economic observer, a liberal political observer, and a conservative social observer, the cited sentiment could have come from Karl Marx’s writings.  This blog has addressed these attributes of an advanced capitalist-based culture and has cited other experts.

[2] For a descriptive account of this phase, see Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whig Party (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 1979) especially his chapter on “The Evangelicals.”

[3] Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, 284.

[4] Monaghan v. School District No. 1, 211 Ore. 360, 315 P. 2^nd 797 (1957), emphasis added.

GETTING IT RIGHT

 

This posting carries on this blog’s argument about instituting among social studies/civics teachers the belief that civics education should hold, if not the prominent, a highly esteemed position in the rationale for public education as well as private education.  That is, such a notion should be an element of a teacher preparation program and instill in its prospective teachers a sense of the importance of their sought-after jobs.

              To remind the reader, here is the written form of this element,

 

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.

 

To this point, various historians have been cited to support this contention and a review of several stated aims for education have been shared – for example, of note was the National Education Association’s Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education “principles”, the 1918 Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, that placed civic education as number five in its listing of seven principles.[1]

          But of late, such a role has been mostly forgotten and today public education along with private education is sold on practical grounds.  The main focus seems to be:  How do educational opportunities further the interests of individual students?  And with such an emphasis, what is the hidden message that society is communicating?  It is:  government, through its education programs, is not something one participates in but instead, is merely a dispenser of services, including education.

          And the taxpaying citizens are merely the consumers of such services.  Applying this perception to schools, one is told that schools are built for kids or that all that happens in schools is done for the benefit of children.  This sounds right to a citizen who might not give such a question much thought.  Intuitively, one agrees when someone else states this premise, but as a trump or ultimate goal, aim, or value, it is far afield from the original aims of those who first proposed public education to this nation.

          Who says this “civic thing” should be the ultimate value?  Take the following Supreme Court statement into consideration:

 

The primary purpose of the maintenance of the common school system is the promotion of the general intelligence of the people constituting the body politic and thereby to increase the usefulness and efficiency of the citizens, upon which the government of society depends.  Free schooling furnished by the state is not so much a right granted to pupils as a duty imposed upon them for the public good.[2]

 

The clear point of the judges’ opinion is that public schooling is not for the benefit of the individual student, but for the interests of society.  Surely, advancement of the former usually advances the latter, but not always.  There are times when the interests of the community – as in mandating masking during a pandemic – outweigh the believed interests of the individual.

          Beyond that, defining the purpose of schooling as a consumer service puts all affected persons who are involved in education in a different mindset.  After all, like all businesses, one wants happy customers not burdened with duties and obligations, but instead satisfied with a product that makes them feel good even if the original purpose of offering the product has not been met.

          This former teacher observed during his years of service that students did not generally go to school with a desire for receiving the service they were there to receive.  One observes that a different general disposition seems to be at play when compared to young people attending a movie theater or an amusement park. 

But, under a general mode of schooling, to satisfy the student-customer (and often his/her parents), school officials often find it necessary to enhance the service to make it seem as if the school day is more like a movie theater or an amusement park.  This is not bluntly stated or readily observed.  Instead, a general assumed sense prevails that manifests itself in many ways during the school year.

          Often, good teachers are not defined as those who engage students in meaningful learning, but as those who have the skills or personality to make sure students have fun.  When asked how a lesson went, teachers tend to reply whether the students liked it or not, not whether the lesson elicited meaningful engagement or whether students learned from the experience.

          Those aspects of the educational process, which by their very nature depend on students fulfilling a duty or obligation, are lessened, or eliminated.  Concerns for learning become compromised more and more as the years go by.  So deteriorated has the learning function become that in the last twenty years, states have taken to imposing outside standards and evaluation instruments to verify the schools’ claims that learning has/is taking place.  That is, one cannot trust schoolteachers and administrators to hold honest and meaningful evaluation of their students’ progress.

          Grade point averages have lost their meaning – at least, to a great degree; diplomas have less value.  Such statements as an individual student being an honor student become significant as some quality other than academic achievement.  But most important, schools become places other than where one can promote civics education.  The notion that education is a product of a community effort loses its sense of communal accomplishment or even meaning.  And in the opinion of this blogger, this has been progressing – or is it regressing? – for a significant number of decades.

          Education for the masses cannot be just another consumer service; it must be a collective/communal endeavor for the benefit of the society that it serves.  And central to such a view or sentiment is the civic function such a view entails.  An effective teacher preparation program, one that leads to a state certification, needs to make plain this distinction between a commercial view and a communal view and make it clear that one should advance education’s ultimate goal of enhancing the health of the society it serves.

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

[2] New Hampshire Supreme Court, Fogg v. Board of Education, 76 N.H. 296, 82 Atl. 173 (1912).

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.