JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, III

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation[1] …

This current series of postings is reporting on the basic elements of critical theory, the main antithetical view to the dominant natural rights view that Americans mostly favor when it comes to governmental/political thought.  Critical theory is a view that focuses its concern on political qualities of domination and authority.  Readers are invited to review the last two posting of this blog for how it, the blog, has introduced this construct.

          Part of that reportage was describing how critical theory grew out of the efforts of a multidisciplinary group of scholars who established the Frankfurt Institute.  Their initial efforts, due to German politics during the 1930s, found these scholars moving the Institute eventually to New York City.  After the ensuing years in which World War II transpired plus some stabilizing years, the Institute moved back to Frankfurt, Germany. 

Changing its name once again – to the Frankfurt School – they were able to skillfully advocate their political positions and garnered a good degree of influence in a conservative West Germany.  With this re-establishment in their original location, this group during the 1950s and ’60s aimed most of its efforts at attacking positivism.  That is, these scholars found a good deal of fault with the trend among the social sciences to adopt more rigorous scientific protocols in conducting their studies. 

This specifically meant that social sciences – which relied heavily, up to that time, on more narrative/historical forms of research – focused on hypothesis testing methods in which observations of human behaviors were measured to discover significant correlations between independent and dependent variables.  This was deemed to be a major obstruction to the School’s main aim, i.e., to change society. 

Why?  Because the behavioral approach objectified the study of politics while the Frankfurt group’s change-oriented aim relied heavily on normative questions – change presupposes value determinations.  And adding fuel to this disaffection of the prevalent social sciences was, at that time, a highly emotional development, that being the student anti-war movement – mostly a reaction to the Vietnam War – that both Europe and the US was experiencing. 

The resulting disruptions between those in power and anti-war demonstrators with allies like leftists from the Frankfurt School, grew and featured concerns over the various forms of subjugation the School was highlighting which mostly affected either low-income groups or targeted groups of prejudicial policies or both.  And this fed into the School’s concern with social science modes of research.

The “establishment” – made of those who belonged to privileged groups – was adopting behavioral approaches in their analyses of social realities and they stood in support, for the most part, with the war footing against Communism.  Partly due to World War II lessons – appeasing aggression from “foreign” invaders – and capitalist aims to expand their markets across the world, there seemed to be tunnel vision among the power centers as to what appropriate policy should be adopted concerning such developments as those being witnessed in Southeast Asia. 

The School found itself, again, in an uncomfortable domestic environment in Germany due to the disruptions associated with the anti-war movement.  At that time, though, new blood was making its way into the School’s ranks.  One such newcomer was Jurgen Habermas, who introduced a very influential communication theory.

That theory points out the necessity for participating actors of various social arrangements – whether they be federated (in agreement) or antagonistic – to recognize the intersubjective validity among their claims so that social cooperation can be achieved.[2]  This is veering critical thought further from pure Marxist thinking (a trend pointed out in previous posting), albeit not in contradiction to it.

Was there a complete divorce between Marxists and critical theorists by what critical theorists were promulgating through the School or other platforms?  One area that these critical scholars seem to have maintained a strong link with Marxist thinking was their rejection of purely objectified social science research. 

And by transcending the boundaries among the various social sciences – becoming highly interdisciplinary – and other related disciplines (such as linguistic or aesthetic studies), these writers started to find fault with segregating these objectified studies from normative political theory as indicated above. 

In so doing, they fell squarely with Marx and his views that it is essential to keep social science protocols (of either historical or behavioral-based types) and social criticism relatable to each other.  The former provides the means, but the latter keeps such efforts along justifiable rationales which, in turn, help those involved in exerting the energy and expending the resources such research demands.

Despite this link, Marxist scholars, for their part, found it offensive that critical theorists would be disposed to seemly leave behind Marxist focus on proletarian revolution and the energetic adoption of going into other non-Marxist sources of scholarship to inform the substance of their research and writings. 

But, as time passed, this separation of research such as between positivist studies (based on factual information) and normative studies (based on values), lost its fervor and has come to be seen today as artificial.  The concern eventually fell from overall academic importance.  In that, critical theorist played an important role.

And as critical theory further developed, certain inconsistencies have materialized among those affected scholars.  The next posting will delve into these inconsistencies and report on how they, ironically, further diversified the interests of those who claim to be critical theorists or exponents of this construct.  Many a movement was generated or overwise inspired by critical theory and its advocates.

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[1] These postings that convey the basic information regarding critical theory heavily depends on the overview provided by William Outhwaite.  See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.

[2] For interested readers in this generalization, see “Jurgen Habermas,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007/2014), accessed March 18, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/habermas/#:~:text=Habermas's%20theory%20of%20communicative%20action,on%20which%20social%20cooperation%20depends.  It is beyond the purposes here to delineate Habermas’ argument at this point.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, II

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation[1] …

The last posting established what has been the main concerns for critical theorists.  That has been domination and authority.  These main issues were taken on by those scholars that initiated the Frankfurt Institute which got started in Frankfurt, Germany in 1923.  And that posting further gave readers a brief overview of how those scholars, with the backdrop of political turmoil (revolving around the Nazis struggling to attain power); they found their environment anything but hospitable. 

Due to that backdrop, the Institute first moved to Geneva and then on to New York City in 1935.  In the ensuing years, members of the institute began extensive research into various social factors that related to their initial concerns of subjugation of various groupings.  They all shared a certain, qualified allegiance to Marxist thought.  While domination and authority are not foreign concerns to Marxist thinking, their emphasis on those concerns began to develop with a variance from pure Marxist analysis. 

Where Marxists bore down on economic interests and exchange values, critical theorists began to see dominance as a more basic motivator than material well-being.  Specifically, the critical theorists judged material motivations as more of a means toward dominance which intuitively is less of an economic issue than a psychological issue. 

So, instead of the Marxist emphasis on surplus-value, one finds analysis of surplus-repression being critical theorists’ main point of interest.  This, as was noted in their writings, was, in part, a reaction to Sigmund Freud’s promotion of suppression as a social prerequisite in managing modern states.  Here one finds a critique among these scholars of what had been assumed characterizes the legitimate exercise of political power.  That being the “rational exercise of authority.” 

Instead of accepting being rational as the good and proper thing to pursue, one first needs to reflect upon which mental construct serves as a basis for determining what constitutes rational thought – upon what is rationality based?  That is, one can determine a paradox at play, for example, in liberal Western states, rational policies and behaviors, under the reasoned parameters of the given dominate ideology (liberal democracy), it rationalizes subjugating realities.[2] 

To round this out, though, what in the West has been praised as historical liberation, attributed to the effects of enlightenment – rational thought, science, objectified research, positivism, reductionist studies – was deemed by critical thinkers as subjugating forces.  And here a mental exercise might be helpful.

Imagine an unaligned, neutral thinker facing a promoter of capitalism.  The capitalist touts the accomplishments of capitalist economies – outstripping any other economic output, by far, of any current or historical system.  In responding, the unaligned thinker asks the capitalist:  does he/she believe populations of people, by the designs of nature, are equal in the distribution of talents? 

The unaligned questioner, in order to make clear what the questioner is asking, quickly adds, “Yes, one can concede that among individuals, there is variance, but in terms of groupings – race, nationality, religion, people of different geographic origins, even differing familial strains – are people, in total among those groups, equal?

Not to sound prejudicial, the capitalist says yes, and capitalism’s true proponents have fought to equalize legal restraints among these groupings.  The law should be blind to such distinctions.  Yet the unaligned person further asks:  “Why, then, are there notable variances among those groups in terms of asset distribution?  Why are the poor more likely to be members of some groups as opposed to other groups?”

Further, the questioner asks, why do capitalist nations sustain and in some cases support policies that either ignore, uphold, or otherwise promote systems in which meaningful distribution of assets – wage, wealth, education, health care, etc. – favor some groups (in the US, white, male Anglo people) and disfavor other groups (African Americans, Latinos, indigenous people, to some degree, Asians, and others)? 

If one cannot cite natural distinctions among these groups, then “enlightened” logic would claim, something, given the realities, is not fair, something is subjugating these unfavored people.  And if one follows the main argument of capitalist thinking, then one would be prone to argue that government – in the tradition of laissez-faire economics – should not be disposed to do anything to “fix” this state of affairs.

With this mental exercise in hand, which is offered by this blogger and not necessarily proffered by critical theorists, this account hopes to point out an insight critical theorists hold fairly central to their overall argument.  That is, as with the shortsightedness of the above capitalist, people unreflectively ascribe to rationales that are prevalent and do so even at subconscious levels. 

In terms of capitalist, liberal democracies – enlightenment style – what one has are rationales drawn from the prevailing ideology.  That is, what people find (or perhaps don’t even realize) as being true reflects their mode of thinking and speaking – it is “the water in which people swim.”  It functions as a dominating force; and as such, a formula can be deduced:  enlightenment, as Herbert Marcuse points out, equates to totalitarianism.

This has all led to a criticism offered by critical theorists, that the culture – the mode of thought, beliefs, prioritization, and feelings – of Western industrial and postindustrial societies – has become pervasive and beyond reproach.  It is well ensconced in those peoples’ minds.  This cultural approach more than any other aspect of critical theory defines the early work of these initial scholars. 

And it points out the interaction of political, sociological, and psychological factors in how people who live in industrial, capitalist societies – even with democratic features – are so entrapped in subjugating rationales that they have real negative effects on disfavored groups.  The above capitalist may very well not even be conscious of how levels of destitution might exist in that person’s society or in societies in general. 

And even if a number of people know of it, they might simply chalk up such realities to individual shortcomings – they didn’t work hard enough, they didn’t study hard enough, they didn’t play the game smartly enough, etc.  These individuals simply do not see or care to see the institutional nature of such injustices.  And they further don’t see how the various elements of the society play a role in “hiding” what is actually happening.

What readers might find of interest along these lines, is the work that these researchers conducted over cultural realms of interest (e.g., aesthetic works).  But this did not preclude critical commentary on the behavioral turn the social sciences took in the post-World War II years and affected the substances of what was taken as common knowledge.  More specifically, they took aim at scientism, positivist studies, and empiricism.  More on this aspect of critical theory will be shared in the next posting.

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[1] These postings that convey the basic information regarding critical theory heavily depends on the overview provided by William Outhwaite.  See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.

[2] But less one simply dismisses this sort of thinking as anti-American or anti-West, a higher degree of castigation by critical theorists was aimed at the East where, under the label of socialism (an occidental ideology), was experiencing higher degrees of subjugating authority and domination.

JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY, I

 

[Note:  This posting is subject to further editing.]

An advocate of critical theory begins his/her presentation …

It is seldom the case that one can mark in time when a school of thought, say political school of thought, began.  It probably comes closest to that ability when it comes to critical theory.  In 1923 in the city of Frankfurt, Germany a collection of political/social/psychological thinkers got together and founded the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research.  Later, its name was changed to simply the Frankfurt Institute.[1]

          There are an ample number of prominent names involved with this founding.  They include Max Horkheimer (who became its leader), Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin (a literary theorist), philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and psychologist Erich Fromm among others.  This diverse grouping is telling in that critical theory turned out to be a product of a diverse disciplinary base.

While this group shared varying advocacy for Marxist thought, they individually and as a group held deep seated concerns with a good deal of its arguments.  What follows gets into this variance, but first this short historical description points out that the Institute, due to the political environment in Germany (the rise of Hitler) during the late 1920s-early 1930s, moved to Geneva in 1933 and then onward to New York City in 1935.

While much has evolved in critical theory thought since those early days, the role of this blog will be to get at the essential arguments the Institute promoted initially.  The blog also wishes to point out that many other writers with varying arguments have added to the mix and it will refer to some of them.  This, of course, makes nailing down what exactly critical theory is an elusive project.  So, for example, contributors emanated from traditions such as poststructuralism and postmodernism.

Along this line, from this view’s very beginnings, part of a general trend with Marxism in the West, starting in the 1930s, was that they, Marxist leaning academics, sought conceptual connections with non-Marxist thought.  And their writings where not, as pure Marxist writings were, geared at proletarian audiences, but to fellow academics. 

The trend was more specifically aimed at cultural and ideological issues and away from political economy.  Just to remind readers, pure Marxist thought proposed a dialectical materialist view of history.[2]  In addition, Marx, in his strict accounting of what that history reveals, are described forces that simply are/were in place and do not materialize due to normative considerations. 

People, according to this purer form of Marxism, fulfill their roles in this history not because they good or evil, or right or wrong, but because they are human beings acting in accordance with their nature.  Critical theorists reject this reasoning as they turn away from objectified research that opts for scientific protocols (more on this later).

Another factor of importance to this development was contextual and time specific to the 1930s.  At that time, intellectual upheaval was being experienced.  There was a hostile environment made of liberal capitalism (or what some have called the late robber baron era), Stalinism, and fascism. 

Not swayed by arguments distinguishing these ideological traditions, early critical theorists were taken with these isms’ similar organizational, technological, cultural, and personality structural elements and, in turn, gave them, the critical theorists, theoretical focus, at least as compared with what pure Marxist writers were able to enjoy.

From the start, the aim among these writers was to change society.  In such a mode, their attention to these other isms and how their advocates sought to rule not only the politics of their polities, but in how people lived their lives.  One needed to understand that the more recent ideological developments – thought of today as mostly anti-democratic ideologies like fascism – were merely outgrowths of the older, liberal democratic tradition. 

For example, fascism could not be studied or understood in terms of its own attributes but needed to be considered as a development spurred on by the subjugating character of the “parental” liberal democratic regimes.  As Horkheimer is quoted, “He who does not wish to speak of capitalism should also be silent about fascism.”[3]  This seemingly contradictory judgment needs clarifying, but it reveals the central contention critical theory makes regarding social realities.

In this mode of transcending traditional boundaries among the various academic disciplines, critical theory pushed to crossover from discipline to discipline.  Early on, its advocates began analyzing subjugation from sociological and political concerns.  This led to socio-cultural analysis with a dash of history in which antisemitism, for example, is perceived as an outgrowth of dominance initiated by the Enlightenment.

Or stated otherwise, fascism can be categorized as rebellion of suppressed antagonism initiated by de-legitimizing long held prejudices among the population against minority groups – especially if those minorities were perceived as enjoying material largesse.  Perhaps Hitler could have adopted a “MAKE GERMANY GREAT AGAIN” slogan to capture this deep-seated antagonism that before Hitler might have been sustained at subconscious levels.

With that, this posting hints at where critical thought is aiming.  More needs to be described and explained.  Just to further remind readers, this blog warned them that with critical theory, one has a more involved set of ideas than the relatively simple rationales of either parochial federalism or natural rights views.  But to report as to what this other view, critical theory, has to offer, this blog will go about doing so in short installments.

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[1] This blogger wishes to express a word of gratitude to a source of information that has served to organize how this blogger presents its account of critical theory.  It also is a source of information.  See William Outhwaite, “Critical Theory,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought, edited by David Miller, Janet Coleman, William Connolly, and Alan Ryan (Cambridge, MA:  Blackwell Publishers, Ltd), 106-109.

[2] Readers who would benefit from a refresher review of Marxist thought, are invited to look up Posting #68.  To gain access, readers can go online and look up this blog’s posting, “Posting 68:  Some Influential Sources of Critical Political Thought,” Gravitas:  The Blog Book, I (April 29, 2011), accessed March 15, 2023, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zh3nrZVGAhQDu1hB_q5Uvp8J_7rdN57-FQ6ki2zALpE/edit, 240.

[3] Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination:  A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Oakland, CA:  University of California Press, 1973), 156.

A PROTOCOL FOR JUDGING CRITICAL THEORY

 

Following the pattern this blog has established in presenting, analyzing, and evaluating the main mental constructs Americans have harbored concerning governance and politics, this posting will review how critical theory will be presented.  Basically, in dialectic style, the blog will attempt to take on the view of one who would advocate the construct.  That is, each posting, under the “judging” series, will begin with a reminder:  “An advocate of critical theory continues his/her presentation …”

The thing is, this blogger, as with natural rights, is not an advocate but will try his best to present that view in positive terms.  The “judgments” will utilize William Schubert’s commonplaces of curriculum, that being subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.[1]  Paralleling how these commonplaces have been used in terms of parochial federalism and the natural rights view, each guides what this blog will address. 

Beginning with subject matter, those presentations will focus on the morality of critical theory, the discipline of the social sciences, and the interdisciplinary nature of critical theory.  With the category, the “student,” this review will sustain the subcategories used with natural rights.  Those are personal student interests, student social interests, students’ economic interests, political student interests, and pedagogic student interests. 

And with the category “teacher,” it will be divided into two subcategories:  teacher effectiveness and teacher knowledge.  Finally, the commonplace “milieu” will direct attention to the expectation of schools, school’s socioeconomic base, and youth culture.  Those are the areas of interests which the blog will further analyze by implementing Aristotle’s categories of causation. 

That is, specific questions of inquiry will be derived from those categories, i.e., they will inquire into the state of affairs, interactions, situational insights, and the capacity to act morally.  Stated more descriptively,

 

·       The state of affairs refers to the actual conditions found in schools, as opposed to abstracted or hypothesized relations between factors or variables.  Of particular concern will be dilemmas caused by adherence to critical theory as opposed to another construct. 

·       Interactions refer to social encounters affected by the respective construct.

·       Situational insights are interpretations of encounters gleaned from analyses of practice. 

·       And capacity to act morally will be assessments of practices judged according to good citizenship and social capital. 

 

The reader is warned that these will not be addressed in order and there will be a good deal of imagination in that critical theory is not that widely employed in American schools.  A lot of what follows is speculation in the mode of “what would happen if” critical theory became prominent – an eventuality this blogger does not anticipate.

          And by further introduction to this construct, here are some other broad-based facts regarding critical theory.  To begin, it is not a predominately political construct.  It is more a sociological one or, better stated, it focuses on society and culture, but with a determined interest in the power structures a society might have. 

In terms of its moniker, it has a bent toward critiquing how existing power structures function and pointing out that despite “democratic” processes, power entities ensure its members secure policies that advance their interests at the cost of those not in power.  As such, related study delves into understanding not only political realities, but also the vast array of human concerns that help critical theorists determine which social forces are at play in maintaining power relations.

Along with political science and sociology, active areas of study include psychoanalysis, history, communication theory, feminist theory, race theory, and philosophy.  To what end?  To secure understanding that deciphers the nature and cause of subjugated human conditions, as it utilizes a varied and open approach to seek truth unadorned by simplistic rationales. 

One aim, it seems, is to understand the role that ideology plays in hampering understanding.  It is adherence to such beliefs systems (capitalism, socialism, fascism, and the like) that justify ongoing injustices keeping humans down, short of true liberation.  The aim of this view is, according to Max Horkheimer, “to [achieve] liberated human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”[2]

In this vein, the following quote is useful in grasping the conceptual boundaries of what critical theorists consider justice – or as Helen Pluckrose refers to it, critical social justice (CSJ) – is:

 

CSJ holds that knowledge is not objective but is culturally constructed to maintain oppressive power systems. This is believed to be achieved primarily by certain kinds of knowledge being legitimised by powerful forces in society, then being accepted by everyone and perpetuated by ways of talking about things – discourses.

These oppressive power systems believed to exist and permeate everything are called things like white supremacy, patriarchy, colonialism, heteronormativity (assuming that most people are heterosexual), cisnormativity (assuming that people are men or women depending on their reproductive systems), ableism and fatphobia. However, it is believed, most of us cannot see these oppressive discourses and systems because they are just the water we swim in. The marginalised have a greater ability to see them and so have a greater competence to define them and point them out. Knowledge is thus tied to identity and one’s perceived position in society in relation to power – often referred to as “positionality.”[3]

 

One current study that amply describes this sort of mental bondage that transforms into subjugation of the severest form is found in Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents.[4]  It turns out that casteism functions as an ideology.

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[1] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces can be defined as follows:

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum.

·       Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.

[2] Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory (Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press, 1981), 2-3.

[3] Helen Pluckrose, “What Do We Mean by Critical Social Justice, Counterweight (February 17, 2021), accessed March 11, 2023, https://counterweightsupport.com/2021/02/17/what-do-we-mean-by-critical-social-justice/. British spelling.

[4] Isabel Wilkerson, Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents (New York, NY:  Random House, 2020).

FROM NATURAL RIGHTS TO CRITICAL THEORY

 

This blog has presented, explained, and evaluated the natural rights construct – what some might call the classical liberal perspective.  It, the blog, claimed that this perspective is the dominant view among the American public in terms of governance and politics.  Also, to a great degree, it assists those citizens in defining, understanding, and passing judgment over their expectations regarding their civic selves, that of other citizens, and of the government.

          As such, this foundational construct goes to provide the manner in which the nation’s civics instruction is developed and shared in American classrooms.  In this presentation, the blog focused on various elements of this view, particularly its moral element.  Also, a good deal of effort was made to describe how the view affects the quality of interaction between students and teachers, including how it influences policy and practice regarding discipline.

          The moral element was presented to highlight the way natural rights argues for individual free choice and behavior – only limited by the rights of others to the same standing – and that any counter condition to this liberality constitutes subjugation.  As for its link to academic input, the view was described as having a theoretical attachment to the political systems approach in the study of politics.  In that, the blog specifically highlighted the models presented by David Easton[1] and Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr.[2]

          These models were reviewed in relation to Eugene Meehan’s criteria[3] for viable and reliable constructs.  The Meehan-style review led naturally to a critique which emphasized the perspective’s excessive promotion of individualism and the detrimental effects such an emphasis has caused in the teaching of government and civics.

          And as with any view, any construct, any dominant perspective, there will be those among the populace who will not agree.  In true dialectic tradition, the natural rights view is not immune to such challenges.  This blog favors one such opposing view, that being federation theory.  But in truth, currently, the most prominent view picking up the challenge is critical theory, and this blog will next turn its attention to this other view. 

It is a view with an interesting history and has spread its appeal among academics in certain socially related fields – sociology, political science, education, etc.  Unlike natural rights, with a relatively simple basic set of ideas, critical theory has a varied foundation.  Some of its basic concerns are exploitation, injustice (as it defines justice), and an imbalance the way power is distributed in society.  Many advocates disagree with themselves in a variety of claims and positions, but all share, to some level, an adherence to Marxian principles.

A recent development that reflects the strength of this view is how the Democratic Party seems to be divided between a moderate wing – noncritical theory partisans – and the progressive wing – the critical theory contingency.  One way to measure how “critical” a particular politician is, is how apt that policymaker is to favor a governmental interposition – including ownership – to meet some human problem area such as the environment, the economy, health, etc.

As with the constructs already reviewed in this blog – that being the parochial federalist view and the natural rights view – this account of critical theory will set out to provide responses to this blog’s list of research questions.  To remind readers, the overall concern is:  does critical theory as a view of governance and politics provide a legitimate and viable way to study government and politics at the secondary level, i.e., in middle schools and in high schools?  There, the targeted courses would be civics and American government, respectively.

With this overarching concern, the review employs subsidiary questions.  They are directed by the dialectic stance projected by the dominant view, natural rights, and by this challenging view, the fairly leftist stance which constitutes the critical theory.  These views are in many ways not only at odds with each other, but place in opposition the role schools should play in American society.  Within this context, further questioning is:

 

1.    What role has the history of critical theory played in the development of civics curriculum?

2.    What consequences have resulted from the efforts of critical theorists in the teaching of civics?

3.    Ideally, if critical theorists were to “get their way,” how would American social arrangements be affected?

4.    And how would those desired social arrangements – per the percepts of the construct – be achieved?  

 

If critical theory were to attain the nation’s support, how would Americans proceed as the future unfolds, at least as the advocates of this view, view it?

          Utilizing a developmental arrangement of competing notions as to how the opposing perspectives foresee the effects of their claims and policy proposals, hopefully readers will be able to compare how this antithesis compares with the thesis, i.e., how critical theory compares to natural rights. 

This will be at times be overshadowed by this blog’s effort to inform readers about how critical theory came about – through relating some of its history.  But guiding the effort will be the commonplaces of curriculum developed by William Schubert[4] and include the subject matter, teachers, learners, and milieu.  In turn, the commonplaces serve to organize a good deal of what will follow.

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[1] 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).

[2] Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown. 1966). 

[3] Eugene J. Meehan, Contemporary Political Thought:  A Critical Study (Homewood, IL:  Dorsey Press, 1967).

[4] William H. Schubert, Curriculum:  Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (New York, NY:  MacMillan Publishing Company, 1986).  The commonplaces can be defined as follows:

·       The subject matter refers to the academic content presented in the curriculum. 

·       The teacher is the professional instructor authorized to present and supervise curricular activities within the classroom setting. 

·       Learners are defined as those individuals attending school for the purpose of acquiring the education entailed with a particular curriculum.

·       Milieu refers to the general cultural setting and ambiance within the varied social settings found at the school site.

 

CRITIQUE OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS VIEW, IX

 

The last posting stressed how the self-esteem movement has taken hold in American schools – how it both affects approaches to curricular content and in how school staff handle disciplinary issues.  This posting provides an overview of how self-esteem affects teacher-student interactions.  Generally, the focus of this movement is to emphasize the individual students’ perceptions; how they define the social world around them. 

Observers of any age, such as this blogger, can readily detect meaningful change – some good, some not so good – in how those interactions take place, what assumptions are at play, and surely how outcomes materialize.  For example, time dimensions seem to have altered; yesterday’s effects are now cast as unimportant and with them, a source of shame for wrongdoing is forgotten. 

First, Americans did away with sin when they disposed of Calvinism[1] and now they do away with social standards.  As the self-esteem view puts it, statements about generally accepted notions of right and wrong behavior are seen as cumbersome and in the way.  And along with this trend, views considering discipline are affected.  Discipline and its demands are deemed to be irrelevant, except as it might be useful to acquire material success (a middle-class belief that seems to be shrinking along with the size of the middle class). 

Roy Baumeister has done meaningful research on the effects of boosted self-esteem advocacy or to be more accurate, advocacy for humanistic learning theory.  In 2006 he reports,

 

Unfortunately for the low-self-esteem theory, researchers have gradually built up a composite image of what it is like to have low self-esteem, and that image does not mesh well with what we know about aggressive perpetrators. People who have a negative view of themselves are typically muddling through life, trying to avoid embarrassment, giving no sign of a desperate need to prove their superiority. Aggressive attack is risky; people with low self-esteem tend to avoid risks. When people with low self-esteem fail, they usually blame themselves, not others.

Faced with these incongruities, we cast about for an alternative theory. A crucial influence on our thinking was the seemingly lofty self-regard of prominent violent people. Saddam Hussein [dictator of Iraq who was alive when these words were written] is not known as a modest, cautious, self-doubting individual. Adolf Hitler's exaltation of the "master race" was hardly a slogan of low self-esteem. These examples suggest that high self-esteem, not low, is indeed an important cause of aggression.

We eventually formulated our hypothesis in terms of threatened egotism. Not all people who think highly of themselves are prone to violence. That favorable opinion must be combined with some external threat to the opinion. Somebody must question it, dispute it, undermine it. People like to think well of themselves, and so they are loath to make downward revisions in their self-esteem. When someone suggests such a revision, many individuals--those with inflated, tenuous and unstable forms of high self-esteem--prefer to shoot the messenger.[2]

 

What this suggests is that the whole notion of self-esteem – which everyone should have a realistic dose of – is a more nuanced factor in how people, even young ones, function in social settings like those of schools.

          Baumeister goes on to argue in another published work that if children are taught a false sense of self-esteem, i.e., a child is convinced he or she is more talented than the child’s ability justifies, such incongruence with reality will encourage violent behavior on the part of the subject.  This is apparently due to the frustration engendered by the person’s expectations and the reality the person encounters.  He writes,

 

High self-esteem means thinking well of oneself, regardless of whether that perception is based on substantive achievement or wishful thinking and self-deception.  High self-esteem can mean confident and secure – but it can also mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, and egotistical.[3]

 

          The progressive pedagogy, and its philosophy, pragmaticism, lack a firm ethical base[4] and this has made it susceptible to the humanistic learning theory arguments.  Peter F. Oliva identifies this psychology, which he calls perceptual psychology, as a main branch of progressive education.[5]  Strangely, perceptual psychology seems to be the one element of progressive education that has been extensively adopted in the nation’s schools[6] – is its popularity by way of attempting to keep the “customer” base happy or, at least, appeased? 

          As such, one finds two consequences.  One, the effects of excessive concerns for self-esteem on civics education have been bolstered by the assumptions laden within the natural rights perspective in ways described earlier in this blog.  Primarily, that would be in terms of rights – one has the right to self-define oneself regardless of what the facts are.  And two, this bias easily becomes part of the “hidden curriculum”[7] which has transferred its messages of individualism and anti-communal sentiment in ways more effective than any formal instruction could.

          And with this review of humanistic learning theory and its effects on American schooling, the critique of the natural rights view comes to an end.  The next posting will provide a summary statement of the natural rights construct and a “bridge” to its most vibrant antithesis, critical theory.  This latter area of contention – natural rights vs. critical theory – weaves a contemporary tale that is finding its way more frequently into the evening news.

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[1] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” The Annals of America, 13, (Chicago, IL:  Encycloaedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 277-288.  Readers should not consider this posting as an argument to reinstate Calvinism as a dominant view of morality or even of good behavior.

[2] Roy F. Baumeister, “Violent Pride,” Scientific American, August 1, 2006, accessed February 26, 2023, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/violent-pride/.

[3] Roy F. Baumeister, “Should Schools Try to Boost Self-esteem?,” American Educator, 20, 2 (Summer, 1996), 14-19 & 43, 41 (emphasis in the original).

[4] Boyd H. Bode, How We Learn (Westport, CT:  Greenwood Press, 1940).

[5] Peter F. Oliva and William Gordon, Developing Curriculum, 8^th Edition (Boston, MA:  Pearson, 2013).

[6] As the last posting pointed out, in American schools progressivism doesn’t prevail.  That honor goes to essentialism.  That view can be defined as:

Essentialism tries to instill all students with the most essential or basic academic knowledge and skills and character development. Essentialists believe that teachers should try to embed traditional moral values and virtues such as respect for authority, perseverance, fidelity to duty, consideration for others, and practicality and intellectual knowledge that students need to become model citizens. The foundation of essentialist curriculum is based on traditional disciplines such as math, natural science, history, foreign language, and literature.

See “Essentialism,” SIUE (n.d.), accessed March 5, 2023, htpps://www.siue.edu/~ ptheodo/foundations/essentialism.htlm.  SIUE refers to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s School of Education.

[7] “The term ‘hidden curriculum’ refers to an amorphous collection of ‘implicit academic, social, and cultural messages,’ ‘unwritten rules and unspoken expectations,’ and ‘unofficial norms, behaviours and values’ of the dominant-culture context in which all teaching and learning is situated.”  See “Teaching the Hidden Curriculum,” Boston University (n.d.), accessed March 4, 2023, https://www.bu.edu/teaching-writing/resources/teaching-the-hidden-curriculum/#:~:text=The%20term%20%E2%80%9Chidden%20curriculum%E2%80%9D%20refers,teaching%20and%20learning%20is%20situated.