The
following list of titles and accompanying dates refers to past
postings on the blog, Gravitas: A Voice for Civics Education, that
have been deleted. After each title and date, the entries below
include the first paragraph of each respective posting. If you
care to receive a copy of a particular posting, send your request via
email to gravitascivics@gmail.com . One posting per request.
111 TRADITIONAL FEDERALISM CRITIQUED
(September 30, 2011)
I
have of late posted a series of blog entries dedicated to the ideas
and ideals of our founding generation, especially those known as
Whigs, Commonwealthmen, or Patriots. I reported that these
leaders enjoyed support from about 40% of the population of the
country at the time between the writing of the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. Of course, that
statistic is based on a lot of speculation; after all, that was over
200 years ago. I also wrote that their beliefs started to lose favor
at about the same time. Yet, overall, their views, when it came to
government and politics, probably had more support than any other set
of beliefs. That prominent position was lost during the years
following World War II. I call this earlier construct traditional
federalism. It was displaced as the dominant view by the natural
rights construct. If you want a taste of how different we saw the
world during the time traditional federalism was dominant, watch old
episodes of the TV drama, The Waltons, a series of family life
in the depression years of the 1930s (I know at least one of the
cable networks runs episodes daily).
112 FEDERALIST
THEORY, A NEW APPLICATION
(October
3, 2011)
If
you have been reading this blog of late, I have entered a series of
postings that have reviewed a set of ideals that was instrumental in
starting this great nation of ours. Our instruction in civics,
history, and government classes should be diligent in teaching the
role these ideals played. I am not saying that there are currently
no attempts at doing such a review, but current treatments are
seriously abbreviated and ignore much of the federalist principles I
have reviewed in my postings. I believe this more federalist
oriented review is advisable for many reasons, but most important
because it, one, more fully explains how the nation got started and,
two, has something meaningful to add to our current considerations.
From those ideals, which I summarily call the traditional federalism
construct, I can make the following recommendations for our civics
curriculum:
- incorporate the founding principles in our instruction regarding the foundation of our constitution
- instruct students on the philosophical basis of our structural system with added emphasis on the role of local governments
- strive to legitimate the expectation that citizens have duties and that often times one needs to weigh the demands of the common or public good against one's private interests
- engage students on the need and justification for a political morality including what criteria should serve to judge good and evil in our political and governmental activities
- along with the exclusive and collective virtues of the governed people, extol, using derived standards of morality, their shortcomings
- emphasize individual integrity in liberty and equality as defined in our compact (US Constitution) and in our statutory provisions (what is generally considered our social contract)
- strive to encourage and convince students that our republican form of government expects average citizens to actively engage in local grass-roots decision-making and that such activity in determining policy is in preference to detached professional expertise
These
aspects of the traditional federalism construct, I believe, logically
promote what previous postings have highlighted; that is, Robert
Putnam's idea of social capital. To remind you, by social capital,
Putnam means a societal quality characterized by having an active,
public-spirited citizenry, egalitarian political relations, and a
social environment of trust and cooperation.
113 TRADITIONAL
FEDERALISM AND INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
(October
7, 2011)
I
have been expressing through this blog the pluses and minuses of a
construct which guided the origins of our national government – the
traditional federalism construct. It is a construct that emphasizes
republican government, local political engagement, liberty based on
freedom from tyranny (including the tyranny emanating from one's
passions), and the duties and obligations citizens have to place the
common good above personal interests. I critiqued that construct
from the perspective of a civics educator who might want to
incorporate the construct as a guide to his or her work. I also
began to review the research methodologies of those academics who use
the construct in their work. The purpose of including this last
element was to make the argument that pedagogically, the method these
scholars utilize of analyzing historical documents can be transferred
to the classroom and students could engage in this type of work. As
such, students would analyze what our forebears thought in terms of
how we should govern ourselves. Of course, such documents can
include founding documents and charters, letters, Supreme Court
decisions, famous speeches, recorded transcripts of legislative
proceedings, famous debates, and the like.
114 LAST
WORD ON TRADITIONAL FEDERALISM
(October
10, 2011)
Since
my posting of July 8, I have been sharing with you my views
concerning the origins of this nation in terms of our forebears'
political thoughts and values. Naturally, these beliefs had much to
do with how the United States got started and how and why our
constitution was written. Central to that process was a set of
beliefs I have labeled traditional federalism. I want to conclude my
presentation of traditional federalism by tying its tenets to our
responsibilities of conducting a viable civics curriculum. Walter C.
Parker, I believe, has something powerful to state concerning our
overall charge:
Let me begin by
specifying the desired outcome of education for democracy as
Enlightened Political Engagement … The concept has two dimensions –
democratic enlightenment and political engagement – and together
they suggest something like wise
participation or
reflective involvement.
(Parker,
W. C. (2001). Toward enlightened political engagement. In W. B.
Stanley (Ed.), Critical
issues in social studies research for the 21st
century
(pp. 97-118). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Quotation
on p. 99, emphasis in the original.)
Potentially,
school attendance places students in an environment in which
enlightened political engagement is a norm or at least is presented
in a way so that students could understand its benefits. As Parker
writes, “[s]chooling is important for a democracy because it gives
one more power and gives one ideas about how to use it.”
All this rings true even though, as John Patrick and John Hoge argue,
schools could be more effective in this regard. Patrick and the
National Council for the Social Studies agree with me on the notion
that we should not, despite the number of years that has elapsed
since our beginnings, totally forget or regard as totally irrelevant
the substance of ideas and ideals the founders left us. I have tried
to make the case that at its core, traditional federalism can be
utilized in the effort to impart enlightened political engagement.
After all, traditional federalism, more than any other set of ideas,
served as a foundation, as a definition for our ideas of citizenship,
provided the basic concepts of how government should be structured,
and successfully encouraged a general spirit of active citizenship
that Alexis de Tocqueville observed as late as the 1830s. I have
already shared with you Tocqueville's reporting of American cultural
traits supportive of communal engagement and the manifestation of
those traits in active, local decision-making. All of this was
legitimized by the broad acceptance of values and ideas constituting
traditional federalism.
115 TRANSITION
TO LIBERATED FEDERALISM
(October
14, 2011)
This
blog will now shift direction. In recent postings, I have been
writing about a mental construct instrumental to the founding of our
nation. The traditional federalism construct left this nation with a
set of beliefs that still have significant influence on our political
thinking despite the fact that as a whole set of ideas, it no longer
holds a predominant position in our political culture. That “honor”
belongs to the natural rights construct to which I dedicated many
initial postings. As for federalist values, I must add that at no
time did belief in them eliminate or significantly curtail “sinning,”
behavior that offended the moral prescripts of the federalist mind
set. Ken Burn's recently broadcast series, Prohibition,
provides ample evidence that Americans did not suffer from any
paucity of anti social and delinquent behavior throughout their
history. What I will point out, though, is that Americans also had a
sense that all those shenanigans were wrong, whereas of late, they
seem highly more tolerant and ascribe far less illegitimacy toward
such behaviors. The women's groups that fought excessive drunkenness
could illicit a sense of shame from communities back in the twenties
and early thirties and even the men who engaged in alcoholic abuses
could feel the sting of guilt. Shame, I sometimes think, is a thing
of the past as we seem to have crossed some moral – or should I
write immoral – bridge.
116 INTRODUCING
MORAL THOUGHTS OF FEDERATION THEORY
(October
17, 2011)
In
each of our historical time periods, I mean our national historical
time periods, there have been one or two prominent moral issues
gnawing at our national conscience. There were the moral issues
surrounding slavery, alcoholism, poverty, global threats to democracy
from totalitarian regimes, and so on. President George W. Bush spoke
of the “Axis of Evil” and today we have rumblings over whether
our financial debacle which ignited in 2008 was the product of
unscrupulous activities by our financial institutions or the
narcissistic behaviors of common citizens amassing personal debt to
sustain life styles they couldn't afford (the only other time
personal debt amounted to 100% of GDP was in 1929). In any of these
eras, one can make the claim that our schools should have addressed,
with urgency, values and values education.
117 GET'EM
WHERE THEY LIVE
(October
21, 2011)
In
terms of getting a handle on why any organized effort acts the way it
does, I believe the place to start is to look at the dominant shared
values among those involved in the effort. That goes for educational
efforts as well – be they in this country or any other. I have on
several occasions in this blog written about the emphasis that the
dominant political construct in our nation, the natural rights
construct, puts on the concepts of the individual and individual
rights – individual sovereignty. I will remind you that at its
base, the natural rights construct is a moral argument. It promotes
individualism because it holds the rights of individuals as a trump
value and this commitment sets a direction for its entire approach.
The ideal of individual sovereignty is logically related
to what Kant calls the “universal law of justice: act externally
in such a way that the free use of your will is compatible with the
freedom of everyone according to a universal law” – where
“according to a universal law” means according to a rule that
favors no one at the expense of others. (Reiman,
J. (1994). Liberalism and its critics. In C. F. Delaney (Ed.), The
liberalism-communitarism debate
(pp. 19-37). Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., p.
21.)
Since
that construct dominates civics and social studies education in our
schools, any challenge to its position needs to counter this
foundation. Strategically, people who would like to replace the
dominant construct might begin by looking at where that construct has
guided values education. To add a bit of context, let me point out
that values education was a central part of our schools' curricula
before the natural rights view became the dominant one. Prior to the
1960s, our schools unabashedly promoted values instruction based on a
Protestant theology. The natural rights construct, on the other
hand, has dramatically abandoned this more sectarian view of values
education. Below I review this latter development. I will point out
here, though, that supporters of natural rights have been very
successful in instituting their views – it has become the
legitimate perspective of values education among developers of
curriculum. Therefore, for anyone challenging the dominant
construct, such as myself in promoting federation theory, in order to
make any headway, the need is to address where the natural rights
construct has taken us in terms of values education.
118 DEFICIENCY
OF CHARACTER EXPLAINED
(October
24, 2011)
As
I established in the last posting, the values clarification
instructional model became the instructional approach utilized by
natural rights curriculum designers. In order to delve into the
ideas of morality expressed by the values clarification model of
instruction and its consequences, James Hunter provides us with some
key observations. Values clarification model refers to the main
approach utilized by schools, at least as reflected in official
curricula, in dealing with values and questions of good and evil. In
his book, Death of Character, Hunter expresses as his major
argument that certain social forces, such as diversity and the
liberal perspective have, since the 1960s, basically de-legitimized
the holistic moral model or code that prevailed in our schools'
curricula. He argues that that earlier code promoted a sense of
character among our population. He presents this argument in a
nonjudgmental way; he basically expresses this development as a
matter of fact.
119 CHALLENGE:
TREATING VALUES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
(October
28, 2011)
Should
public schools be about the business of promoting values? I have
indicated in previous postings that this can be a touchy proposal for
some. Replace the words “public schools” in the question with
“government” and I think you can see why. For the sake of full
disclosure, I am a product of parochial schools (except for the last
couple of months of my fourth grade year). I did go to public
institutions for my undergraduate and graduate education, but for the
rest – K through 12 – the nuns and brothers saw me through those
challenging years. And, in so doing, they gave me a good dose of
values education. It was, at least at some emotional level, an
effective effort. While many of the details of those lessons have
fallen by the wayside, I still hold quite firmly some of the core
values and principles that education promoted. Within those years,
if memory serves me correctly, each day started with religious
instruction. I have often wondered why public schools don't have
something similar in terms of addressing moral or ethical issues.
Could this be done within the constraints of the First Amendment
and its prohibition against the “establishment” of religion
clause? I believe public schools can and should do this as an
antidote to the prevailing levels of incivility, criminality, and
nihilism that sufficiently warrant such an inclusion in our public
school curriculum.
120 UTILITARIANISM:
SECULAR BUT TROUBLESOME
(October
31, 2011)
Readers
of this blog know that I am in the midst of trying to devise a moral
code that can be utilized in guiding curriculum designers and
teachers in values education. I have made the argument that values
education that deals with morality has been systematically avoided in
many of our public school classrooms. My focus is on values
education that can be taught in public schools where the challenge is
heightened by constitutional restrictions against sectarian
approaches to this area of instruction. I have, in a previous
posting, made the claim that such a code needs to be “secular,
non-ideological, and substantive enough so that a values education
curriculum can develop within the constitutional parameters of our
laws.” I indicated that in developing such a code, I would comb
the contribution of western philosophic writers to gather those ideas
and arguments that would assist in such an effort. This posting will
review two traditions: Aristotelian and utilitarian approaches, two
varied views.
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