#federation theory

This blog has been about answering a question.  That is:  does a federalist perspective, in the form of liberated federalism, provide a legitimate and viable construct for the study of governance and politics in both middle schools (civics) and high schools (U.S. government)?  Federalism, in its more theoretical plain, is concerned with a lot more than structural arrangement among entities such as the US’ central and state governments.  In fact, it offers a whole way of viewing governance and politics.

It is an approach that reflects a congregational style in which the individual entities making up a polity take on a partnership role with the other entities in the arrangement.  With that, each entity has understood duties, responsibilities, and obligations – not necessarily mandated by law – aimed at initiating or sustaining the interests of the federated union.  In short, each is to behave in ways that support those interests even if it means sacrificing self-interests.

To answer the above central question, there are subsidiary questions.  As this and those postings that immediately follow are summary entries, these questions suggested themselves from the concerns of the analysis this blog has presented. They are:  How have the constructs guiding the teaching of American government and civics – since the beginning of the nation – evolved?  What have been the salient consequences of that development?  To what state should the development of a construct lead?  And how can the desirable state come about?

The first two questions reflect the historical aspects of the analysis this blog has, since late 2021, been presenting.  That is an analysis of American governance and politics emanating from the central mental constructs that have guided those activities from the origin of the nation.  That history was summarized through the blog’s postings since that first one of this series, “Dealing with Ideals,” which was posted on December 14, 2021.[1]  It, the historical account, described and explained the evolution of the parochial/traditional federalist perspective and how it morphed into the natural rights perspective.

Included, though, were descriptions of political science theories or models that are associated with each historical period.  The theory of federalism, with a strong component of republican thought, was described utilizing the ideas of Daniel Elazar, Gordon Wood, and Donald Lutz, among others.  Their contributions helped present the general tenets of the federalist/republican view.[2]

When the analysis turned to the natural rights view, the blog shifted in its reliance on political science contributions, to the political systems model – mostly from the work of David Easton – and the structural-functional approach – the work of Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell.  The two models were reviewed as basic disciplinary constructs which have served, under the natural rights era, as foundation for the current teaching of civics in the nation’s schools.

Challenging this dominant view, since the 1960s, has been the Marxian view, critical theory.  That view has softened the Marx influence with what has generally been the ideas of postmodernism.  Here, writings of Paulo Freire, Cleo Cherryholmes, Henry Giroux, and Michael Apple were utilized.  The central message of this approach has been to further a view of equality that it, the construct, holds as a trump value and advocates achieving equal results. 

In essence, it argues that levels of wealth and income should drastically approach equality across the workforce; that there should not be a “have,” as opposed to a “have not,” class of people.  Since no modern society has come close to this ideal, its actual realization – what that would look like – is a mystery.  Consequently, most content inspired by this approach seems to be lodged in describing how unequal or exploitive conditions are, especially in capitalist nations such as the US.

The synthesis, the adoption of liberated federalism to guide civics, contains the compromised position between natural rights and critical theory.  It advocates the re-emergence of federalism as the dominant view but is especially sensitive to the liberty and equality issues that natural rights and critical theory views stress in either their dominance or in their challenge. 

Here, the ideas of Philip Selznick, Amitai Etzioni, and Robert Bellah were central, as well as the cited writers of the federalist view.  As such, ideas and ideals of these contributors had a profound influence in the development of the proposed model, the liberated federalism model.  Stated as a simple assertion:  civics education should be guided by the liberated federalist mental construct.

[1] Interested readers who wish to look up the postings that present the dialectic argument from its beginning, see Robert Gutierrez, “Dealing with Ideals,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics,” December 14, 2021, accessed November 14, 2023, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2021_12_12_archive.html.

Educators who wish to address an area of study, say civics, rely – sometimes without awareness – on some overall explanatory/descriptive view of the subject.  The claim of this blog has been that currently that view for social studies subjects has been the natural rights view.  Academics call it classical liberalism.  The blog has further argued for a change, that instead of the current view, it should be replaced by the construct, liberated federalism.  A good deal of space in this blog has gone into describing and explaining that proposed view.

          At this point, the blog has attempted to present a viability statement that applies Eugene Meehan’s criteria[1] to highlight the construct’s strengths.  After addressing each individual criterion – comprehensiveness, power, precision, consistency/reliability, isomorphism, compatibility, predictability, and control – the blog with the last posting added two more criteria:  abstract level and motivation.  These distinct but related criteria relate more to educators’ daily concerns.

          Abstract level refers to how much of reality is included with some presentation of that reality, and motivation refers to how much the material elicits the interest of the students presented with that reality.  If readers are interested but have not read that posting, readers can look it up at the URL, http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/, September 1, 2023.

That posting also introduced the work of Jerome S. Bruner[2] and Edgar Dale.[3]  This posting will delve more deeply into their contributions.  To begin, Bruner provides a model for the different modes by which information can be communicated and at what minimal ages a person can understand the information presented by the different media modes. 

Generally, as observed by analyzing people’s learning abilities at different age levels, Bruner discovered that the following trend exists:  the youngest (least sophisticated) children understood information in the enactive mode of representation.  That would be children from birth to 1 year of age depending on this mode and refers to an activity of direct experiences. 

For example, teaching a baby to shake a rattle is done by an action activity in which the rattle is placed in the baby's hand and the teacher grasps that hand and shakes it.  This can be described as action learning.  Of course, action learning can be employed with older learners, as with dance lessons.

With some aging, for students who are more sophisticated but still lacking in the higher levels of sophistication, a more abstract mode can be employed.  Bruner calls this intermediate level of abstraction iconic modes of representation (applicable to teaching young children from 1 to 6 years of age).  This teaching uses media that present images of what is to be learned.  “How to” demonstrations or pictures are examples of this mode.  Cooking shows on TV use this mode to teach viewers how to cook specific dishes. 

Last, for the most sophisticated students, the most abstract mode of representation can be used and is what Bruner calls symbolic (potentially applicable to teaching students 7 years of age and above).  These instructional media rely on language.  By depending on language, these informational materials can have the highest degree of applicability to varying aspects of reality – it's the most generalizable information (while lesser abstract media modes need to convey more specific content). 

Language media opens the student to concepts which categorize elements of reality.  For example, the concept, transportation, refers to a wide variety of phenomena which can be grouped to convey meaningful information, as in the sentence, “costs affect the mode of transportation people use.”

On the other hand, the work of Dale addresses the same concern between abstraction and modes of representation, but instead of devising more general modes of representation, he identifies specific media types and activities that instructors can choose.  Dale arranges them hierarchically by listing them within a triangle or pyramid.  That is, he arranges, from bottom to top, an ascending order of abstraction within the prism – the visual depiction of his model is called Dale's Cone of Experience.

If one superimposes Bruner's modes on Dale's listing of media types, it can take the following form:

MOST ABSTRACT – SYMBOLIC

Written text (as in a book)

Spoken word (as in a lecture)

INTERMEDIATE ABSTRACTION – ICONIC

Still pictures (as in a picture portfolio)

Moving pictures (as in a film)

Exhibition (as in a collection of artifacts)

Demonstration (as in a person showing a student how to cook a given dish)

LEAST ABSTRACTION – ENACTIVE

Role-playing (as in a learner pretends to be a person in some social situation, e.g., as a family member when father or mother comes home to announce he/she has lost his/her job)

Simulation (as in playing a game based on a model of some reality, e.g., playing the game Monopoly)

Direct purposeful experience (as in an internship in which student takes on real life responsibilities for a particular job)

Applying all these ideas regarding sophistication, abstraction, and motivation to evaluating federation theory, the question becomes:  how well does the construct allow instructors, curriculum developers, and media developers to match the sophistication of secondary students to civics or government material being taught? 

Here, this blogger will simply state that federation theory does not primarily rely, as most classroom instruction does, on higher levels of abstraction.  That would be the case in either structural descriptions of complex bureaucratic institutions – branches of government, political parties, interest groups, and the like – or behavioral analysis of political variables – such as the correlation between demographic dimensions and particular individuals securing leadership positions in government. 

Most of those classroom sessions utilize lectures or demonstration presentations.  Instead, a curriculum guided by federation theory relies on instruction that focuses on more dynamic aspects of civics and government.  It would guide instruction to, for example, describe contextualized political and governing accounts, elicit students to empathize with political actors dealing with interpersonal human challenges, and/or has students recreate the inter-dynamics of groups in varying degrees of federated associational arrangements. 

By doing so, this approach lends itself to a more humane and less abstract treatment of governance and politics.  While this form of federation theory, liberated federalism, relies on more historical analysis, it is more apt to present less abstract content by conveying stories or narratives.  And it lends itself to relying on cognitive psychology by highlighting how people think, both currently and in the past. 

But that does not preclude the use of more abstract media.  For example, it does not, out of hand, dismiss behavioral studies, but can rely on them when they are applicable and prudent.  In short, the judgment is that this perspective allows for very high degrees of flexibility on the part of instructors, curriculum developers, and media developers to gauge the material and experiences in which students are asked to take part. 

In that federation theory comes closest to following Bruner's advice:  when presenting new content, the overall strategy should be to follow the progression from enactive to iconic to symbolic.  All other things being equal, in order to be effective, less sophisticated students need less abstract content and, therefore, less abstract media modes of instruction should be used.  Conversely, for more sophisticated students, given the content being taught, more abstract media of instruction can and often should be employed.

As for the other elements of motivation, one can ask:  what sounds more motivating?  Are dry abstract descriptions of unfamiliar material more motivating than materials that depict the interactive activities of human encounters?  These latter depictions would be contained in stories of collective entities such as families, workplaces, back room negotiating sessions, war fronts (ones that don't glorify wars but get at the real-life sacrifices war demands), political campaigns, and so on. 

These are the types of content settings that federation theory encourages instructors to use and their students to study.  To say the least, federation theory holds its own in terms of motivation and is best when it comes to matching the sophistication of students and the abstraction levels of the media and content it suggests. 

For a full illustration of this strategy within the confines of a single course – but illustrates the principles contained in this posting – readers are referred to this blogger’s book, Toward a Federated Nation:  Implementing National Civics Standards.[4]  This blog will next turn to the methodology issues in implementing a curriculum based on a liberated federalism model.

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

[2]See Saul McIeod, “Jerome Bruner’s Theory of Learning and Cognitive Development” (June 14, 2023), accessed August 31, 2023, URL: Jerome Bruner's Theory of Learning And Cognitive Development - Simply Psychology. The issue was how the material was presented.  And one of the factors determining success was the nature of the media used to present the information.  To this blogger’s understanding, Bruner was not arguing that young students had to mature to learn complicated material.  He was of the mind that any content could be taught to any student regardless of his/her sophistication.  The issue is how the material is presented.

[3] “Edgar Dale,” Wikipedia (n.d.), accessed September 1, 2023, URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Dale.

This blog is in the midst of describing the theory that guides its efforts.  Since this blogger wishes to prescribe what he believes would be a better way to approach civics education, the subject would best originate in political science.  And as sciences do, it describes and explains the relationships that its practitioners highlight in their research, i.e., how relevant variables relate with each other if at all.

         The last posting left the reader with what Daniel Elazar claims are the two central variables that political scientists should study.  They are power and justice.  The first, according to Harold Lasswell, is about who gets what, when, and how (this blogger flippantly adds “and how much”), and Elazar states that justice is about who should get what, when, and how – and why.[1]  And to add a wrinkle, unlike other variables that political scientists measure and analyze such as voting, justice demands normative theorizing.

         This blog incorporates the normative theory of federalism as it applies to education and in that, this blogger uses the term federation theory and prescribes its use as the central theoretical basis for the teaching of governance and politics in the nation’s civics’ classrooms.  It does so because the alternative perspectives, according to Elazar, either do not relate to the rule of the many (what the US has) or have not provided suitable “guidelines for using power in order to live well.”[2]

         This blogger has argued that in the US there currently is the natural rights theory predominantly serving as the basis for what is taught in government or civics courses at the secondary level.  This other view, based on the legal concepts of the natural law philosophy, has experienced change since the beginning of the nation.  And within its current rendition, the perspective is not so much a legal idea but a cultural one.

         Basically, it is defined as the notion that one is allowed to engage in any activity as long as one does not interfere with the rights of others. This, among many Americans, has become the belief to the degree that not even this last qualifier pertains.  But at any level, it generally does not impose any responsibilities and duties on people beyond obeying the law, i.e., laws not offensive to natural laws.

         What those rights are is an open question.  They definitely include the enumerated rights contained in the Bill of Rights but are not limited by them.[3]  This perspective dovetails nicely with an individualistic political culture that is prevalent today.[4]

         On the other hand, a federalist paradigm or theory can generally be described as a view that society is based on a partnership among citizens, imposing the responsibilities such an arrangement entails.[5]  Needless to say, the adherents of each perspective – natural rights and federalist rights – find themselves at odds with each other as issues such as, for example, censorship arise in the national media.  

Usually, the respective feelings are ill-defined because, as is often the case with cultural beliefs, the acquisition of the perspectives is through experiences in which respective values are treated as assumptions, providing an implied or hidden element.  Back in 1996, Michael Sandel, using the label – the liberal political philosophy – for the natural rights perspective, describes it as follows:

 The political philosophy by which we live is a certain version of liberal political theory.  Its central idea is that government should be neutral toward the moral and religious views its citizens espouse.  Since people disagree about the best way to live, government should not affirm in law any particular vision of the good life.  Instead, it should provide a framework of rights that respects persons as free and independent selves, capable of choosing their own values and ends. Since this liberalism asserts the priority of fair procedures over particular ends, the public life it informs might be called the procedural republic.[6]

 This perspective is the prevailing political theory to which this nation adheres.[7]

         Its adopted lessons – its ideals and ideas – are accumulated through life and are supported in schools, leaving a strong influence on the individual. Sandel continues:

So familiar is this vision of freedom that it seems a permanent feature of the American political and constitutional tradition.  But Americans have not always understood freedom in this way.  As a reigning public philosophy, the vision of liberalism that informs our present debates is a recent arrival, a development of the last forty or fifty years [of this writing in 1996].  Its distinctive character can best be seen by contrast with a rival public philosophy that it gradually displaced.  This rival public philosophy is a version of republican political theory.[8]

 Again, the terminology is different, but “republican political theory” is the broader category and federalism is a type of that theory.  And more specifically, Sandel is expressing federalist propositions when he points out that this philosophy emphasizes self-government that presupposes an active and intra-active citizenry.

This form of republican rule is concerned beyond ends and addresses the prerequisites for meaningful self-rule.  “It means deliberating with fellow citizens about the common good and helping to shape the destiny of the political community [which] requires a knowledge of public affairs, and also a sense of belonging, a concern for the whole, a moral bond with the community whose fate is at stake.”[9]

This sense has spurred reaction.  Currently, there are movements attempting to inform and promote a more communal view of governance and politics.  The next posting will report on them but before becoming aware of those efforts, the reader might consider what the implications of a polity guided by excessive individual thought causes.  One can make the argument that the current polarized political landscape is a direct result of adopting the natural rights view as the nation’s prominent view of governance and politics.

[1] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33 (Spring, 1991), 231-254.

[2] Ibid., 231.

[3] Randy E. Barnett, “Ninth Amendment” in The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, edited by Kermit L. Hall (New York, NY:  Oxford University Press, 1991), 589-592 AND “Ninth Amendment,” The Annenberg Guide to the United States Constitution (n.d.), accessed November 24, 2021, https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/ninth-amendment/ . 

[4] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent:  America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996) AND Ava Rosenbaum, “Personal Space and American Individualism, Brown Political Review (October 31, 2018), accessed November 24, 2021, https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2018/10/personal-space-american-individualism/.

[5] Daniel J. Elazar, “How Federal Is the Constitution?  Thoroughly!” Elazar, D. J. (1994). How federal is the Constitution? Thoroughly. In a booklet of readings, Readings for Classes Taught by Professor Elazar (1994), prepared for a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute. Conducted in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, 1-30.

[6] Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent, 4.

[7] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966) AND Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent AND Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996).

[8] Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent, 5.

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

To this point, this blog has, in its account of the different obstacles facing civics teachers, described in broad strokes a number of deficient conditions. They are the dysfunctional aspects of the nation’s political culture, the challenge of immaturity among students, and the less than optimal state of civics education.  With this posting, the blog shifts to the landscape of the political culture itself.  

Or in other words, the blog will now look at the social environmental factors that define the nation’s politics of the day.  Rightly so, the nation has cast its main attention – beyond the pandemic – on the divisive nature currently holding sway.  That divisiveness affects just about every aspect of social life – reportedly, it is even affecting family relationships – and definitely poses an obstacle to civics teachers doing their jobs.  

The aim here is to analyze this challenge and provide various insights as to its nature and suggests what teachers and other educators should do in relation to the challenge.  To be clear, what is being addressed is the polarized politics hanging over government in its attempts to issue policies.  And those affected policies seem to include just about all the possible areas in which government has a role.  

That extends to whether masks should be mandated, to what should be taught in schools, to defining who this nation’s antagonistic foes abroad are.  All of these up to the present were not controversial and summoned broad agreement across parties and other social/political divisions.

         And, as with the rest of this blog, commentary or evaluation will be offered against the stated criteria that federation theory holds, what that theory sees as beneficial, functional, and moral.  To reiterate, that would be curricular content that promotes communal, collaborative, and caring dispositions within the citizenry. As such, the specific challenge for this review is to point out and explain how the dominance of the natural rights construct has found such aims to be misplaced and worthy of being ignored.

         And what is it about the natural rights view that makes it so problematic in terms of federal beliefs?  David Brooks, in his most recent book, provides vivid imagery of what this problematic thinking generates.  In describing the nation’s tribalism, one of the dysfunctional conditions he identifies, he writes,

Psychologists say the hardest thing to cure is the patient’s attempt to self-cure.  People who are left naked [in a self-centered society] and alone by radical individualism do what their genes and the ancient history of their species tell them to do.  They revert to tribe.  Individualism, taken too far, leads to tribalism.[1]

The main point this blog has made in terms of the natural rights view is that it promotes an extreme individualism.    

For advocates of federation theory or views one can associate with it, this is not just a matter of aesthetics or taste.  The dismissal of such concerns for community, collaboration, and care for others – or a lack of it – incorrectly instructs what the US Constitution sets forth. It, the Constitution, established a republic based on the very communal commitment toward a polity made up of voluntary partnering – through the mechanism of a sacred compact – that unified both the people of the United States and the states of the United States.

The Latin word for this sort of leaguing is foedus – the Latin word from which federalism is derived and meaning covenant (the religious version of a compact).[2]  Now, Brooks writes of this sort of leaguing as the product of a love commitment.  That can be toward another person, as in marriage, an ideal, a place, a country.  Can a nation be based on the assumption its citizens hold to such a love?  In this, this writer questions the level of emotion Brooks ascribes to such a commitment, but the point is made.  Citizenship defined by a compact-al agreement calls for a lot.

         Should such an alignment rely on people’s natural tendencies?  Unlike with natural rights, as just indicated, which does rely heavily on natural proclivities, federation theory relies on them in part, but not totally. Yes, humans naturally want community, but are easily convinced to seek other goals and/or to define community in a highly parochial manner.[3]  

Hence, to maintain what the founding fathers established, subsequent generations have needed to proactively promote that compact of unity.  And to do so, they have needed to socialize the populous to instill those values, attitudes, beliefs, and civic modes of behavior that promote this sense of partnership – it just doesn’t happen naturally.  

And it has become somewhat obvious, that the more recent generations have not sufficiently socialized the incoming generations so that they are disposed to meet this obligation or commitment – not to the degree the Constitution proscribes. Instead, by adopting the natural rights view, they find policies aimed at furthering this sort of commitment as encroachments on individual prerogatives.

To be further clear, what is being referred to here, by using derivatives of the word federalism, is not the structural arrangement of the states and central government of the US.  Yes, federalism calls for a non-central arrangement of government.  That, by its nature, does include, some central entity and more local entities while withholding complete sovereignty from anyone level of governance.  But what is of more importance, is the necessary rationales for such an arrangement.  

As stated earlier in this blog, “… those processes [refer] to modes of political behavior that furthers a federated citizenry which include[s] healthy doses of social capital and civic humanism.”[4]  And such qualities presuppose a viable communal society in which its members are disposed to collaborate and cooperate in their pursuits of common endeavors broadly defined.  This is what Elazar calls a federal union’s processes.

And however one defines the terms, one can readily see that current levels of polarized politics – or tribalism, as some refer to what is going on – stands smack in the way of a people holding the necessary binding values and attitudes to pull off this active level of engagement. To what extent is that?  Just visualize one holding a partnership in any aggregate effort such as in a marriage or a business.  It would not be based on some transaction or set of transactions, but on commitments.  How much indifference or nonchalance would such an endeavor sustain?  Not much.  

And that can go for a national unions as well. Look around; is this nation on a dangerous path to disunity?  It almost happened before – admittedly for other reasons – and was saved by a bloody civil war.  And this writer believes that part of this current story – one mostly ignored – is how the nation’s civics education program is failing to instill – or more inoffensively stated, to encourage – the necessary disposed emotions and beliefs.

He cannot see how true solutions to this polarization – in the long term – can be achieved without addressing the shortcomings of the nation’s civics education program.  One should remember that one cannot count on natural tendencies or rational calculations; it has to depend on its citizens learning how to be committed to others and on its people holding the necessary values, attitudes, skills, and knowledge to pull it off.  And according to Brooks, such unions depend on love.

[1] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House), 34.

[2] Daniel J. Elazar, “Federal Models of (Civil) Authority,” Journal of Church and State, 33, 2 (March 1, 1991), 231-254.

[3] Cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker writes of this and entails the practical realities resource scarcities have on this evolutionary trait.  See Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

By way of reviewing many of the postings of the past year, this blog of late has recounted what they have to say over the dysfunctional state of civics education. Dysfunctionality here is defined as how distant, conceptually, the civics curriculum of the nation has veered away from federalist aims and goals.  The focus in this blog has been on the textbooks that most American government teachers employ at the high school level.  The shortcomings that those books exhibit can also be found in the middle school civics textbooks as well.

         In addition to the textbooks, the reader can check out other evidential documents in a report this writer offers online.[1]  That evidence portrays what civics educators, particularly those holding powerful positions at the district, state, or national levels, want to accomplish in civics classrooms.  This posting reports what this writer judges those aims and goals are and their consequences.

         Their overall bias is to continue a curricular thrust that began in the mid twentieth century mark.  That is to promote a language and tone in instruction that relies on a “scientific,” objectified approach.  Despite various promises such an approach claims – an unbiased view and methodology by which to approach the subject matter – the overall content derived from such language does have detrimental consequences.  

A term that captures these consequences is anti-federalist messaging.  Or stated more descriptively, this messaging communicates lessons that work to degrade the partnership qualities that the US Constitution establishes.  Instead of promoting a more communal, inter relying nature of citizenship, what is communicated is a consumerist role for each citizen – one in which he/she participates, to various degrees, in a competitive process for favorable public policy.  

As such, each citizen’s attention focuses on advancing personal interests, much as one does in the various economic markets in which one participates. And as such, the approach exhibits a natural rights view of governance and politics in which each member of the populous defines his/her personal values, goals, and, therefore, interests.  

To do so, the curriculum pursues a set of goals.  To begin, it limits its descriptions and explanations to the structural, procedural, and functional accounts of the various elements of the political system.  Some of those elements exist outside government (interest groups, political parties, etc.) and some within government (the various branches of government, various departments, agencies of the bureaucracy, etc.).  These elements are presented as the necessary, objectified elements which allow the grand system of competition to exist.  

They also provide an overall view of government as having this refereeing role as the various competitors go about their efforts to gain favorable results. That is, the curriculum presents government as agent, but does not really give students a realistic explanation as to how power among the competitors outside or within government works to determine winners and losers.

         This curriculum does reasonably cover the “waterfront” of the various elements that do exist and play the various roles entailed in this grand competitive arena.  And one can attribute to the curriculum a sincere effort to communicate that information that a knowledgeable citizen needs to at least get started in his/her seeking favorable public policy.  

As continually pointed out, the information is primarily structural in nature. It lacks, though, the human qualities one associates with influence and, therefore, what it takes to win.  While it almost totally ignores feedback or reaction to issued policies (no small omission), this writer has little to complain about with what is offered.  He views that the curriculum and its offerings, textbooks and other materials, as great information sources that could be employed in a more comprehensive approach.  

Yes, a curriculum and its materials can be more federalist in nature, but a realistic expectation of changing what is to what should be is overwhelming and the needs for a more useful civics program cannot wait.  The answer, therefore, needs to be in changing the mindset of teachers in how they see the content, as opposed to the teaching styles they employ in the classroom.

         One should keep in mind Daniel Elazar’s reasons[2] for studying governance and politics. One reason is to understand why politics manifests itself as it does.  At least, what exists in classrooms provides students with a good sense of who is involved and where they are involved in making governmental and political decisions.  It gives students a sense of how things get done.  But this coverage, at best, is simply too superficial even if the materials – specifically textbooks – are bulky and heavy.

And in terms of Elazar’s concerns for justice and civility, this curriculum, as it is currently practiced, is seriously deficient.  A curriculum that reflects a natural rights view cannot meet the challenges the current political environment presents to the nation.  That view simply ignores, to a serious degree, the communal, collaborative, and mutuality qualities this polity needs to enhance.  It is too self-centered to encourage the national partnership to function as such and be able to advance itself in a healthy fashion.

[1] As a reminder, the online site referred to can be found at the URL, https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSQxMfz-ILTNUq-qUXwCK-VjkQ55HWCY7lj6tCmAaaH53Z2B8jQfmhb_cfvaSbXr-4U6nQb1p4wdLJB/pub .

[Note:  From time to time, this blog issues a set of postings that summarize what the blog has been emphasizing in its previous postings.  Of late, the blog has been looking at various obstacles civics educators face in teaching their subject.  It’s time to post a series of such summary accounts.  The advantage of such summaries is to introduce new readers to the blog and to provide a different context by which to review the blog’s various claims and arguments.  This and upcoming summary postings will be preceded by this message.]

This blog has of late reviewed various challenges civics educators face in the classroom.  These challenges need to be contextualized in terms of the common expectations people share concerning that subject matter; the same people who fund its efforts. Admittedly, those taxpayers – when speaking of public schools – or tuition payers – in terms of private/parochial schools – probably do not give this concern much thought.  But to the extent they do, they cannot be happy with the lack of success that portion of the curriculum achieves.

         Of course, such judgements need to first consider what civics education is meant to accomplish.  People generally ascribe to civics the aim of promoting good citizenship.  And perhaps here is where the problems begin.  It turns out not everyone shares the same image as to what good citizenship is.  There is no unified vision of what qualities a good citizen has.  

Is it being loyal to a leader, is it a person that consistently obeys the law, is it a person who proactively participates in governmental decision-making, or is it someone who maintains allegiance to a set of national goals?  Probably in some places a totally apathetic citizen fits the bill.  Each of these standards reflects a different way at looking at governance and politics.  

And each, where it holds sway, is usually supported by not only a structure of government, but also by a set of values, beliefs, attitudes, and of a political culture that prevails in a given geographic area of the world.  Not only do these views differ among nations but within nations as well.  

This writer has argued that the dominant view of governance and politics in the US has changed since the nation’s inception. It began with a version of federation theory – a view that perceives the American political system as a product of a grand agreement, a compact, that establishes a partnership among its citizens.

That version, while introducing such espoused values as inclusion, equality, and a form of liberty (federal liberty), became dislodged – after a long decline from favor – in the years following World War II. In its place, another construct took hold.  This latter view – a view that took on some currency all the way back to the time when the Constitution was being ratified – is the natural rights view.  This view has become so dominate most Americans would probably list its tenets as being that of the US Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.

As one reads this blog, one gathers that the blog’s aim is to support the federalist view and disparage the dominance of the natural rights view.  Early on, the blog argues for the merits of federation theory.  It highlights the theory’s description of how the American constitution establishes not only a structure – three branches of government, a bureaucracy, central and state governmental arrangement, etc. – but a set of processes that counts on citizens being communal, collaborative, and disposed to support a spirited partnership with fellow citizens.

The reasoning of such expectations stems from the reasoning that the founders of the American republic had.  That is, one joins with others to form this communal entity for the common advantage of each within the congregated group.  They form a partnership under a realization that their individual welfares are tied to the health of that union.  It is not the creation of an extended family – an organic view – or of a collective – a socialist view – but of a mutually advantaged group of people understanding their common interests.

This is motivated by three social qualities:  reciprocity, sentiment, and self-fulfillment.

·       First, one joins such a grouping due to an understanding that one and others are naturally motivated to reciprocate both to positive interaction (someone does one a favor, one is apt to do one back) or negative ones (someone harms another, he/she is apt or, at least, motivated to harm that person back).  

·       Second, emanating from reciprocity, one gets to know others and if the interactions are positive, will tend to like them or even love them.  That furthers the ties.

·       And last, as one matures and all this becomes clearer, one seeks his/her fulfillment – doing that which one comes to see as his/her “purpose” – being derived from such a league.

At each step or level, the richness of the partnership grows if the values sustaining such processes are known, honored, and advanced.  Hence, this is a federalist view of good citizenship, good governance, and good politics.  That is, the ultimate aim is for citizens to become federated.

         Under this view, challenges to civics education would primarily originate from a view that does not share the ideals associated with federation or, at least, does not promote them.  And fulfilling that description is the view that is dominant today, not only within the American political culture but within the civics curriculum of the nation. That is the natural rights view.  

It is not that the natural rights view opposes people from ascribing to federalist values, that’s up to the individual. What it opposes is for publicly funded entities to promote those or any other values except one.  And that value is natural liberty.  Natural liberty holds that individuals have the right to determine their aspirations, values, attitudes, and the freedom to pursue them short of prohibiting others the same opportunity.  It is called natural because it reflects the capacities of all natural creatures except for the last attribute.

Respecting the rights of others prevails only, where it exists, among humans.  And this capacity leads to the concern about why people are motivated to interact with others under the conditions this view identifies.  And the motivation, when all else fails, is transactional:  one does X for someone else in exchange for Y – tit for tat.  

Yes, this is a form of reciprocity but more limited compared to how federal theory views it.  As opposed to a federal exchange, a transactional exchange is limited to the immediate interaction – specified exchanged assets – and nothing else. Expressed this way, the distinction between these two theories seems to be one of degrees but that is not accurate.

Federalism counts on a sense partnership to develop and people who have experienced viable partnerships know that more than any set of immediate exchanged goods is involved.  Marriage serves as the most common example.  At the same time, natural rights thinking holds an indifferent sense to any such bonding or communality to develop.  The former sees government’s role as promoting communal forces; natural rights sees that with indifference and, if assets are needed (read tax dollars), its advocates tend to be hostile toward it.

As such, natural rights does not encourage one to see civics as anything beyond describing and explaining how the public transactions of the nation are conducted especially through the agency of its government, both through the central government and those of the states. But a federalist approach broadens the concern.  And that stretches from family interactions – e.g., a single dad handling his teenage daughter’s initial experiences with intimacy – to how the nation handles its workers losing their jobs to cheap labor nations.

The aim of this account is not to investigate how the natural rights view affects the whole school experience, but how it affects the maturation process of students and schools’ civics education. It also looks into the effects the political landscape has both in terms of how citizens interact and how it affects political parties.  But overarching these reviews, this blog attempts to highlight the fact that social arrangements, despite whatever problems they face, are loaded with assets.

Among these assets are the talents, financial resources, genuine good wishes, connections, inspirational insights, instructional experiences, and many other types of potential assistance from which one can benefit. They can and will provide competition that brings out or encourages one to develop to one’s potential.

But this interaction, of course, can also be challenging, upsetting, or threatening.  One can and will run into those who harbor bad intentions.  These other actors oftentimes are motivated by short-term thinking in which advantage is sought through shortcuts to valued prizes at one’s expense.  Usually, those so motivated are exhibiting some form of immaturity.  They do not seek true federation with their fellow citizens, or they limit any such feelings to their meaningful others, e.g., to his/her family.

But all this understanding of the social world, of its potentialities, is not natural.  People do have a natural sense toward linking up with those considered part of one’s identity, of one’s grouping.  But in a nation, especially like the US with its varied population, there is no natural bent toward such inclusion.  Acceptance, tolerance, much less establishment of an expanded sense of Us, has to be taught.  In a “Pluribus” social environment, a good deal of instruction goes into establishing the “Unum.”

 This teaching is at two basic levels.  One is at imparting the belief that being federated is possible and worth achieving. And two, conducting those lessons that impart the belief, knowledge, and skills aimed at advancing communal and collaborative dispositions, and an understanding that the nation’s societal health is at stake.

The reader might find all this a bit idealistic. One should not belittle idealism. Espoused theories that one hold act to motivate behaviors judged to be good or right.  Yes, a people don’t always live up to those standards, but they do play a role for after all most people find guilt to be discomforting and will act according to such theories to avoid it.

This writer expressed the espoused values of federation theory in previous postings and in his book, Toward a Federated Nation.  This and the following postings are more realistic.  And that realism looks at what stands in the way of Americans living up to the standards one associates with federalist theory.  

One place federated ideals are not being promoted or advanced, at least to the degree they should be, is American schools. As various prior postings point out, schools and America’s youth are noted for their narcissistic character.[1]  As this blog has stated, “things are not good right now.”

The last posting began a review of the ideas of Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. regarding the differences between critical multiculturalists and assimilationists.[1]  That posting left the reader with Schlesinger’s opinion that critical multiculturalists can’t divorce themselves from the contributions of Western culture.  That that tradition provides the sentiments and reasoned rationales upon which these advocates base their calls for liberty and equality.

         This posting delves into what the substance of that tradition is.  The liberal historian does not deny the crimes of that tradition, but that those crimes have spurred their “antidotes.”  Among those counter beliefs include rationales to end slavery, to upgrade the status of women, to do away with legalized torture, to wage the fight against racism, to uphold (if not invent) the practice of free inquiry and expression, and to lay the foundation and practice of individual liberty and the enumeration of human rights.

         The historical record shows that these “democratic” attributes got their starts in Europe and included the belief in the rule of law and that cultures should not face extinction by dominant ways of life.  Take one of these, freedom of inquiry; it has allowed a rich tradition of artistic expression.  Schlesinger, to make this point, cites the case of Salman Rushdie.

That novelist portrayed a story offensive to the followers of a Middle East religious tradition.  Well, some of the followers issued death threats against the writer because their tradition did not share the ideals of tolerance that would allow such writings.  Yet, in the West, many could not even understand this reaction; it was so non-Western.

         Summarizing, Schlesinger writes, “Individualism itself is looked on with abhorrence and dread by collectivist cultures in which loyalty to the group overrides personal goals – cultures that, social scientists say, comprise about 70 percent of the world’s population.”[2]  A key word in this quote is “collectivist.”  

That word represents the basic difference – and here this blogger is interjecting – between critical theory thought and federation theory thought.  Central to critical thought is the group, the collective; central to federation theory thought is the compact-ing of consensual individuals.  Under this latter view the result is not a collective, but a community that allows for congregations to meet common challenges while protecting the integrity of each member.  

The historian charges:  “White guilt can be pushed too far.”  And this “pushing” has led to various counterproductive aims.  Ethnic ideologues seem to be advocating a central policy choice:  bilingual curricula in public schools.  This would be punctuated with choices to segregate minority children from American society.

It would also promote the message that these students do not take part in American democratic tradition and adopt the language and thought of them being victims with a reliance on alibis.  This, in effect, leads to a generation turning away from opportunities to attain the gains by the strenuous work of prior civil right workers and, yes, white guilt.

Here, one can find a union between the writings of Gunnar Myrdal[3] and federation theory.  That being that a stand against a single society will ultimately fail and will not deliver its promise of a better life.  And among the rank and file of minority citizens, the dream still exists:  to shed ethnicity and land up in the suburbs in as short a time as possible.  

Rank and file does not include all:  “Others may enjoy their ethnic neighborhoods but see no conflict between foreign descent and American loyalty.  Unlike the multiculturalists, they celebrate not only what is distinctive in their own backgrounds but what they hold in common with the rest of the population.”[4]

As mentioned in the last posting, this blogger agrees a lot with Schlesinger ideas and sentiments, but not all of it.  But at a time when there seems to be a collapsing of diverse opinions in the great polarization of the national political arena, and a newer form of incubation seems to be in effect, one should not lose cognizance of what is brewing below the surface.

One can sort of see it in Portland where some protesters are expressing moderate objections to racism and some are more virulent and extreme in what they want to happen.  The factions are united because the current political realities demand it, but this does not mean they have disappeared.  The next posting will continue this blog’s treatment of Schlesinger’s argument.

[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992).

[2] Ibid., 127.

[3] Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York, NY:  Harper and Brothers, 1944).

To remind the reader, this blog is currently focusing on the polarization that has befallen the body politic of the nation.  There are various sources feeding this situation and the last posting presented one such source:  the incubation of problems the body politic had not addressed over extended periods of time.  

The point was made that such a condition did not necessarily arise from incompetence but can be the product of competent people doing competent things, at least as competency is defined by a given people at a given place.  This posting addresses an example of incubation.  This example refers to how the nation views and accommodates immigration or, stated another way, how Americans of different cultural backgrounds interact with each other.

This issue is further divisive in that it addresses the lack of accommodation among people from different races.  How Americans see this issue has evolved and this posting seeks to take a historical view.  That is, how did the national debate over public policies to address the disruptions caused by the steady stream of immigrating groups whether they be groups of various nationalities, ethnicities, and/or races, develop?  

The history of how Americans have dealt with the upheavals associated with this amalgamation of lifestyles, language challenges, and other diverse cultural traits is one of evolution.  And reactions to that continuing aspect of the American story has also been varied – many Hollywood storylines have been based on those challenges.

For example, there has been those who take a nationalist view that to varying degrees seeks to maintain the “American way” of life that they associate with the Anglo-Saxon base.  Of course, that base was initially established when British colonists brought over their culture and were naturally able to establish it as dominant during the early days of colonization.  

The nation’s culture has remained colorized by that cultural strain but has drifted away from its purer version.  But to the extent it has maintained any dominance, those who adhere to it have been blind to any dissention that exists among those who promote a more diverse culture.  They are attracted by a singular sense to such calls as “Make America Great Again,” again to an earlier time in which their culture held sway.

To varying degrees, these right of center ideologues believe in immigration restraints and the immigration they would allow would predominantly come from Western European nations.  They also do not recognize that minorities, be they of other nationalities, ethnicities, or races, suffer from undue discriminatory practices.  For example, the current Black Lives Matter movement is judged to be unjustified since they do not see systemic prejudice among the nation’s police forces.

Those who think that way populate the right or conservative side of the polarized divide.  But there is another side and this posting focuses on a short historical account of how the left side finds itself where it is in terms of the current national divide.  Its current development provides a revelatory example of what the last two postings call polarization and why it exists.

The left side of the polar landscape fought against itself between those who argued for assimilation (centered pluralism) and those who advocated multiculturalism (diverse or individual pluralism).  This posting and others to follow will flesh out the differences between these two positions.  

Under the more polarized environment of today, these differences within each side have been downplayed since the current alliances within each side call for overlooking such fissures.  Indicating that these amalgamations exist but are currently ignored is the fact that this writer, in his preparation for this posting, could not find a published work on this issue – multiculturalism – of a recent date.  The most recent citation is from the year, 2012.  

That citation is an article that describes what it calls critical multiculturalism – a multiculturalism based on critical theory. It states, in part:

In some ways Critical multiculturalism is leaning towards the original idea of popularist education as a tool of emancipation for the economically downtrodden, but it goes much further, [it] is much wider in scope and is rooted in critical theory.  Critical multiculturalism is an enabling form of education that instils in its students the ability to bring about social change, it has been described by Neoliberal thinkers as a “Political education” because it exposes issues relating to why students are in the economic situation they [are] in, why streaming exists, in effect it exposes the mechanisms of inequality to those who are themselves victims of inequality.  

Politically critical Multiculturalism leans toward Anarchism, Marxist and Feminist thought.  It is able to expose the system that enslaves them by looking through the lens of critical theory.  Critical theory is a critique of our society and the culture that emanates from it, this critique draws from a broad and varied spectrum of ideas from social science and humanities.  By employing critical theory students learn how to be both critical and analytical; these tools enable the autonomy of the student to come to fruition.[1]

Today, critical theorists and neoliberals need each other since the opposition is not each other but the alliance of all right-wing groups; that’s the reality of the nation’s polarized political arena.

         But as a historical case study, one that might shed light on how incubation of a problem manifests itself among limited numbers, the fight over multiculturalism can be helpful in understanding how things get out of hand.  How this concern over varied cultural groups in the 1980s and 1990s, with the inability to coalesce into a single political position, made solutions more elusive.  By understanding this, one gains insight into why polarization exists and helps one deal with it.  

         So, what did multiculturalists argue?  A recurring theme in their literature was to attack the dominant culture’s institutions. These institutions are described as oppressive on various groups including immigrant groups or people in general who do not belong to the dominant Anglo-Saxon cultural group.  One institution of concern is that of education.

         More specifically, a lot of their ire was aimed at public schools – it should be remembered that a lot of this writing took place before “choice” options became a serious challenge to the very existence of public schools.  In those days, public schools were seen, at least by critical theorists, as part of the overall exploiting superstructure that held back disadvantaged groups in the population.

         The next posting will pick up this topic and further explain the makeup of this case of incubating a political problem.