Where do we find the balance?

MacAllister said:

My question, then, is what ARE we teaching our first graders about their government, and about their responsibilities as citizens?

Click to expand...

Excellent post, btw. It explains why you are the rulerz and we lick the jack boots.

On to the topic, I wonder this very thing. I don't have a child in the school system and I worry all the time about the state of education. For our little rural part of the world, I think we are lucky to be able to filter out some of the nonsense, but I still feel as though I will have my work cut out for me in raising my girls to be caring, compassionate and responsible citizens.

And I see so many parents who I believe won't put in the time or effort to do the same. And then I see those that will. But it's a coin toss really.

As a society, we've started to be so sensitive, so offended, and so busy trying to be PC to play CYA that the bigger picture is lost. My cousin's wife is all over Facebook, responding to some poll that them broadcasting the POTUS's speech without parental consent was something terribly wrong and this was why she was homeschooling her children.

I kind of did the arched eyebrow What? thing to that because I see it as a valuable learning opportunity to raise a valuable discussion with children. Kids aren't slow and stupid. To spend time sanitizing their environment for every. little. thing. is beyond silly.

In short, Mac, I don't have a clue.

This is an interesting point for discussion, Mac.

I think the furor about Obama's speech to school kids is a strong reflection of the division that our increasingly embittered partisan political system has engendered. I remember Reagan's speech to students, an no one gave a damn about it. He was the President. *shrug* We thought it was pretty cool. The parents didn't care either. It was understood that he wouldn't be trying to indoctrinate seven year olds into the conservative mindset.

But now things are different. And sure--I know someone out there is going to shriek in self-righteous indignation, "IT'S ONLY THE CONSERVATIVES WHO HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS! THEY'RE JUST MAD BECAUSE MC CAIN LOST!" Well, phtooey. That's not the case. If George W. Bush had decided to address American schoolchildren during his administration, the squalling would have been just as loud. The political atmosphere has fragmented since the eighties, splitting the electorate into such vicious factions that any and all actions from either side are viewed with skepticism, anger and sometimes just plain protest. I think Americans are more aware of the manipulation that characterizes partisan politics--and I'm talking about the mainstream, middle of the road America that swings from party to party and determines our political ideology in four-year chunks. Moderates no longer trust either side completely--and if you add that to the fervent extremists on both sides of the aisle, it can lead to somewhat puzzling protests and accusations.

So what are we teaching our kids about government? Well, judging from some of the young ones around here, we're not teaching them much. Throughout my daughters' journeys in the public school system, they've been taught everything from how wrong the Republicans are to how wrong the Democrats are and very little about how they got there in the first place. One daughter didn't learn about the Bill of Rights until high school, when I sat down and taught it to her myself. (And no, before anyone casts aspersions upon her intelligence--she scored in the top .1% of graduating seniors in the state of Ohio on her proficiency tests the day AFTER she moved up here from Kentucky) They were taught that the US is a democracy, learning little or nothing about the electoral college. Most of what they learned about politics came from taped media broadcasts about the elections, brought into class and shown on TV. It's hard for me to identify precisely what they were taught because my girls learned quite a bit at home from me. However, I do remember the outrage I felt about the above examples--a severe enough outrage that I paid visits to teachers on several occasions. (One of my daughter's teachers said quite snidely, "If you think you can teach this better, be my guest." *shrug* I set the day and taught political structure for an hour. She apologized in the hall after I was done.)

I don't think it's the fault of the teachers. I think our educators are hampered by the restrictions placed upon them by our politicians, quite frankly. We've spent a lot of time over the past quarter century censoring what our children are exposed to in school. We're reaping the ramifications of that now. Add a splintered political atmosphere to the situation and it quickly gets explosive. Give the country a charismatic young President (who is visible to a lot of these kids through Chia-Obama pets and Obama sneakers and the mass marketing of the Presidential office) known for his rhetorical power and the last thing his political opposition wants is for him to address their children.

So all these children have to base their opinions on is a flawed process of teaching government and civics, the media visibility of not only the President but the points of view of those vehemently opposed to his policies, and a vague understanding of what makes Obama so special to our country. What does that give us?

Another generation of American voters who have been forcefed so many political premises and ideologies that by the time they're old enough to register, they're either firmly in a partisan camp or so disinterested that they'd rather play video games than take a few minutes out of their year to make their voices heard among their elected officials.

tjwriter said:

Excellent post, btw. It explains why you are the rulerz and we lick the jack boots.

Click to expand...

Kinky.

It took us a while to learn about the government, but it was actually a required course in middle school for us. We also learned basic law and such.

My daughter learned about voting during the Obama campaign and her class got to learn about the candidates, what they were saying, they followed certain speeches in class and on voting day, she and her class mates got to vote for the president. They were part of the election, the little line of 6 year olds with bright faces.

Last year, they wrote letters to the president and the teacher mailed it off. This year they're going to listen to the president address them and their classes and teachers will talk to them about it.

Teaching about the government isn't dead everywhere.

ETA: I actually remember reading the constitution and bill of rights in class as early as 3rd grade. My kids actually have brought home a copy of each as well.

One way not to achieve balance is to promote only the Federalist papers, and ignore the Anti-Federalists entirely. Just sayin'...

And GWB did address the school children, and there were howls about it. Hearings were even held on the ~$27,000 cost of the performance.

Finally, if you want to understand the issue with education, there's no better explanation that I've found than this one by John Taylor Gatto, thrice New York City Teacher of the Year, once New York State Teacher of the Year, before he chucked it all after 29 years. This essay is a short examination of the topic, but I recommend at least the prologue and the first couple chapters of the full treatment.

And the more I asked why not, and persisted in thinking about the "problem" of schooling as an engineer might, the more I missed the point: What if there is no "problem" with our schools? What if they are the way they are, so expensively flying in the face of common sense and long experience in how children learn things, not because they are doing something wrong but because they are doing something right? Is it possible that George W. Bush accidentally spoke the truth when he said we would "leave no child behind"? Could it be that our schools are designed to make sure not one of them ever really grows up?
...
But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens in order to render the populace "manageable."
...
Our schools are ... factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned .... And it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down."

It's perfectly obvious from our society today what those specifications were. Maturity has by now been banished from nearly every aspect of our lives. Easy divorce laws have removed the need to work at relationships; easy credit has removed the need for fiscal self-control; easy entertainment has removed the need to learn to entertain oneself; easy answers have removed the need to ask questions. We have become a nation of children, happy to surrender our judgments and our wills to political exhortations and commercial blandishments that would insult actual adults. We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television.
...
Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do. After a long life, and thirty years in the public school trenches, I've concluded that genius is as common as dirt. We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women. The solution, I think, is simple and glorious. Let them manage themselves.

Click to expand...

Don said:

And GWB did address the school children, and there were howls about it. Hearings were even held on the ~$27,000 cost of the performance.

.

Click to expand...

I beleive that George H.W. Bush SENIOR gave a televised speech to schoolchildren, but George W. Bush didn't. he was attending a class on 9/11 and read them a story, but he didn't address all American schoolchildren. But in re Bush Sr's speech--yes, the Democrats held hearings about that, didn't they?

The Federalists and Anti-Federalists were rough and tumble with each other. Everyone thinks that some time back, politics weren't as unsavory or difficult or cumbersome or manipulative as they are now.

People in power are often distrusted and maligned by those not in power.

People who hero-worship those in power often see no wrong.

People who lose, often see nothing right.

All we need do is cite President Bush OR President Obama or President JFK or President Reagan or President Clinton to see that there have always been syncophants, partisans, hacks, toadies, true believers and koolaid drinkers, truthers and birthers and conspiracists and professional protesters and Karl Rove/Rham Emmanuel types that worked the system and used all that power and publicity and enthusiasm and willing obedience to a party/person rather than a policy or core ideal, to push forward an agenda.

Ballance may be found in the great middle, with all the people who don't go to tea parties but do not agree with everything that comes from the white house either. If we look at politics, we will be defined by what we are not or what we are for, because politics is about winning and losing. If we look at policy, we will find usually (in good legislation), crafted compromise that reflects more than one political ideology.

Statesmen craft good legislation. Politicians whip ideological treatises through.

So if we want Statesmen, we must elect them. Mac or Dawno for Office????

We already blame Dawno. it would be too confusing to have to blame Mac too.

I have no idea about what they teach kids in school. However balance is something I've done a lot of thinking about.

I suppose it depends on what a person means by balance. And the situation the balance occurs in.

A stone block is very balanced if it is on a flat, immobile surface. It takes a lot of effort to upset its equilibrium. But put it on a tightrope and it will fall off very quickly.

There is the balance of a person walking. This is a much more complex process. There's a constant interplay of muscles and senses that allows a person to move from point A to point B. This process is better suited to walking a tightrope. Which is what life often is.

In this case I believe we're talking about balance in a society. I like John Ralston Saul's take on this. He uses the metaphor of the atom, a structure held together by opposing forces in balance with each other. I think it's a damned useful metaphor.

Myself, I think that our educational system is at the root of our current problems. Despite the example Mac cited and our beliefs about it, our educational system is not an educational system, it's an industrial process. Its purpose is not to turn out human beings suitable for citizenship. Its purpose is to turn out human resources suitable for employment.

In my opinion, human resources make poor citizens.

Man, I am soooo going to get flamed for this.

MacAllister said:

If you've got some good links for Anti-Federalist writing, Don, by all means PUT 'EM UP!

(*damned rabble-rousing states-rights minarchist....grumble, grumble....*)

Click to expand...

Fixed. Most small-L libertarians aren't anarchists by any stretch of the word.

Thinking about it for a while now and I honestly think the balance that's missing are the parents.

Parents who teach their kids to think, learn, feel, to learn for themselves, to search, to understand. Parents who raise their kids to strive for greatness while being conscientious and kind and develop empathy for others while instilling a deep-seated responsibility not just to their country but to everyone around them.

Basically parents to teach their kids to give a damn instead of loading them up on candy and tv shows and video games while they spend their own time pursuing their own happiness forgetting they took on the responsibility of actually raising their children.

You learned that it was important to educate yourself further on the issues? May I give your teacher a big ole smooch? Even in my classes, where a lot of meetings and $$ went into figuring out how to best teach us, the all-too-human teachers didn't want us to think for ourselves. No dissent, because that's always offensive, unruly or arrogant.

Great topic, and fascinating answers.

In the height of the Cold War '80s I went to a tiny parochial school in TN. A boy straight from the USSR was new to our school. He was beaten up for not knowing the words to The Pledge of Allegience, and the teachers were in full agreement with the mob.

I like balance in these things, too.

SPMiller said:

Fixed. Most small-L libertarians aren't anarchists by any stretch of the word.

Click to expand...

I disagree. They just rebranded themselves to separate themselves from history.

I'll admit it was a brilliant move on their part. By using liberty in this new description it becomes difficult to disagree with them. If you disagree with them you're disagreeing with the very concept of liberty. Which only evil people can do.

One of the best ways to win an argument is to place your opponent on the wrong side of it from the beginning.

Excuse me while I get all cynical here.

The way I see it, we cannot any longer rely on the public school system to teach our children about things like this. This is for several reasons, and for me, are not grounded in any particular fear of indoctrination. For one thing, the way we teach these days is different from the way things "used to be done". Classes are far larger and less homogenous than they were when I was a child. Everything from different learning abilities to different cultures and different languages take a piece of the learning pie, in terms of deciding how and what to teach. There is also the NCLB legislation, which, while proposed by GWB and supported by pols of varying ideologies, was driven largely by parents concerned at the perceived/actual decline in student performance. Standardized testing is a much bigger deal now, and has far larger implications for the schools involved than in years past.

So, to that end, I don't expect nor do I wish for teachers to try to teach my kids anything about politics. Government, yes. Civics, I guess you could say. But good citizenship? Seems like a pipe dream when kids can easily look around them at the adults they know or the evening news and see that it's all about the party, about rhetoric, and about getting elected. They may not understand the terms, or even grasp the more subtle aspects of it, but kids aren't stupid. Things have to be simplified to a certain extent (depending on age) for them to grasp what being a responsible citizen really means, but it can be done. I just think it's best done by parents. But perhaps I am biased. I believe in questioning everything, trying not to take anything at face value, and realizing that the "other side" may have perfectly valid points that are worth considering. This thinking, imo, is a direct result of my upbringing, and had nothing to do with what I learned in school. In fact, I learned more about how government works as an interested adult than I ever did in school. One semester of civics with a brief overview of how legislation gets passed and the various branches of government and their functions is not sufficient, imo.

I'm starting to ramble and babble a little here, so I'll just sum up with climbing atop my favorite hobby horse and say that rather than teaching government or civics, what schools *really* need to be teaching is critical thinking skills. That means not teaching them to think exactly like their teachers or be marked down for it and call it critical thinking, but to challenge their teachers, peers, and even yes, parents on what they are saying. And it needs to start early on these skills. You don't have to toss a ton of terminology at them (I got lost in the woods on a lot of that when I was learning "officially" about rhetorical devices), but you can start teaching the basics.

mscelina said:

I beleive that George H.W. Bush SENIOR gave a televised speech to schoolchildren...

Click to expand...

You're absolutely correct. My bad.

MacAllister said:

If you've got some good links for Anti-Federalist writing, Don, by all means PUT 'EM UP!

Click to expand...

I'll look around and find a good source.

MacAllister said:

(*damned rabble-rousing states-rights anarchist....grumble, grumble....*)

Click to expand...

States-right anarchist just sounds wrong, doesn't it? I consider Constitutionalists "fellow travelers," and I used to be one not long ago, so it's not a terrible description after all. See below for more detail.

Romantic Heretic said:

Myself, I think that our educational system is at the root of our current problems. Despite the example Mac cited and our beliefs about it, our educational system is not an educational system, it's an industrial process. Its purpose is not to turn out human beings suitable for citizenship. Its purpose is to turn out human resources suitable for employment.

In my opinion, human resources make poor citizens.

Man, I am soooo going to get flamed for this.

Click to expand...

No flames from me. Go back to the source I quoted in post 6. You'll find that once again, we find ourselves on the same side of the barricade.

SPMiller said:

Fixed. Most small-L libertarians aren't anarchists by any stretch of the word.

Click to expand...

More small-l libertarians are anarchists than you might imagine. It's a natural progression from statist to minarchist to anarchist if you continue to explore the possibilities. The Zero Aggression Principle logically ends at anarchy. Granted a lot of libertarians get scared somewhere on the path and stop at the minarchist level, however. I was there not long ago, but I've read some interesting proposals for privatizing justice, so I'm getting a bit braver. I'm probably closest to a rational anarchist, as defined by R.A.H. in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as "state" and "society" and "government" have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.

He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame ... as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else.

But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world ... aware that his efforts will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.

I will accept the rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

Click to expand...

And we could have a whole thread about the concept of "rational anarchist," or even a bunch of them. It's taken me years decades of study and thought to get where I am today. I used to be a great proponent of the nanny state, believe it or not.

mscelina said:

We already blame Dawno. it would be too confusing to have to blame Mac too.

Click to expand...

Where the hell is Dawno, anyway? I got a heap of blaming built up.

caw

MacAllister said:

QFT

Click to expand...

(Which applies to Cranky's comments about critical thinking.)

There's a reason they deliberately don't teach critical thinking, though, and Romantic Heretic spoke to that earlier, as well as the essay I quoted in post 6.


ETA: And here's a site for the Federalist-Antifederalist Debate. I haven't had time to vet it thoroughly, though.

I think I learned about the basic structure of the government in school - three branch system, checks and balances, whatever. The rest was just a bunch of "here's an issue, debate it" or "here's an issue, let's write an essay about our opinions."

I actually remember, I think this was in junior high, discovering that the constitution was printed in the back of our civics book. I was like, "Wow, cool!" and read it myself. Sad, eh?

Most of what I learned about politics and government I taught myself - because I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh in my dad's truck. My dad would get all riled up about things and then we'd discuss stuff around the dinner table. Say what you will about Rush - I frequently disagree with him - but he has passion. He and my dad convinced me that this stuff was IMPORTANT and I needed to know it, so I educated myself.

I don't know what's going on with schools today, but a high school English teacher I know was saying how basically they are dictating classroom content in more and more detail, so much so that by the end (he just retired) he was basically given a set of lesson plans and told "you must teach this." Kinda sad, and essentially just makes teachers into babysitters.