Important notice: Due to the cold, the rally on January 20th has been moved to Broadway United Methodist Church, 609 E 29th St, Indianapolis. Indoors.
________________________________
.Several weeks ago, the Indianapolis Capitol Chronicle ran an article in which the author mused about civics instruction. She had come across the 1930 edition of a civics textbook, and noted that its focus on community responsibilities seemed very different from today’s preoccupation with individualism.
The book starts with this preface (and yes, I took photos while at the table): “It is generally agreed today that the main reason for the existence of schools is to help our pupils to become good citizens. Our schools teach the three R’s because everybody needs those tools in order to act intelligently in his relations with his fellow man. It is no less important for the pupil to learn that his life must be lived in close association with his fellow men, and to profit by the experience of human beings in regard to these relations.”
In those few introductory words lies the conundrum that faces all societies: how do we protect the political, religious and philosophical autonomy of the individual while building safe, orderly and supportive communities?
Several years ago, I made a speech in which I considered that question. As I said then, there is an African proverb to the effect that it takes a village to raise a child. Implicit in that saying is the question at the heart of political philosophy: What should that village look like? What is the common good, and what is the nature of social obligation? What sort of social and political arrangements are most likely to promote and enable what Aristotle called “human flourishing”? And perhaps, more importantly, do we live in an era when such questions have largely been abandoned?
That simple introductory paragraph from a long-ago textbook reminds us that our public schools have two vitally important tasks: first, giving children the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but also to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and second, equipping them for the responsibilities of citizenship.
Over the past few decades, there has been a very unfortunate narrowing of emphasis to just one portion of that first responsibility. Critics of public education have focused almost entirely on the subjects needed to produce a workforce–on giving students the skills they’ll need to compete economically. The sorts of instruction that will help them flourish, that will give them the insights and understandings that will help them create rich and enjoyable lives–music and art and literature–have been relegated to the sidelines or eliminated entirely, dismissed as “frills.”
Worse, the various educational “reforms” that have been pursued have ignored the second important purpose of public education–preparing students for thoughtful and engaged citizenship in a complicated and increasingly diverse society.
Not only have our public schools neglected the proper teaching of American history and government, the vouchers that facilitate evasion of the First Amendment have sent thousands of children to religious schools, most of which ignore civics instruction and deepen tribal commitments rather than helping students understand the complexity–and necessity– of seeking the common good and wrestling with the imperatives of our national motto: e pluribus unum.
Too many of our legislators, here in Indiana and elsewhere, confuse education with job training. They are most definitely not the same thing. We are impoverishing generations of students by depriving them of sustained contact with the liberal arts and with the enduring questions that separate thinking humans from automatons. By neglecting instruction in government and citizenship, we have contributed to the widespread ignorance that continues to elevate so many unfit and unstable individuals to positions of power. It isn’t just Trump–there are plenty of other examples at all levels of government, certainly in Indiana.
Finding the “golden mean” between too much emphasis on individualism and too much emphasis on community and conformity has never been simple. That search for a proper balance between individual rights and the imperatives of the common good is fatally compromised when a significant portion of the population remains uneducated because those responsible for education policy don’t know (or care about) the difference between educating students and training them.
When the body politic lacks a common understanding of their society’s foundational principles, culture warriors and plutocrats are enabled, and tribalism threatens to bring down the entire edifice of legitimate government. That is arguably where we find ourselves right now, and the sustained assault on American education–an assault that has hollowed out the very concept of education– is at the very heart of our impending Trumpian disasters.
We are reaping the whirlwind.
Neoliberalism definitely involves the creation of a cheap but competent workforce. I think the suggestion that supplementary knowledge is “dismissed as ‘frills'” undersells the true motive. It’s purposeful, and if the rightwing could get rid of all extraneous learning, they certainly would. They continue to work on it. Unnecessary knowledge promotes thought that needn’t provide value for the boss, and probably even undermines corporate power. Neoliberals don’t want the peons worrying and wondering about things beyond their work. The ideas around work, in the USA at least, are poisonous to the individual. Time off is terrible, ven if you’re ill. Workers’ rights are terrible. The rightwing celebrates and actively promotes the lack of agency of the workforce, the lack of life for the worker.
Remember George Bush responding to a divorced mother who told him she worked three jobs to support her family?
“You work three jobs? Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you are doing that.” -George W Bush, 04 Feb 2005
This is a sickness in your country.
Amen, Sheila! [That was supposed to be ironic…] The high school-to-job metric–or even high school-to-more school metric–is easier to measure than high school-to-citizen. How about this metric: the percentage of your high school’s seniors who graduate registered to vote. (Yeah, I know, it doesn’t mean they’ll cast an informed vote, but I’ve discovered first-time voters tend to take the job seriously.) Such an initiative has to come from the corporate/nonprofit/faith sectors because the political class is scared to death of first-time voters. Indeed, any initiative to improve Indiana’s civic health must come from those sectors because you’re asking those in power to act against their own interests.
“That search for a proper balance between individual rights and the imperatives of the common good is fatally compromised when a significant portion of the population remains uneducated because those responsible for education policy don’t know (or care about) the difference between educating students and training them.”
The term “public education” has never been open to the public to be educated and those now “…responsible for education policy…” are politicians who have decided that an uneducated public must begin in the early education system. Parents have been brainwashed to believe that the public education system is lacking the ability to educate their children and that private education (primarily religious) is of higher quality in their teaching ability. They have chosen to ignore the basic concept of federal and state Constitutions by raiding the public education budgets and instituting the voucher system which now has few, if any, actual requirements to meet to qualify for voucher assistance.
“…its focus on community responsibilities seemed very different from today’s preoccupation with individualism.”
As an individual educated in the pubic school system I feel my years during WWII educated me in civics in action as we participated in the war effort in school and at home. We were proud to carry cans of fat to school and newspapers and magazines for the drives to provide needed supplies to the companies needing those items to produce supplies for our military. We proudly participated in the War Bond drives by paying $18.75 for the bonds which later cashed out at $25. Most of us had “Victory gardens” which we shared along with fruit from the trees in our yards to aid in the lack of foods available in our stores. Many wore articles of clothing made from flour sacks the local grocers provided. Butchers also gave us bones to use as a base in soups. We did this as individuals in a community effort knowing we were aiding each other and our country. Civics in action!
It is not the mandate for public schools to cherry pick what curriculum to offer a very diverse enrollment that private and charter schools are able to offer.
Public schools should be expected to offer a first rate civics curriculum as well as state of the art vocational training labs. The vocational education program can lead to more advanced degrees with certification available through community colleges.
Not everyone desires or feel the need to go to college, but they should have access to advance employable skills as a valid choice without judgement. Our nation needs skilled welders as much as we need skilled surgeons. Better yet, welders and surgeons who value and argue persuasively the fundamental merits of our Constitution.
Good letter today, much to ponder as we begin to figure out how to deal with the oligarchy/kleptocracy/kakistocracy (?) that begins January 20, 2025.
Thank you for moving the rally indoors.
“Critics of public education have focused almost entirely on the subjects needed to produce a workforce–on giving students the skills they’ll need to compete economically. The sorts of instruction that will help them flourish, that will give them the insights and understandings that will help them create rich and enjoyable lives–music and art and literature–have been relegated to the sidelines or eliminated entirely, dismissed as “frills.””
One can find the root of those two sentences in the commodification and consumer satisfaction model of education. This has been going on in post-secondary education for decades and is accelerating the privatization of elementary and secondary education through outsourcing and voucher programs. The courses “dismissed as “frills”” in that model -history, philosophy, literature, the social sciences, the arts- simply have no ROI. Put another way, they don’t produce proles. At least not reliably compliant and complacent ones. We can see what conservative education policies are doing to history (I’m looking at you, DeSantis), and pick any random student on any campus and ask them if they know what “sophistry” is, or what “social contract” means. It’s a pretty safe bet they won’t, even if they’d heard a professor utter those words in a class they dismissed as a useless requirement they just had to get through. If they’d paid attention in those liberal arts classes because the subject matter was understood as important, more people might know what socialism actually is and why we don’t really have it here, and what autocratic oligarchies are and why that’s what we’re sliding into. And they’d be much better equipped to sort the bullshit from evidence-based assertions of fact, which is the first thing people need to be able to do to sustain a democracy.
I don’t know how one fights that.
BTW … the best civics lessons I learned during high school was when I enlisted Army Infantry before graduation with the 490th Civil Affairs in Abilene, Texas. Officers (doctors and lawyers) who led training in counter insurgency based on factual scenarios in hot spots around the world … then lab discussions on strategy to rebuild civic infrastructure after cessation of hostilities. Real world civics lessons.
I would add (as no doubt many of you are tired of me saying…) Civics education, YES – but critical thinking/literacy – now expanded into data literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, too. Get a prophet’s view from 1969 – “Teaching As a Subversive Activity”.
Another African saying is the Ubuntu phrase that I like so much, I am because we are.” Then there is “All thriving is mutual,” from robin Wall Kammerer, a Native American.
I have read that St. Augustine argued against the educating of the ,masses, because, then, they might learn to think for themselves. But, hey let’s just get rid of education in the U.S. Who needs to think?
I was raised in the Catholic School system in Indy in the 50s and 60s. We had required classes in civics, Indiana history, American history, world history, and geography. The teachers were Sisters of Providence (grade school) and Sisters of St. Joseph (high school), together with coaches and priests. Educationally it was hit or miss. Some were excellent and some were terrible. Public Universities were very affordable, so I went to Purdue.
Now that I’m in the Wayback Machine I hear the same words being said in all three levels. “I’m not here to teach you everything you need to know. I’m here to teach you how to find what you need to know.”
That doesn’t work today. Social media has made it easy to find anything. Today, we need to teach how to determine whether what we find is true. That’s the greatest challenge today. Civics is one of the few areas that are essential to the discernment of reliability of information. If you don’t know how it’s supposed to work, you can’t know when it isn’t working.
As to the limitation to job training, it’s the ideal system to kill innovation and discussion. Most of the kids I talk to don’t read anything that isn’t required for school. It’s disheartening to say the least. An education without music, literature, dance, theater, sculpture, and painting is devoid of life and joy.
Amen to Peggy’s last sentence….
John H.: Good summary. How do we fight the dumbing down of our citizens? Begin by ousting all Republicans from elected office. They kill anything good that they perceive does not create profit for their capitalistic donors.
Reagan’s misbegotten embrace of Friedman’s Supply-side doctrine should have been the wake-up call for all Americans that Republicans are only in it for money and power. The infamous Lewis Powell memo to the U.S. CofC is codification for oligarchy rule over the working classes. And it goes on and on … all Republican initiatives are directed at keeping the working classes ignorant and beholden to their masters.
Sound familiar? It should. For those of us who were taught actual history, the above scenario was exemplified in the DARK AGES. Not much changes when the “frills” are excluded.
Homo Sapien Sapiens are social creatures programmed by DNA and culture to attend to both ourselves and the others around us. That behavior is demonstrated worldwide and by observing individuals’ behavior.
From birth to death, we spend our time alone and, most days, also in groups. When together, we behave based on relationships and group structure. The specifics of how our time is invested in pursuing opportunities and avoiding threats determines who we’ve been and who we are and extrapolates to who we will be.
We invest our adolescent years in learning purposes: survival and relationship-building, including our relationship with learning, to become our destiny. The conduct of the classes we attend in school becomes a significant part of our education in living.
So, civics starts in the home but soon changes to a public education challenge and goal.
This is undoubtedly as, if not more, critical than it ever was.
When I worked for a Swiss company, the company was responsible for helping high schools develop competency in industrial jobs. The corporation had an “extra” building with a ground floor that included two restaurants for workers and another for present or potential future customers. (I had some of the best meals in town at the customer’s restaurant both as a customer and in my retirement job, entertaining potential customers from the US).
The three floors above contained classrooms, design rooms, and a modern, complete, competent machine shop with automated machine tools. The apprentices, who the corporation was schooling in collaboration with the local high school, manufactured some parts for sold production lines.
My boss there told me once that one of the lessons they taught was how to behave around customers, a lesson that was not being taught at home or in the half-days students spent in public schools. Whenever I entered as a customer or with a group of potential customers, the classroom behavior that was expected was to drop the task at hand, stand if sitting, look at each individual who entered in the eye, introduce yourself, and ask if you could help in any way including what you were presently engaged in learning as well as working for the company.
One goal of the corporate school was to educate workers who might be employed out of school by the corporation. In most cases, though, it was expected to work in some other locally related business and return someday with experience in how things were done successfully in those companies. My corporation didn’t view others as competition but collaborated in developing the greater good, a successful Swiss and canton (state) economy.
Was that a drop in productivity? No, it was the skills necessary after school to help the corporation be more successful.
The Swiss education system is much different than ours. The goal was always to aim at the greater good, an economically competitive and successful Switzerland. That achievement was part of the Swiss culture, so from birth to death, people understood it as a significant part of life.
Pete – thanks so much for sharing that story – very uplifting. Would like to connect…think we once did, right? I am on Facebook and LinkedIn.
A 45-page excerpt from Anne Nelson’s book will give you a taste of the oligarchic control of the US. Politicians are just carrying out the tasks developed behind closed doors by all the oligarchy-funded nonprofits.
The Christian right was around before the Civil War in the South, and the congregations fought for the state’s right to have slavery. Now, how in the world did the plantation owners (oligarchs) convince the white peons to sacrifice their lives for slavery on plantations? Talk about a propaganda job!!
The Southern rebels didn’t want the federal government to tell them what to do, and they still don’t. Then, integration was forced on the rebels from the South. How did that go over?
The federal government took God out of public schools, which really ticked off the rebels down South. In Texas, the Council of National Policy was formed to take on the federal government, and yes, the Christian Nationalists were a big part of it. One of their goals is to sink public education by shifting resources to private religious schools, charters, homeschooling, and micro-schooling. There will be an explosion of these policies once Trump takes office and Linda McMahon gets situated. The WWE wrestlers will become education mascots. LOL
Linda is as unqualified as Betsy DeVos and Pete Hegseth, but Republicans claim no experience is good. I wonder why employers and the Chamber don’t make that their motto instead of seeking college-educated people to serve coffee and hamburgers.
Civics would be great, but that ain’t happening anytime soon as the billionaires behind destroying public education now have the power to make all the decisions at the federal level. They’ve been working for this since the Civil War.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Shadow_Network/aI2SDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR5&printsec=frontcover
Do we prepare kids for today to be engaged citizens? Per David Brooks today:
“We live in a soap opera country. We live in a social media/cable TV country. In our culture you don’t want to focus on boring policy questions; you want to engage in the kind of endless culture war that gets voters riled up. You don’t want to focus on topics that would require study; you focus on images and easy-to-understand issues that generate instant visceral reactions. You don’t win this game by engaging in serious thought; you win by mere attitudinizing — by striking a pose. Your job is not to advance an argument that might help the country; your job is to go viral.”
Updated info about the H4D rally can be found at https://hoosiers4democracy.org
Hope to see you there
https://hoosiers4democracy.org/
I have known Debbie Asberry for many years and I have always known her to have a deep commitment to the common good with both courage and authentic integrity. For those who look for a link to engage informed evidence based citizen action to support our democracy (democrat republic) … I highly recommend connecting through link above that will then take you to their SubStack platform.
So, public attention is focusing on public education, what do you know. But, as usual, the emphasis misses the mark…. Ideological conditioning which the far right often alleges for the hell of it is hardly happening but it may well be on the way given the developments taking shape in some states, supposedly to eliminate ideological conditioning but, really, introducing it.
Sheila has it right, but, with Lester, add critical thinking (although I believe it’s implied) and Pete’s contributions as well. Sheila, with the following, demonstrates yet again how simplicity (simply-stated anyway) and sanity combine: “our public schools have two vitally important tasks: first, giving children the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but also to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and second, equipping them for the responsibilities of citizenship.