Timothy Egan writes a regular column in the New York Times. I usually find myself vigorously nodding in assent as I read whatever he writes. I went to a wonderful conference at Oberlin College this week, and he gave a talk that is reflected in this column.
He blames our current national stupidity on schools and teachers because they are not teaching civics, Government, and history. He acknowledges that these vital courses may have been casualties of the standardized testing hysteria.
But that can’t be the only reason so many Americans can’t tell the difference between fake news and facts, why so many Americans don’t bother to vote, why so many accept outright lies without question, why so many know so little about our government or our history.
Teachers, what do you think?
Read what Egan writes and speak up.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He has a point that history, civics and government has been ignored due to the testing madness, but the apathy of the public has been going on for far longer than the big ed reforms. If parents don’t vote, then their children likely won’t vote (modeling behavior). Citizens are apathetic because they know that their vote doesn’t matter. Even when we do vote, it is likely that our candidate will never follow through with campaign promises…our circumstances never change. Because citizens know that they really don’t have a say, they get the “I’ll take care of me/mine” attitude. We don’t live in a democracy anymore. Our politicians are the enemy and not to be trusted. The politicians LOVE this, because they can do as they please to pad their pockets while the citizenry is busy making due. We’ve been “had” and we know it…..and we know there is nothing we can do about it.
I agree that our leaders have been neoliberal neocon artists for a long time, campaigning for Main Street and governing for Wall Street. I disagree that we are disengaged, however. The turnout for recent elections has swelled. Gone is the apathy of the 1990’s. It’s not that people don’t care; it’s that they’re powerless. They don’t have rights because they don’t know their rights.
How recent an election are we talking about. 42% 0f Americans did not vote in 2016.
I was thinking about Obama in ’08 and the primaries last year.
That’s because there is an effort by Republicans to suppress the vote.
The turnout in Virginia this year was the highest in 20 years.
Our representatives often fail to represent the people. Instead, they respond to those with deep pockets. However, a groundswell of concerns or complaints can force representatives take notice. As Diane has stated before, “They are few, and we are many.” We have to be vigilant, pesky citizens that bother representatives, and let them know we are aware of the moves they make. Political leaders keep a record of those that call or email. We have to pester them to get them to do the right thing for public education. Otherwise, they are content to follow the money.
First, what he’s suggesting is unconstitutional; literacy tests for voter registration were banned decades ago. However, there is some truth to his other ideas. Recently, we conducted research implementing a challenging US History curriculum that focused on enduring concepts and multiple perspectives. In gathering background data, we found that many of the schools taught social studies twice a week for 20 minutes each. Add that to issues you discussed in The Language Police and the lack of explicit teaching of critical thinking skills, and you have the issues he discussed. The good news is that, with research-based, challenging, concept-based curiiculum, we can do better. Some of our students were so excited, they visited the Civil Rights museum on their own on a Sunday. I have hope, but we can’t throw away the social sciences to address the reform issue-of-the-month.
I gather that in some places, the history department has been merged with the English department to focus history classes on reading and writing test prep in order to try to raise scores. History classes are used for many pullouts and assemblies to do so-called intervention test prep, and days of history instruction are lost. I spent a month on civics in my U.S. history classes, but I couldn’t convince other teachers to do the same because we were doing test prep. Unless the annual high stakes tests are abolished, teachers will continue to be pressured to narrow their focus further and further until the only thing American citizens will know is what their phones tell them. “Siri, what’s civics?”
In elementary schools, that is EXACTLY what has happened in my district. I am a secondary history teacher, and I am told that students get “social studies in elementary schools through reading instruction.” But there is no coherent pattern to this social studies “education.”
As a result, my first lesson in my 9th grade geography classes is: “the difference between a country and a continent.” Students do NOT have an actual history class until the 8th grade. Things that used to be common knowledge for students by the time they came to me in 8th grade are no longer taught. I have to start history education from scratch. I have been asked questions like, “Who won the American Revolution?,” and. “what does U.S. stand for?,” and, “If the Himlayas are in Asia, why are the U.S. presidents on them?” From 8th and 9th graders.
Who won the American revolution?
The Spanish, French, British and Portuguese.
Who lost?
The Native Americans.
“Who won the American Revolution?”
American Revolution
Was won by Europeans
American insurrection
Was lost by Native beings
One reason among many, the Common Core. It cut instruction in the content areas. And it infected the Social Studies standards–these written under the auspices of the Council of Chief State School Officers who were shills for the Common Core. These standards offer nothing but platitudes, and assert that all details bearing on content should be determined at the state level.
Here is the opening platitude from the standards:
“In the college, career, and civic life (c3) framework for social studies state standards, the call for students to become more prepared for the challenges of college and career is united with a third critical element: preparation for civic life. Advocates of citizenship education cross the political spectrum, but they are bound by a common belief that our democratic republic will not sustain unless students are aware of their changing cultural and physical environments; know the past; read, write, and think deeply; and act in ways that promote the common good. There will always be differing perspectives on these objectives. The goal of knowledgeable, thinking, and active citizens, however, is universal.” For the standards for civics, such as they are, see pages 31 through 34. https://www.socialstudies.org/sites/default/files/c3/C3-Framework-for-Social-Studies.pdf
At least one of the groups pushing for the US Citizenship test for all high schools students is wrapped in a larger package of patriotism: The Joe Foss Institute named for a Medal of Honor winner for his service as air combat service during the WWII Guadalcanal Campaign. Ross became Governor of South Dakota, president of the NRA, and was the first commissioner of the American Football league. The leadership team for the Joe Foss Institute includes Lt. Col Oliver L. North, USMC (Ret.), and Vice President Danforth Quayle among others http://joefossinstitute.org/about/our-leadership-staff/
A real cause for concern about the civic engagement and knowledge is this dismal report: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens by Martin Gilens and Benjamin. Here is the conclusion of the study.
“Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened. “ p.577. https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
I was gone most the day so I’m catching up with this post. Good points, Laura.
You couldn’t be further from the truth. Common Core was all about civic responsibility. The periods set aside for Social Studies in my school was dismal until the CCSS.
Civics should not be part as a strand of ELA. Civics and government is a course and should be reinforced by civic participation
I work in a middle school. Civics was never its own class in middle school – it has to be incorporated with other content areas.
Besides, if we added all the separate subjects we believe should be taught in middle school, students would be in school until 10 PM. I do not like testing, but if it didn’t exist, it would not help much as far as adding content areas to the curriculum.
NYTeacher, social studies is a separate academic class in area middle schools with American history and government the focus in 7th and 8th grade. I believe it is still true that the students take a required test on the U.S. Constitution although the way the Illinois legislature messes with public education I won’t swear to it. As far as I know, students are also required to take U.S. History in high school that includes a unit on government. I am retired now and my children are out of school, but I hope that schooling has not degenerated to such a level that such an important area of study is ignored. I have noticed the demise of student government at least at the middle school level. We seem to have forgotten the importance of opportunities to affect change through hands on activity that student government supplied, and yet we are all hot and bothered for project based learning especially when we can attach the acronym STE(A)M to it. Perhaps there are more “modern” iterations of student government that can fulfill that role.
The alleged “Common Core” has helped debase our nation. It has done a huge amount of damage. It’s harmed our children. It’s hurt the integrity of our public schools and the teaching profession. It’s damaged our political system. It was about as helpful to our polity as a 500 pound bomb.
Trump won his election for many reasons -including the Democratic Party’s attack on its own base. The wacky, untested, “build the plane while we fly it” Common Core proves just how out of touch Obama, Duncan, Clinton, Cuomo and John B. King et al.were with so many of the actual people who show up and cast ballots on election day.
“Civic responsibility”? Yeah… I think the Common Core has been all about responsibility -CORPORATE responsibility, that is.. as in to the bottom line, to profit.
I’ve taught social studies for 30 years. When it comes to my life’s work and the children I care for, the Common Core is indefensible.
Listen, I have worked tirelessly embedding the common core / next standards into the curriculum. It’s not easy. The publishers have not produced quality resources and materials. Educational websites help somewhat, but most of the time you have to figure it out on your own.
Obviously, most people do not understand the common core / next generation. Most people have rejected it because they reject testing, government involvement, and a horrible rollout — all deservingly so! But we have to question why so many publishers and organizations read the standards, yet couldn’t produce a quality curriculum. It was really tough for me to get it, but it shouldn’t be tough for all this companies to get it.
1) What ever affect the CC will have is irrelevant to the question ,because it is way too early for it to have had much impact. So as much as I loath the idea of creating worker drones, those worker drones have not for the most part entered adulthood yet.
2) What is civics and how specifically has it and would it be taught. As you point out hyper patriotism via Oliver North . Or as in the almost comical 1950s ant communist propaganda that used to be distributed in some of our schools is not civics.
Teaching history/social studies and literature should suffice. Of course then once again, it all depends on what is taught and who is deciding that . But it always has .
3) Bingo : The Princeton Study highlights the fact for years we resemble an oligarchy where the concerns of ordinary citizens are secondary in the Congress (and the Media). Perhaps more of a reason to not be aware , it would not matter .
The Republicans are proposing a corporate Tax cut that closes no loop holes and lowers the rate . Yet before the election Schumer was proposing cutting the rate and closing the loop holes with loopholes the size of the donations politicians receive from Wall Street.
It’s just too glib, too easy to blame the schools and the teachers for our present predicament. One hundred years ago, fewer people were in school, fewer people were graduating from high school or college and many kids dropped out after 8th grade. We managed to avoid a Trump style president at that time though Harding was not that much better. Trump has been boldly and loudly vulgar, despicable and reprehensible for decades, this is nothing new. There’s more going on here than schools and curriculum.
Good point. I blame the Billionaire Boys for buying democracy for themselves and no one else.
I lived through the Sputnik brouhaha. The US was in a state of shock, how could this have happened. What was one of the first reactions? Yes, you guessed it. BLAME THE SCHOOLS, all part of blame the schools syndrome. We were told that science and technology were not being taught enough or being emphasized enough. Baloney. The problem was American exceptionalism in which we thought we were the bestest on the earth in every pursuit. In addition, we thought that the USSR was a backwards country barely able to produce a bottle of aspirin. In other words, American arrogance and hubris lead us to underestimate the true capabilities of the godless communistic evil empire.
Schools are easy targets to be blamed for all society’s ills.
Completely agree. Blame Citizens United. Blame the Glass-Steagall repeal. Don’t blame education. (But if you’re going to blame education, blame the NCLB/ESSA.) Our democracy is in the hands of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Alphabet, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon now. And they are everywhere, not just presidential elections. Netflix bought my school board! No one supported the unions — too busy watching Netflix.
Agree, Joe.
Come on. If you can’t blame schools for mass ignorance, who can you blame? The fact is that the opposite of ignorance is knowledge, and it’s a fact that many schools have radically reduced their commitment to teaching knowledge. One local school district here in CA teaches NO science or social studies in kindergarten through fifth grade. It’s math and ELA skills practice all day everyday. And few teachers balk at this because they’ve all been brainwashed to think that knowledge isn’t very important –skills are. Currently the “experts” are trying to dismantle the final vestiges of fact-transmission with the new Next Generation Science Standards, which in our area at least, have been interpreted to mean no direct instruction, and the new CA history frameworks, which privilege the “inquiry” process over actually learning anything about history. The progressive education virus, incubated by Dewey, Freire, Kohn and others, has been steadily infecting American teachers’ minds for a century resulting in a radical redefinition of education as skills-building instead of knowledge-building. The result, predictably, is ignorance; and, depressingly, none of the promised skills, since the skills-building curriculum is largely an impotent sham. Kids still can’t think critically, or read, or write, despite our throwing all eggs in the basked of skills building. It’s a scandal.
That’s exactly when ed reform started and it began with”New Math”, (which was terrible). Written by scientists and mathematicians without the voice of teachers. Fortunately, it was only piloted in a small population of US children, unlike CC which was released onto the entire country. The CC math IS the “New Math” of the 60’s. My husband is a product of the “new math” craze of long ago and was one of it’s failures…..fortunately, he was smart enough to overcome and the people in charge were smart enough to see that it was a complete failure. Why these standards ever resurfaced is a mystery to me.
As Joe and others have said this has nothing to do with standardized tests and only a little to do with schooling. Most of the people who voted for Trump, and who regularly vote for candidates seemingly against their self-interests are middle-aged or older. They, myself included, went to school between the 1930’s and the 1970’s and what the history and civics they learned there is long forgotten other than some misleading historical “facts” oft-repeated in popular culture.
The problem is American culture. It is predicated on short-term feelings – What makes me feel good now? – rather than long-term rationale and stability. As a society we don’t value intellectualism, thoughtful dialogue, or becoming informed. While religion might have been the opiate of the masses a few decades ago, now television with its 1000’s of options and social media keep Americans well-medicated, perfect for corporate missionaries to proselytize about their self-interest.
That being said, I refuse to give voters a pass when the interests of the people they vote for do exactly what should have been predicted from their rhetoric. While some adults don’t have access to good sources of information and/or lack the ability to evaluate it, far more choose ignorance over learning. They allow others to tell them what to think – it’s easier that way – rather than do the heavy lifting of exposing themselves to a range of ideas and thinking critically.
These cultural norms aren’t new in the US but the danger of falling prey to others’ interests at one’s own expense is greater than they’ve ever been.
(Please excuse missed grammatical errors. Need editing option!)
Sally,
Anti-knowledge fads have swept American schools ever since John Dewey in 1915. Our schools have often offered vacuous fare, though Common Core is the apotheosis of content-free education.
Rev. Johnson, the TX pastor, made a good point. We need remind representatives they are are obliged to offer common schools for the common good. Too many representatives are only too happy to abrogate this responsibility as many of these so-called reps. are multi-millionaires that never use or need strong public education.
Well said! And accurate. I was a global history teacher who believed in the mission of showing Americans the world. A truly gifted teacher can change a student’s view, but mostly kids don’t want to learn what’s not relevant to them. All these add-on programs don’t change the culture. Having worked in a high school for 25 years, I reject ‘blame the schools’.
@ponderosa: John Dewey was definitely NOT “anti-knowledge”. That is a bogus right-wing trope repeated by those who either have not read or do not understand Drew’s education philosophy.
Fox is the opiate of the 55 to death crowd and, sadly, others.
Drspektor: technically you’re right. But the pro-knowledge part of Dewey has been lost in translation. Kirkpatrick and his other acolytes warped his teaching and it seems to me it’s this version of Dewey that prevails today.
Dewey valued knowledge. He emphasized how it was acquired. Not through trading a textbook or hearing a lecture, but through educative experiences. A debate, a project, a research paper, experiences that make the knowledge come to life.
Diane, such activities have become ends in themselves. Few acknowledge that an essential part of their value lies in the knowledge they instill. A staple of my practice is having students make skits that contain facts about the unit we’re studying, but they cannot make the skits without the knowledge I give them through lecture (a few advanced students can glean it through reading; many cannot). The value of the skits is two-fold: 1. they’re fun; 2. they solidify the knowledge in their heads. When kids visit me the following year, they remember their skits in detail.
Education is now about doing things, not about learning things.
Agreed. I am SO sick of every social ill being blamed on the schools. WHERE are the other civic institutions through all of this? Sitting on their hands, or pointing their fingers at teachers. They should be supporting schools and teachers and figuring out ways to help students get this information.
BUT, when they blame teachers, they have no responsibility and they can dump it all on someone else. Less work for them, right?
Mandated Civics Tests are Not the Answer!
http://bustedpencils.com/2016/03/mandatory-civics-test-a-good-idea-to-deny-ethnic-studies/
“There’s nothing wrong with Wisconsin students knowing American Civics and learning to be patriotic! Maybe. Maybe not. However—as a first level practitioner of American civics—Representative Edming, before thwarting democracy, should have let THE PEOPLE know that requiring a mandatory civics test was the agenda of an extremely well funded right wing institute. The people of Wisconsin should have had a chance to debate the need for government funded right-wing patriotic propaganda being mandated by the state. It’s one thing to talk about the lack of so called civic knowledge. It’s an outrageous thing when only one version of civics—obedience and blind patriotism—is mandated by oligarchic pawns.
What about mandated culturally relevant curricula and ethnic studies? Why perpetuate the divisive story of American exceptionalism when research clearly shows more promise in engaging students in critical history and ethnically centered curricula?
The answer is simple: What works in empowering citizens to take action was never and is still not the purpose of a mandatory civics test….”
Utah started mandating students pass a multiple choice version of the citizenship test three years ago. They have to pass it to graduate.
Utah still has some of the lowest voter turn-out in the nation. Doesn’t seem to have had any impact, and the students regard the test as a joke.
Don’t you think it’s a good idea to insure that all citizens have some basic knowledge about civics in their heads?
Some bubble test result is not an indicator of “knowledge in their heads”. Come on, you should well know that.
Yes, I do think a thoughtfully produced “bubble test” can gauge a person’s knowledge, albeit somewhat crudely. Don’t you?
Ponderosa,
I am in agreement about the importance of knowledge, but the bubble test is not a good gauge of the knowledge we both value. It is superficial and depends on right answers to complex questions. We can do better than that. If the standardized tests were to disappear tomorrow, we could devise better ways to gauge student knowledge of questions that don’t have one right answer.
People don’t read enough, period. We know that. As for the schools, the emphasis on testing math and English skills (to the detriment of content) didn’t leave a lot of room for history, foreign language, or even science. But there’s something else: many teachers feel discouraged from engaging with serious issues because it could create controversy. I noticed, fifteen years ago, that the teachers who supported the war in Iraq were lauded, while the ones who were skeptical about it–or even allowed that students had a right to oppose the war–came in for a whole lot of criticism. Parents complain if they think their values don’t get respect in the classroom. They fear that the teachers might impose their own views on their children. And administrators always want to avoid any controversy. Teachers need to be trained in how to lead class discussion, and we all need to learn how to disagree in a civil manner. The obsession with technology, combined with an ignorance of how to use this tool, has contributed as well.
There is fault on both sides of this issue. I know first hand. I am a retired high school SS teacher and an active League of Women Voter member at the state (CT) level and also the local level (CT’s biggest city Bridgeport). LWV members are of the opinion that little civics is taught at the elementary level in CT (RIGHT) and NOT taught at the high school level (WRONG) Civics is a semester course required for graduation in CT usually taught in the sophomore year, but must be repeated if failed then before graduation. Texts are not available in Spanish nor even workbooks. Where teaching is not strong is that the Civic sophomore course deals mainly with Federal Government and has little time for municipal civics. Turn out in Bridgeport for 2017 municipal election for BOE and City Council was about 11% of eligible voters and of course immigrants must be citizens to vote. Noncitizen households cannot instill in their children the experience of going to the polls. That is why high schools must do more to get 18 year olds registered. We need High School teachers to join LWV, or to invite LWV reps into the school before November. In my city, Social Workers are being trained to ask clients if they are registered and explain how voting = POWER. Elected officials listen to voters and not so much to those who do NOT vote. That’s a fact. Teachers certainly can tell students, if mom and dad or auntie doesn’t vote, they have little POWER in the community. Involving the schools in sending home information on registering to vote online or paper and dates of upcoming elections should be mandatory for every SS teacher in October!
U of Cincinnati prof Sarah Stitzlein, in her new book American Public Education and the Responsibility of Its Citizens (Oxford U. Press) makes the point that public education if absolutely essential to US democracy, slams all efforts to divert public funds to private schools and for-profit charters, and criticizes the atrophy of civics education in our schools in recent decades. She then proceeds to lay out how civics ed should be rejuvenated and greatly improved. — Edd Doerr (former history teacher)
I notice Professor Stitzlein refers to “for-profit charters.”
If she fails to see the danger posed by (largely misnamed) non-profit charter schools, then she still needs some educating on the issue.
Charter schools are private entities funded with public dollars. They are not public schools, and should never be referred to as such, and they drain resources from real public schools. End of story.
Egan is right. Immunizing citizens from lies demands long and careful installation of accurate knowledge in kids’ brains. This is what schools around the world have done for time immemorial. But, in a silent revolution, the modern American school has almost entirely abandoned this task, not just because the fateful tests only measure ELA and math resulting in neglect of science, history and civics, but, even more importantly, because the education schools have waged jihad against the transmission of knowledge for the past 100 years in this country. Their campaign has now achieved almost total victory. What, you may ask, do the ed schools advocate instead? Vague skills, such as all-purpose problem solving skill, that cognitive science show to be unteachable. Teaching has been taken over by pseudo-scientific theory, and mass ignorance is the result.
Speak for yourself. I impart facts constantly. It’s the most important thing I do.
TOW: don’t you think that for every one of you, there are nine or more who disparage teaching facts, and claim that teaching “critical thinking skills” and “inquiry skills” and “complex text reading skills” and “research skills” are far more important? That’s what I’ve seen in talking to teachers around the country.
Should I spend one or two days lecturing on the names and dates of the events surrounding the election of 1800, or a whole week or two having the students research, write and deliver speeches supporting either the Federalists or Democratic Republicans, and using the events surrounding the election to back up their arguments? Forget the ‘skills versus knowledge’ debate. Forget the test scores. Do what makes sense to you. Engaging students in thinking and creating exercises makes sense to me.
I mix it up. Lecture some, research some, do project based learning some. I don’t think it has to be an all-or-nothing thing.
Well as the non educator here, I am not going to blame educators for this failure . Although there is one, that I will blame later for that . First let us acknowledge that things were never as rosy as we would like to think they were . The American people never as engaged as we pretend. Yet there have been periods in our history where they became engaged . Starting in the 1780s with the birth of the Labor movement which was far more of a political movement than a labor movement . A movement led by socialists and Christian socialists and a few anarchists thrown in for good measure .
The American people have been isolated in an intentionally planned assault that pits us as individuals “raging against the machine”. Among other things service to country has been limited to a minuscule fraction of the populace. There was nothing like the draft to raise civic awareness in schools and out, from HS through Grad School . That problem has been solved . we have become a Nation of “flag waving yellow bellied armchair patriots”.
A nation who thrills at the rockets red glare knowing they or their children will never be called on to make the sacrifice . The cost of these endless millatary interventions was even held off budget .
The Union movement which had made tremendous strides in the thirties with some radical socialists in various positions has been attacked and managed on its way to extinction . No longer a movement that can bring millions to the streets nor the voting booths.
First it was assaulted immediately after WW2 . The Taft Hartley Act removed the socialists with an unconstitutional loyalty oath. Assured an anti worker low wage South with Right to Work , long before the offshoring of American Jobs, Assured a divided movement by banning the secondary boycott . . Instead of being met with pitchforks and baseball bats Union leaders were content with eking out small gains for their own members while watching the movement being crushed.So there is the retired NYC teacher this morning a delusional Trumpster, on my congressman’s Facebook page. We are a victim of our own success. That assault went into overdrive in the 80s and state after state has turned right to work . The first thing Republicans did was attack labor rights, because a crippled labor movement can not become a social movement. Social movements educate their members.
In the Seventies the oligarchy (Powell) decided they were losing control. So the first thing they attacked along with labor was our educational institutions and the Media . Starting with higher education the push to view education as vocational was massive . Why are you taking those stupid liberal arts courses and humanities? . What type of job will you get? To drive this home we will take tax dollars away from Public Universities so you don’t waste any time . We will take tenure away from the Professorial Staff by hiring more starving voiceless adjuncts , Break the faculty Unions as Davids mom Elizabeth did at Bennington College . How do you think Coleman wound up at McKinsey. . Of course we have to align K-12 education to be worker drones as well . So as we know Common Core was the pet project of the Business Roundtable long before Gates entered the fight as a member of that group.
But they also determined that the media that they owned was not acting in their interests . They started consolidating the media ,eviscerated news rooms and most certainly turned into entertainment news rather than investigative journalism. Their independence was always a questionable assertion . However when their were more papers and more owners the populace had alternatives .Look no further than the Left wing medias position on trade . Nothing left wing about it as the concerns of every progressive group were dismissed .
So we have two political parties representing the Corporatocracy , The media representing the Corporatocracy , The Educational institutions aligning education with the Corporatocracy. The only social movement that could be capable (if they ever were ) of battling the Corporatocracy half in the grave .
Civics classes I think not.
Joel,
You might want to look at this recent column in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/upshot/income-inequality-united-states.html . It makes the point that unionization rates do not appear to be correlated the growth in the share of national income by the top 1%. The article instead points to the success of some professions in using government regulation to protect themselves against competition.
When the union movement was strong, there was a real path to the middle class.
Timothy Egan of The NY Times said at the Oberlin conference a few days ago that the US has less class mobility than any other modern society.
The article points out that large reductions in unionization rates in New Zealand and the Netherlands resulted in as much increased share of income going to the one percent as was seen in Spain, where unionization rates rose.
The average level of class mobility in the United States hides large differences across geographies. The Equality of Opportunity Project has done a lot of work on this. In some places, like Salt Lake City, San Jose, or New York City, a child born into a household having the lowest 20% of income in the country has over a 10% chance of forming a household in the highest 20% of income in the country. In other places, like Atlanta or Charlotte, a child born into a household having the lowest 20% of income in the country has under a 5% chance of forming a household in the highest 20% of income in the country.
For these results and a huge pile of data (you can look at income mobility in many major metropolitan areas) you can go to their website: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/
First would there be a surprise that I disagree with the article almost entirely. We do not have to do international comparisons when we are incompletely comparing Apples to Oranges to begin with . You can not compare factory worker incomes in Ohio to factory worker in Germany, Denmark … …. . When one has government provided healthcare , college tuition paid maternity leave and vacations……For instance France has a higher unemployment rate . Yet their prime age worker participation rate is way higher than ours , so call me confused . And comparing these economies to each other can be even trickier .
So lets stay away from international comparisons . All we have to do is compare the standard of living vs cost of living for various professions in this country and compare them even over time .
So lets talk immigration a Union meat packer working in the Midwest or South in the seventies earned the equivalent of about $25Dollars an hour with pensions and healthcare, a coveted job. .Much the same has happened to the construction industry where jobs that put some in the top 10% of income earners are now being threatened by non union contractors on massive projects in even the heart of Union NYC. Using undocumented immigrants to break Unions . People working at a quarter the wage. . You can bet your butt that Immigration was used to turn meat packing into a job that Americans wont do . But I am not railing against that immigrant. if our laws were not designed to hinder organizing not designed to allow an employer to void union contracts . That immigrant would be union and not being used as a wage wedge.
All you have to do is compare the standard of living of a Union teacher , construction worker, factory worker , ….. in state or between states to get your answer . You would find few to no Teachers on high cost long Island who would trade places with a teacher in Alabama or Indiana .
Trade ; the author is out of his mind. We have to ask what the economy of a country is based on before we make a comparison. So if you want to claim that Denmark (or what ever he used ) is importing everything and compare it to some place else . What does that mean. Sorry our trade policy since the 90s has seen manufacturing fall off a cliff . There is no denying that . . After falling for a while in the late seventies and early eighties. American factories had retooled and it cost jobs (Automation, Robots ) those manufacturing jobs stabilized at around 18 million . But they represented a smaller and smaller percentage of the workforce .Till the 90s the number of workers in the economy was growing every year from population growth but not the number of manufacturing workers. In the early 90s when China and NAFTA kicked in. It was not Robots that these jobs left the country for, it was low wages and nobody can show the increase in investment in robots in this country , nor the increased productivity that would indicate robots . Trade cost 3-4 million jobs directly and up to 12- 15 million jobs from the multiplier effect . That slack in the labor market has left workers in a position where they are unable to pressure employers for wage increases . Somebody picked winners and losers in these trade agreements and in every labor law ever passed .
All a non union auto maker(or Walmart ) has to do is threaten to close the plant or move the plant to a more anti worker state . We have state officials threatening Volkswagen if they support a move toward unionization. Afraid the cancer will spread to other employers in the state. Unions have dropped their wage demands leaving little reason for workers to think they offer a better deal. None of this is an accident.
So lets talk the 1%. Yes we have a professional class in the top 5% . Believe it or not we have Union construction workers in NYC making as much as some of those Professionals with a bit of overtime. And of course many professionals are working plenty of overtime whether they get compensated or not . Yes we could lower our medical costs by putting American Doctors in competition with doctors from other countries just as well trained and willing to work for less as we do with our factory workers .. A few Republican congressional reps might then become Democrats. But that is not our problem with inequality. The problem is not that a professional class is getting too much of the National income the problem is in the fraction of the 1% that garners the overwhelming share of income.
The CEO of Charter Spectrum(formerly Time Warner Cable) has been the highest paid CEO in the Nation at 99Million as he seeks to deprive his Union workers Pensions and Healthcare and break the union . This has played out for two decades almost three . Like a Danny DeVito movie “Other Peoples Money”. Did we need Newt Gingrich to coin the phrase vulture capitalism .
Again
Politics; “Who Determines Who gets What ,When and How”.
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/jul/29/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-madison-claims-top-01-americans-hav/ .
https://www.salon.com/2016/04/14/the_1_percent_are_the_real_villains_what_americans_dont_understand_about_income_inequality_partner/
Joe,
You do have to do international comparisons if you are going to make the claim that increased unionization rates in the United States would have decreased relative income inequality. We only have one history in the United States. If you want evidence for your counterfactual, you will need to look at other countries with different histories. That is what the column does.
I think you dismiss physician income levels too quickly. According to the Medscape Physicians Compensation Report for 2017 (https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/compensation-2017-overview-6008547), the average earnings of orthopedists is $489,000, for plastic surgeons $440,000, for cardiologists $410,000, for urologists $400,000, otolarynologists $398,000, radiologists $396,000, and gastroenterologists $391,000. I think it is safe to say that this puts the majority of these physicians well over the $390,000 figure required to be in the 1%. Physicians compensation has been growing at a very high rate as well. In 2011 the average physician earned $206,000. In 2017 the average physician earned $294,000, an increase of 43% in the last 6 years.
Your post has many points, and I can respond to all, but this is a good start.
Joe,
What is the MEDIAN physician salary?
A small number of very highly paid doctors — especially if they are also getting money from pharmaceutical companies — can affect an “average”.
If you want finer grain data, you might look at this site: https://www.doximity.com/careers/signin?return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.doximity.com%2Fcareers%2Fmethodology%3F_csrf_attempted%3Dyes
Here is a recent list by specialty: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/physician-salaries/384846/
Here are some median income figures for some specialties: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm#tab-5
Note in the last link the median income for physicians practicing in medical specialty areas was $425,509 in 2015, placing the majority of these physicians well above the $390,000 cut off to be in the 1%.
Okay, so let’s just assume for a moment that the election result was not caused by national stupidity, but by other factors, like oh, let’s say the employment, property, and savings insecurity resulting from the free market economic practices of a perceived if not very real political establishment. Not stupidity. Fear and anger. Loss. In that case, the way to defeat Trumpism (fear and anger) is to offer a real alternative to the free market economics that Trump campaigned against and is now practicing himself. I have to admit, I don’t think I can defeat Trumpism by teaching my 13 year old students Article II of the Constitution. Go Bernie.
+100
Thank you. I like extra credit. I’m going to get an ‘A’ in this class!
Bingo
“He blames our current national stupidity on schools and teachers because they are not teaching civics, Government, and history.” TEACHERS, in fact, have been dismissed for fighting against this dangerous narrowing of curricula, including the removal of civics, government and history classes.
Two of our nations biggest newspapers are also the biggest purveyors of “fake news”, so how is anyone supposed to tell? Need I remind anyone of Judith Miller and the NYC’s push to the Iraq War? And WaPo has been on the forefront of hyping every possible wild Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, nearly every one of which later gets amended with some correction that basically nullifies the whole article (after the hype of the initial article has caused it to go viral, while next to no one sees the correction). I know you don’t like him, Diane, but Glenn Greenwald has been tracking this phenomenon for many years now. If propaganda and fake news are okay from our alleged news sources of record, it’s only to be expected that other outlets will do it too. How is anyone supposed to know what news to trust?
You and Glen G are the only people left who think that the Russians didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, as they have tried to do in France, Germany, and England.
Didn’t Facebook and Twitter acknowledge that they posted hundreds and thousands of ads and accounts posted by Russian trolls and bots? FB said that 126 million people opened ads sponsored by the Russian government, spreading lies and dissension.
Neither Glenn (two n’s, incidentally) have ever said the Russians didn’t meddle in the 2016 election. Hell, America has meddled in our fair share of elections all around the world and with much more obvious results. In fact, we kind of like to by-pass elections and just take care of the regime change our own way. It’s not surprising at all that the Russians would try to meddle in our elections.
What Glenn and I (and others) have said – and still say – is that we’re waiting to see actual evidence that said meddling was in any way conclusive of the election results. As in, it’s pretty hard to fathom that $100,000 in Russian Facebook ads had more of an influence than the hundreds of millions of dollars the DNC poured into the election, which you have denied had an effect.
We’d also like to see actual evidence regarding the more nefarious allegations – evidence which has yet to be provided. A bunch of notoriously dishonest “intelligence” [sic] agencies saying “trust us” does not constitute “evidence”. Anything further on the Steele dossier?
Incidentally, Glenn and I are far from the only ones, and your attempt to marginalize us like that is telling and, again, beneath you. Glenn has many supporters around the world that understand how asking for evidence does not constitution being either a Russian agent or a Trump troll or any of the other McCarthy-ite epitaphs routinely hung on those who dare to dissent.
I have been aware of every presidential election since 1948
I can’t remember any in which one candidate and his family and staff were so involved with a foreign adversary
It is beneath you to suggest that US interference in elections decades ago makes it ok for Putin to pick our president.
At a computer convention in Las Begas a few months ago, there was a display of current voting machines, and attendees were challenged to try to hack them. Every voting machine was hacked.
We should return to votes with a paper trail.
I served on the Federsl Commission on the Electoral Process after the 2000 election. We tested voting mAchines. The most secure was the one used in nyc, which has since been phased out. It involved closing a curtain by swinging a lever. Vote by pulling little levers. The vote is recorded by swinging the lever to open the curtain. No hanging chads. No smudge marks. No electronics. No hacking. No errors. Obsolete.
“What Glenn and I (and others) have said – and still say – is that we’re waiting to see actual evidence that said meddling was in any way conclusive of the election results.”
That’s an impossibly high standard. It’s not possible to prove that any single event or combination of events (short of ballot-box fraud that could be quantified) caused Trump to be elected.
Normally I don’t chime in on these election banterings but I do have to say that there are many, myself included, on both right and left and everywhere in between and outside those parameters who do not buy into the “Russians did it”.
I don’t believe that there is any doubt that the Ruskies attempted to propagandize not only the American electorate but the Brexit, French, etc. . . . The question becomes what was the outcome of their miniscule and risible attempt? In my mind, negligible, nada, zilch.
I certainly agree with Diane (and with Dienne in other regards) that we should have a paper voting system and not the “proprietary” voting machine system we have now. Just ask Michael O’Connell, Republican operative in 04 how Ohio’s voting was controlled by the Republican machine. Oh, wait, you can’t as he was killed in a plane crash while in the midst of having been subpoenaed to testify about that nefarious control which won the 04 election for Georgie the Least.
I am with Diane on this one . It is absurd to think that the constant drip of negative news did not swing the election when votes were so close in many states . Otherwise we might as well shorten campaigns to a week. Because accepting that premise means no one pays attention to news or adds anyway . That it was that close to begin with is another story.
I am amazed at all the premature dementia we have from the Trump Team . Kind of hard to forget people with heavy Russian accents . The word for that on the part of the Russians is national interest. To be defined as the interest of their power elite. The word for Americans who would have partaken in undermining the most fundamental part of our democratic process is Treason!!!!!.
AS for fake news neither the NYT nor the WAPO both of which you have seen me argue with NYCPSP about, are purveyors of fake news intentionally . Take note Dienne, Miller was fired..
But that is a long way from saying that every paper does not let editorial opinion seep onto the news page on many issues . So the answer is the reader has to be aware and searching for agendas as we read. Along with reading other sources.
There is a difference between The NY Times and Breitbart. One has trained journalists and fact checkers. The other is a propaganda mill.
First of all, why does it matter whether Putin’s interference directly led to Trump’s victory or not?
Should we have shut down the Watergate investigation because Nixon won by the largest margin in recent history, with a huge victory in both the popular and electoral vote?
What happened was ILLEGAL. It is ILLEGAL for a campaign to conspire with a foreign government to help win the election. Just like it is ILLEGAL to have a slush fund to run dirty tricks.
It is far less likely that Nixon needed the illegal deeds to help him win. Too bad. His people committed those crimes and he tried to cover them up.
And since it seems quite likely that the Trump campaign conspired with foreign agents to subvert the campaign and Trump tried to cover it up (firing Comey after he didn’t obey orders to stop investigating), we should be cheering on every effort to bring this into the light.
^^And Joel and I have similar viewpoints about the media, despite our differences.
Miller was fired. The NY Times makes mistakes. Their reporters have biases. But their general bias is toward facts and not acting as propaganda arms for one party or the other (except in editorials.)
Think of those reporters as acting like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Warren basically believes charters are a force for good and that the democrats in the education reform movement generally wants to have better schools. Like many reporters, she isn’t spending time to learn the facts and she makes mistakes. But Warren’s bias is toward facts.
Attacking all of the NY Times is like attacking the entire Democratic Party. It’s playing into the right’s hands, which is try to get Americans to believe all Democrats are corrupt and mainstream media is all a lie.
dienne77 says:
“we’re waiting to see actual evidence that said meddling was in any way conclusive of the election results. ”
So if it isn’t “conclusive” then it doesn’t matter how much the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians and covered it up?
Boy, Nixon would have loved to have you and Glenn Greenwald defending all his campaign’s illegal activities because “it didn’t change election results” and he would have won anyway.
What happened to the progressive movement that they decided their hatred of Democrats is more important than doing what is right?
“Decades ago”? Really, Diane? It’s risible to think that we’ve ever given up meddling in other countries’ elections (and, of course, by-passing their elections altogether).
Are you really suggesting that just because the US meddled in other countries’ elections it means that it is okay for one of the candidates to conspire with a foreign government to help him win?
It isn’t JUST that Russia meddled. It is that they conspired with Americans to meddle. And the Americans they conspired with seemed to have high positions in the Trump campaign and were RELATED to the candidate.
Why do you keep trying to use the same distractions as the alt right to pretend there is no crime here? The crime was not that a foreign government meddled. It was that the Trump campaign knew and abetted their meddling in order to win the election. And then fired the FBI director to cover it up.
When are people going to stop taking their cue from “columnists”?
It’s absurd.
Talk about fake news.
Colmnists and think tank wankers: the two biggest sources of fake news.
Exactamundo!
There’s an interesting assumption that tends to prevail that everything that people do that we don’t like is due to ignorance. People smoke because they don’t know that nicotine is bad for you. They eat Big Macs because they don’t know that they’re full of calories and fat. The vote for Trump because they don’t know what a pig he is. So the seeming solution is education. Let’s put warning labels on cigarettes. Let’s put calorie counts on fast food menus. Let’s scream to the rafters about all the outrageous things Trump does.
But, of course, we really know that education is not the answer because ignorance was never the problem. “Oh, the surgeon general says smoking is hazardous to my health? Who knew? Then I’ll quit immediately” said no one ever. I seriously doubt anyone eats Big Macs because they think that’s a healthy meal choice. And unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last couple decades, you can’t be unaware of who Trump is.
The only way behavior changes is if we address the underlying reasons why people do what they do. When people don’t feel so miserable, surprise, they don’t do as many bad things like smoking and overeating. And maybe they wouldn’t vote for Trump either. But propping up banks while they turn people out of their homes is not going to make anyone less miserable. Bombing brown people doesn’t make anyone less miserable. Closing schools and mental health facilities and privatizing the Commons doesn’t make anyone less miserable. Getting rid of unions and holding down wages and benefits isn’t making anyone less miserable. Making people live in fear of bankruptcy from a health-related problem doesn’t reduce misery. Until the Democrats have ideas on how to make people less miserable, people will continue to vote for Republicans (or, at least, not vote for Democrats).
“The Usual Suspects”
When every pol is dubious
The usual suspects win
Easy to be lugubrious
When all you see is spin
Say what?
What “ideas” did Obama have that let him win? Which Democrats are winning? Not the ones with “ideas”.
Obama is still incredibly popular. And Russ Feingold lost to a right wing Republican.
Your beliefs don’t match the facts at all. The facts are that there are too many deplorables that don’t want a progressive solution that won’t give them everything they want — they want a scapegoat and a guy telling them he has all the answers.
Obama had lots of ideas that let him win – supporting labor, getting out of “stupid wars”, taking care of “Main Street” not Wall Street, the public option. The fact that he appeared to be so progressive is why he won (and why he beat Hillary in the primaries). The problem wasn’t with his ideas, it was with the fact that he reneged on every single one of them.
The Democrats who are doing well now are also those who have actual ideas, not just “resist Trump”.
Please provide proof that Obama was running on progressive “ideas” in his campaign.
Hillary Clinton was the one running on progressive ideas — the ones you seem to believe Obama was running on that he was not.
You just didn’t believe Hillary and decided she was as bad as Trump despite her progressive platform. Obama did not run on that kind of progressive platform.
The one point you are absolutely correct on is that Obama’s position on foreign policy in his first campaign was less interventionist than Hillary’s. But please explain the reasons you believe that Obama’s ECONOMIC platform was more progress than Hillary’s? I don’t believe that is true at all.
The US started mandating warning labels on cigarettes in the mid-1960s. The tobacco companies were fiercely opposed to this for a reason.
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2015/11/smokingrates.jpg&w=1484
Better image link
Exactly, Flerp. I didn’t stop smoking because I was no longer “miserable.” I stopped smoking because I lost both my mother and mother-in-law to cancer (both smokers) and had cancer myself. It took my own diagnosis to break the addiction, but the shift in press had made me more than aware of the possible connection between smoking and cancer. My son broke his smoking habit because the benefits and costs had been made obvious, and he could no longer justify the enjoyment smoking gave him. The Marlboro Man lost all of his appeal.
Change of any kind happens slowly but requires a constant pressure. If the environmentalists had gotten complacent after The Endangered species Act was signed, many more species would be endangered or extinct. The cynical dismissal of less than perfect efforts or results results in stagnation and defeat of progress.
Social Studies education is citizenship education, not less important than science or math. It is survival education. It should be taught idea, concept, based, using the development of ideas with Socratic based discussion and the use of essay writing. Using Public Forum Debate, http://www.pfdebate.com, where students, using a current issue, have to defend a specific side, not necessarily the one they like, works. But, we need to have smaller class sizes to do this effectively. We need politicians to step up and fund our public schools so we can do the the job we have been trained for effectively. Charters, segregating students and teachers, even worse vouchers for narrow parochial interests, will only exacerbate the dilemma.
Regarding Russia: All they and other rumor mongers had to do was create some doubt. You win by getting the electoral college, a quick fix to get the Constitution approved, number you need. Comey pops up with his b.s. just before the election and that encourages enough of those undecided doubters, to vote for Trump, along with voter suppression. All you need is to win by one vote. A large majority of us voted for Hillary, don’t forget that. Why didn’t Comey announce the Russia investigation involving treason, not the faux email problem. I have yet to see a real answer for that.
Yes. Curious that Comey announced the Email investigation in late October but failed to mention that the Trump campaign was under FBI investigation for contacts with Russia. Leaders of Congress knew about it. The public was kept in the dark.
It’s all part of the corruption directly to the Trump campaign.
Giuliani and a rogue group of NYC FBI agents seemed to be threatening to claim Comey was “covering up” for Clintonn if he didn’t release it. The Trump campaign seemed to have advance word it was coming as you know Giuliani kept dropping hints.
Let’s remember one thing: The vote in Virginia on election day was very close to the polling there. But the vote in the states led by Republican governors doing everything they could to suppress Democratic votes did not.
Well stated critiques by one and all. Thanks!
I found the opinion piece to be less than satisfying-more of the usual diatribe against “educators”. Blame the schools “But the educators are failing them.”, as many mentioned, the trite decades-old excuse. From the article:
“Yet one in three Americans fail the immigrant citizenship test. This is not an elitist barrier. The test includes questions like, “What major event happened on 9/11?” and “What ocean is on the West Coast of the United States?”
One reason that public schools were established across the land was to produce an informed citizenry. And up until the 1960s, it was common for students to take three separate courses in civics and government before they got out of high school.
Now only a handful of states require proficiency in civics as a condition of high school graduation. Students are hungry, in this turbulent era, for discussion of politics and government. But the educators are failing them. Civics has fallen to the side, in part because of the standardized test mania.”
Not sure what the questions and answers quoted have to do with “citizenship”. As part of social studies and/or geography, they make sense but who teaches geography anymore?
I question his assertion about the “three separate courses in civics and government. . . ” Someone who might know, I’d appreciate to learn if that is anywhere near a true statement. Somehow I don’t believe it is.
As much as I am anti-standardized testing to blame all of the trials and tribulations of the supposed downfall of American public education on “the standardized testing mania” lacks depth of thought and is absurd and risible.
Just more commentary from another talking head who doesn’t know jackshit about public education.
To quote Reb Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof
“When you’re rich and/or a columnist (especially for the NY Times) they really think you know.”
Eagan spoke the frustration many have felt at the ignorance of the American public. Still, his emphasis on the three years of civics avoids a problem. Is the electorate disengaged because they lack commitment to civic duty or is the forsaking of civic duty due to an ongoing campaign by those who benefit from the retinence of a cynical public? Which came first, the campaign of antigovernment rot pouring from those who claim it causes all our ills or the apathy of those who shrug rather than vote?
One of the best informed individuals I know does not vote, saying that real candadites for the positions in government are pushed out by mountebanks. I do not concur, but his lack of participation does not come because of ignorance or apathy. Rather it is a result of his disdain for the system.
The point is that education cannot cure all of our ills. True, we all need education. True, citizens who can tell the difference between Hitler and John Jay will choose Jay every time, dooming Hitler to obscurity. But nothing will be foolproof. John Locke thought the property owners were the ones who should choose the government. John Stuart Mill suggested the rule of thumb should be the greatest good for the greatest number. Both had an equitable economy in mind. Education can teach us to choose good leaders, but we must have an economic system that makes people vote not out of desperation, as was the case when the German voters gave significant numbers to Nazis, but out of confidence that the leadership they choose will give them a fair shake.
Thus the Russians, the school privitazation advocates, the plutocrats, and any other group seeking to depress the vote have a good avenue for their designs. Make people disgusted with the process so that the few win the day. Do it by suggesting that good is bad, and bad is good. Wrap manure in the flag and see if a voting public yearning for a fighting chance will elect a cow patty. Promise reform in the medical system without pain in the wallet. Fight a war almost two decades long without asking the public to endure the economic pain.
Of course there are problems with our democracy, but Egan seems to fail to see that education and democracy are often messy affairs.
“Guilty as Charged”
I am a teacher
I’m guilty as sin
Despicable creature
With Satan as kin
Your children I ruin
With art and with song
I daily imbue them
With all that is wrong
So VAM me and fire me
And brand me in Times
So no one will hire me —
Guilty of crimes
A song of experience.
When I bring up politics in my first year college writing class, students roll their eyes and begin staring at their phones. They are just not interested and most believe that there isn’t anything they can do anyway. I tend to think this is a problem because of the two party system with both parties lying and yelling at each other. It isn’t that students aren’t capable of understanding. They choose not to.
“students roll their eyes and begin staring at their phones.”
A not so subtle sign of the scope of the problem, eh.
But why even give them that chance. First rule when you enter my class: All electronic devices, unless mandated by an IEP are to be shut off and put away. Any breach of this rule will result in your being asked to leave immediately.
I enjoy watching “Watter’s World”, because the people he interviews don’t know anything about history or government. There was a radio program on today, and a person was going around a street asking people questions about the Holocaust. The people were basically clueless. No one knew about the Pearl Harbor attack, Dec 7 1941, or who the “Alles” and the “Axis” were. Sad, sad, sad.
I do NOT blame teachers, they do not select the curriculum. I remember very vividly, when I was a senior in a publicly-operated high school, that we had an assembly, and we all had to watch Holocaust films, the stacks of dead bodies, and the grisly photos of the skeletons in the ovens. Kids are not exposed to such films anymore, I guess.
Sad, sad, sad.
As I’ve written previously on this blog, education in a democratic society has a special place and purpose. Or, at least, it’s supposed to hold such a place. Aristotle saw this more than two millennium ago in arguing for a system of public education in Athens, writing that democratic governance required that “education should be one and the same for all…public, and not private.” But, we’ve moved steadily away from that.
Aristotle perceived the importance of public schooling to democratic citizenship, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.”
In other words, the mission of public education in a democratic society is to develop democratic beliefs and values. Pericles described them in his funeral oration: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms, promoting the general welfare. Aristotle and Pericles knew that government can be “of the people, by the people, for the people;” or, it can be controlled by plutocrats.
Kevin Phillips pointed out in ‘Wealth and Democracy’ that “by 2000 the United States could be said to have a plutocracy.” That was only exacerbated by Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on politics. As Phillips explained it, “the essence of plutocracy has been the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of money and control politics and government as well.” Think Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Think the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. Think Bill Gates and the Waltons (et al) and charters and vouchers and “accountability” and privatization. Think Trump and Betsy DeVos.
Let’s go back to the beginning. After the Revolution, early state constitutions –– like those of Massachusetts (1780) and New Hampshire (1784) –– set up and stressed the importance of a system of public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for public school financing in new territories. Thomas Jefferson sought a publicly-funded system of schools in Virginia, believing that an educated citizenry was critical to the well-being of a democratic society, writing in Notes on the State of Virginia (1794) that “The influence over government must be shared among all men.” In the early years of the republic, George Washington, Jefferson, Horace Mann and other early advocates for public schools agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education.
Over time, access to both public education and voting rights has been broadened, by legislation, by constitutional amendment, and by court decisions. Think, for example, about the impacts of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd 24th, and 26th amendments. Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or the Brown v Board of Education (1954) decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that “ in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, the United States – in many respects – has become a better, fairer place.
Think also about the ramifications of supply-side, laissez-faire economic policy. It is the orthodoxy of the Republican Party. The rich are fabulously richer. Poverty has grown. The middle class has gotten squeezed. Deficits and debt have piled up as money has been redistributed to the top brackets. Jobs have been off-shored. Wall Street was morphed into a high-stakes casino. The economy suffered a near meltdown, and millions of homes were lost. Unemployment spiked. Taxpayers not only bailed out those who caused the calamity but they continue to subsidize Wall Street banks. Nobody was held “accountable.” None of the culprits took any responsibility for what they did, and now they lay the onus for it on public schools. They tell us that schools must “measure up” to ensure American “economic competitiveness.” Sadly, I’ve heard and read educators repeating the stupidity.
The great education historian Lawrence Cremin wrote this in Popular Education and Its Discontents (1990):
“American economic competitiveness… is to a considerable degree a function of monetary, trade, and industrial policy, and of decisions made by the President and Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor. Therefore, to conclude that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform, especially educational reform defined solely as school reform, is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best a foolish and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools. It is a device that has been used repeatedly in the history of American education.” (p. 103)
Will and Ariel Durant noted in 1968 that there are inherent tensions “between wealth laudation, which favors concentration, and democracy, which promotes distribution.” And, as Kevin Phillips pointed out, “government…is one of the most powerful forces shaping the creation and distribution of wealth within the United States.” The proposed Republican tax ‘reform’ package is a prime example.
It isn’t very hard to see why the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and Exxon Mobil and the Waltons and Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and the rest are so “interested” in public education. They can kill (privatize) it while claiming to “save” it, and make money in the process. Isn’t this what they do with almost everything else?
Indeed, some of the same biggest tax cheaters tin the country give money to the oxymoronic Teach for America, which in turn supports charters. The big contributors are the Arnold Foundation (which wants to privatize public pensions), the arch-conservative Kern Foundation (which tries to inculcate ministers into the belief that unregulated “free enterprise” is a “moral system”), the Broad and Gates and Walton Foundations, Cisco, State Farm, and big banks –– Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase–– that have paid billions and billions in penalties and fines for fraud and market-rigging. The FDIC recently filed suit against 16 major “global” banks – including Bank of America Corp, Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase – for “manipulating the Libor interest rate.” The Libor rate is critical to determining interest rates on “$550 trillion in financial products, from home loans to derivatives.” Guess who got hosed by these shenanigans? And guess who cashed in?
A democratic society is predicated and contingent on a citizenry that understands and is committed to democratic values. In any democratic society, the people ARE the government. Aristotle noted that democracy (demos) is the populace, the common people. Thus if all citizens are part of self-rule, then they are “a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.” That is the essence of the social contract.
Public education is an integral of the social contract. And that’s exactly why public schooling holds a unique place in democracies, and why it’s so important. University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson called democratic citizenship “the supreme end of education in a democracy.” Horace Mann viewed public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith considered the development of critical intelligence –– “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic republic.
And yet we have public school educators and ‘leaders’ slobbering all over STEM, and ‘academies,’ and LOTS of technology, and SATs and ACTs, and Advanced Placement, and “college and careers.” Most of it is just phony baloney.
Setting the record straight about public education is vitally important. Because it’s not just about schooling. It’s about family income, and wages, and a shared sense of community. It’s about needed services and the public good. It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s about the vibrancy, well-being and future of democracy itself.
As Ben Franklin was said to have responded when asked what kind of government the Framers had produced at the Constitutional Convention:
“A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Democracy, great comment. Can you supply sources, especially to ancients?
Diane….see the amended comment below….
There definitely is an article in this comment if not a book.
Earl Johnson is right: democratic citizenship should be the supreme end of education in a democracy like ours. Unfortunately, scores on math and ELA tests have supplanted this as the supreme end, which suits the oligarchs just fine. We’ve really lost our way.
it isn’t going to be a simple thing to find our better path either.
As I’ve written previously on this blog, education in a democratic society has a special place and purpose. Or, at least, it’s supposed to hold such a place. Aristotle saw this more than two millennium ago in arguing for a system of public education in Athens, writing – in Politics, Book Eight, Part I – that democratic governance required that “education should be one and the same for all…public, and not private.” But, we’ve moved steadily away from that.
Aristotle perceived the importance of public schooling to democratic citizenship, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.” (op. cit.)
In other words, the mission of public education in a democratic society is to develop democratic beliefs and values. As recounted by Thucydides in ‘History of the Peloponnesian War,’ Pericles described them in his funeral oration: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms, promoting the general welfare. Aristotle and Pericles knew that government can be “of the people, by the people, for the people;” or, it can be controlled by plutocrats.
Kevin Phillips pointed out in ‘Wealth and Democracy’ (2002) that “by 2000 the United States could be said to have a plutocracy.” (p.xv) That was only exacerbated by Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on politics. As Phillips explained it, “the essence of plutocracy has been the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of money and control politics and government as well.” (op. cit.) Think Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Think the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. Think Bill Gates and the Waltons (et al) and charters and vouchers and “accountability” and privatization. Think Trump and Betsy DeVos.
Let’s go back to the beginning. After the Revolution, early state constitutions –– like those of Massachusetts (1780) and New Hampshire (1784) –– set up and stressed the importance of a system of public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for public school financing in new territories. Thomas Jefferson sought a publicly-funded system of schools in Virginia, believing that an educated citizenry was critical to the well-being of a democratic society, writing in Notes on the State of Virginia (1794) that “The influence over government must be shared among all the people.” In the early years of the republic, George Washington, Jefferson, Horace Mann and other early advocates for public schools agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education. (See, for example, “Public Education in the United States,” by R. Freeman Butts, Chapter 2: ‘The Educational Dream.’)
Over time, access to both public education and voting rights has been broadened, by legislation, by constitutional amendment, and by court decisions. Think, for example, about the impacts of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd 24th, and 26th amendments. Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or the Brown v Board of Education (1954) decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that “ in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, the United States – in many respects – has become a better, fairer place.
Think also about the ramifications of supply-side, laissez-faire economic policy. It is the orthodoxy of the Republican Party. The rich are fabulously richer. Poverty has grown. The middle class has gotten squeezed. Deficits and debt have piled up as money has been redistributed to the top brackets. Jobs have been off-shored. Wall Street was morphed into a high-stakes casino. The economy suffered a near meltdown, and millions of homes were lost. Unemployment spiked. Taxpayers not only bailed out those who caused the calamity but they continue to subsidize Wall Street banks. Nobody was held “accountable.” None of the culprits took any responsibility for what they did, and now they lay the onus for it on public schools. They tell us that schools must “measure up” to ensure American “economic competitiveness.” Sadly, I’ve heard and read educators repeating the stupidity.
The great education historian Lawrence Cremin wrote this in Popular Education and Its Discontents (1990):
“American economic competitiveness… is to a considerable degree a function of monetary, trade, and industrial policy, and of decisions made by the President and Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor. Therefore, to conclude that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform, especially educational reform defined solely as school reform, is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best a foolish and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools. It is a device that has been used repeatedly in the history of American education.” (p. 103)
Will and Ariel Durant noted in 1968 that there are inherent tensions “between wealth laudation, which favors concentration, and democracy, which promotes distribution.” (Phillips, op. cit., p. 418) As Kevin Phillips pointed out, “government…is one of the most powerful forces shaping the creation and distribution of wealth within the United States.” (Philips, op. cit., p. 214) The proposed Republican tax ‘reform’ package is a prime example.
It isn’t very hard to see why the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and Exxon Mobil and the Waltons and Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and the rest are so “interested” in public education. They can kill (privatize) it while claiming to “save” it, and make money in the process. Isn’t this what they do with almost everything else?
Indeed, some of the same biggest tax cheaters tin the country give money to the oxymoronic Teach for America, which in turn supports charters. The big contributors are the Arnold Foundation (which wants to privatize public pensions), the arch-conservative Kern Foundation (which tries to inculcate ministers into the belief that unregulated “free enterprise” is a “moral system”), the Broad and Gates and Walton Foundations, Cisco, State Farm, and big banks –– Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase–– that have paid billions and billions in penalties and fines for fraud and market-rigging. The FDIC recently filed suit against 16 major “global” banks – including Bank of America Corp, Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase – for “manipulating the Libor interest rate.” The Libor rate is critical to determining interest rates on “$550 trillion in financial products, from home loans to derivatives.”
See, for example: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/us-fdic-libor-idUSBREA2D1KR20140314
Guess who got hosed by these shenanigans? And guess who cashed in?
A democratic society is predicated and contingent on a citizenry that understands and is committed to democratic values. In any democratic society, the people ARE the government. Aristotle noted that democracy (demos) is the populace, the common people. Thus if all citizens are part of self-rule, then they are “a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.” That is the essence of the social contract.
Public education is an integral of the social contract. And that’s exactly why public schooling holds a unique place in democracies, and why it’s so important. In ‘Theory and Practice of the Social Studies,’ University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson called democratic citizenship “the supreme end of education in a democracy.” Horace Mann viewed public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. And Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith, writing in ‘Reflective Thinking: The Method of Education,’ considered the development of critical intelligence –– which they described as the “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic republic.
And yet we have public school educators and ‘leaders’ slobbering all over STEM, and ‘academies,’ and LOTS of technology, and SATs and ACTs, and Advanced Placement, and “college and careers.” Most of it is just phony baloney. Little if any of it gets to what ought to be the focus – the raison d’être – of public schooling.
Setting the record straight about public education is vitally important. Because it’s not just about schooling. It’s about family income, and wages, and a shared sense of community. It’s about needed services and the public good. It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s about the vibrancy, well-being and future of democracy itself.
As Ben Franklin was said to have responded when asked what kind of government the Framers had produced at the Constitutional Convention:
“A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Indeed.