Notes for “Shut Up and March: Patriotism and the Threat to Democracy in American Schools” (Symposium at AERA, Montreal, April 2005).
This panel, according to our organizer Joel Westheimer, “will clearly be one of the more earth shattering sessions at the conference, that we will together, remarkably, bring down the Bush presidency, that schools will never be the same after a bunch of researchers discuss patriotism with us.” I do not doubt him.
My assignment is to: present on patriotism in the social studies curriculum, historically and today; detail several ongoing debates about patriotism and its place in civic education and school curricula.I’ve only got 5-8 minutes. Here’s a bulleted list of points I’ll try to make, but will obviously run of out time doing:
* In the social studies curriculum, patriotism is pursued via “citizenship education,” through a framework of “traditions” initially described by Barr, Barth and Shermis (1977) but reworked by many folks over the years. The fundamental idea is that no matter the curricular/instructional approach (e.g., “cultural transmission,” teaching “social science knowledge,” or encouraging “reflective thinking”) the singular outcome of social studies education is the production of democratic citizens. These citizens might potentially be conforming patriots or dissenting patriots.
* Citizenship education represents the historically dominant justification of social studies and includes knolwedge or information, skills, values, and social-political-economic participation. However, there is no consensus on what “citizenhip/patriotism” means nor the implications of “citizenship” for curriculum and instruction. As Marker and Mehlinger said in their review of research on the social studies curriculum “the apparent consensus on behalf of citizenship education is almost meaningless. Behind that totem to which nearly all social studies researchers pay homage lies continuous and rancorous debate about the purposes of social studies.”
* Using I. M. Young’s framework of “five faces of oppression,” Vinson (2001) presents an analysis of “civic education” curricula such as CIVITAS and the National Standards for Civics and Government that illustrates the potential for both the oppressive and anti-oppressive potential of citizenship education.
* Ron Evan’s recent history of the social studies uses a “war” metaphor to (accurately) describe a field that is divided into camps with competing interests and goals for the social studies as a school subject.
* Key social studies educators (self-described “Contrarians”) have now hooked up with “movement conservatism” (e.g., well-funded right wing think tanks and foundations such as AEI, Heritage and Fordham Foundations) attacking pluralism and dissent. An effort that secondarily undermines the “tolerant pluralism” that has marked the acceptance of divergent curricular goals of the field of social studies education.
* The Contrarian’s primary document was published in 2003 by the Fordham Foundation, Where Did Social Studies Go Wrong?
* WDSSGW asserts that: social studies education is in deep trouble primarily because the belief systems of education professors are based upon three premises: (1) American society is morally bankrupt; (2) an elite band of university professors, infused with a passion for social justice, knows best how to reform our flawed society; and, (3) classrooms in our nation’s public schools are an essential battleground for this societal transformation.
* For more a more detailed critique of WDSSGW see: Ross & Marker (2005) Download file
* All is not lost in social studies education. We must be doing something right as evidenced by one “point of light” I recently discovered. An essay on government, written by a fifth grader, which reads, in part: “Governments are afraid of a democratic world. Governments like to have control over the world so they are not throne [sic] by mongers [sic] wanting mere justice in the world. People should have free rights to express their feelings to governments with out being hassled by the man!! Is that to [sic] much to ask?”
* What we currently have is a social studies curriculum that (for the most part) aims to create “patriotic” consumers and spectators (in a framework of “neoliberalism”). In a spectator democracy a specialized class of experts identify what our common interests are and think and plan accordingly. The function of the rest of us is to be “spectators” rather than participants in action (for example, casting votes in elections or implementing educational reforms that are concevied by people who know little or nothing about our desires or interests).
* Social studies ought to be contributing to the development of a society in which there is a free flow of information and people control and manage their own affairs.
* The best way to achieve democracy is to initiate children into a form a social life characteristic of democracy: a community of full participation, in which empowers people; includes all; engages it members in active learning in meaningful real-world activities and that accomodates learners with diverse needs, interests and abilities; intentionally builds learning support strategies; and fosters partnering while building real collaboration withing the school and with families and the community.
Follow
The fifth graders concern about government’s concerns with “mere justice” suggest there may be ways in which governments project an interest in the involvement of the citizenry without actually wanting genuine involvement. Their fear of a democratic world is covered or obscured by the rhetoric (promoted and reified in social studies classes?) of democracy and (mere) justice.
Is this fifth grader part of the panel?