We’re leaving today for a vacation in Venice. For the sake of my sanity, I’m not going to bring my laptop, and I’ll try to resist the temptation to open a browser if I see an Internet-equipped computer. So there will be no posts here until June 19.
Monthly Archives: June 2006
why I’m not a zealot about church and state
We saw a student production of Godspell last weekend in my little daughter’s Washington, DC public school. In a different DC public school years ago, I attended a PTA fundraiser that was pervasively religious, all of its rhetoric drawn explicitly from the evangelical Black church. I’ve argued here that it should be constitutional to teach intelligent design (even though it’s bad science and worse theology). In these three cases–and others like them–I’m not zealous to keep religion out of public schools.
I’m not saying that authority figures in state schools like the ones we have today should make sectarian, religious pronouncements while they perform their official duties. To mention an easy case, the principal of a neighborhood public school should not get on the P.A. system and tell all the kids that they must embrace Jesus Christ as their personal savior. But in closer cases, I’m inclined to tolerate religion in public schools, for these reasons:
First, the purpose of public schooling is to reproduce and enhance a culture (not simply to produce economic “returns” for graduates). Because cultural reproduction is a common good, we need to subsidize it with public funds: otherwise, many people will leave the expense to others. Of course, “culture” is heterogeneous and controversial. That is why citizens need to participate in shaping their schools. The debate about what values we should teach is not a cost, but an opportunity to create our common future. By the way, there must be some local control over education, because a national debate about culture will produce the lowest common denominator.
Education should not be conceived as value-neutral, because that is impossible, and the effort to strip it of overt values has negative consequences–such as those that I mentioned yesterday in reference to civics textbooks. I am not terribly offended if some of the values taught in public schools are religious, in part because I think almost all modern norms have religious roots.
As Eugene Volokh’s recent post and the replies indicate, the founders of the United States favored public schooling largely in order to inculcate values. I would reject their assumption that religion was a necessary foundation of public morality. (The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 said: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”) But I would endorse the premise of the Northwest Ordinance that certain virtues are important for good government and public happiness, and that public schooling should promote those virtues. If my fellow citizens see religion as part of morality, so be it.
Second, I would rather have the freedom to participate in a robust debate about the content of our children’s education than to see courts dictate a position, even if I agree with it. For instance, when a judge rules that the teaching of intelligent design is unconstitutional, we cannot seriously discuss the issue. Likewise, if a court were to rule that public schools may not produce Godspell, we would have less scope to debate that play.
Third, Harry Brighouse argues in On Education that there are some perverse, unintended consequences from the American policy of barring religion from all state-funded education. A substantial group of parents is uncomfortable with secular public schools, because those institutions are materialistic, highly individualistic and competitive, and tolerant of premature sexuality. Brighouse (pp. 87-88) describes the typical high school:
It is a 2000-plus student institution, in which no individual knows every other individual; in which many children never have any teacher for more than one year of instruction; in which the prevailing values include pep rallies for sports and a slavishly conformist loyalty to school and neighbourhood. These schools maintain a deafening silence about spiritual or anti-materialist values, take sides in the Cola wars, and accept as a given the prevalence of brand names and teen-marketing. Religious parents often, with justification, believe that their own beliefs are at best ignored, at worst actively worked against by the schools. …
I suspect that in the US many parents are drawn to private religious schools not by any interest in having their chidren indoctrinated, but by their horror at the experience of the shopping-mall high school, and, in fact, an unarticulated sense that the values of the peer group, tolerated by the school, threaten, rather than serve, their children’s prospective autonomy. Religious parents fear that schools that do not incorporate strong moral values, and which treat spirituality as just another lifestyle option … endanger their and other children’s prospects for a balanced and satisfying life.
In most foreign countries, these parents would opt for state-funded religious schools. Some are not fundamentalists (or even necessarily believers), so they add diversity to religious schools by enrolling their own children. In most countries, state-funded denominational schools are regulated so that, for example, they must teach core democratic principles and tolerate non-believers.
In the United States, however, we have pervasively secular public schools that aim for value-neutrality (sometimes with bad consequences); and we have religious schools without any access to state money whose curricula are completely unregulated. The religious schools may draw religiously zealous parents who are hostile to the mainstream culture. When this happens, their students become a homogeneous group, deprived of diverse influences.
American Catholic schools, although not state-subsidized, give a taste of what would happen if public schools could introduce more religion–or if private religious schools could get state money. After Vatican II, Catholic educators chose not to proselytize, but instead to teach a set of values that are highly compatible with secular democracy. They also draw diverse student populations. They appear to do a better job of secular civic education than the public schools–on average. Thoughtful observers like Jim Youniss and David Campbell believe that modern Catholic education succeeds because it is grounded in strong moral commitments.
textbook politics
A paper by Sharareh Frouzesh Bennett confirms my unsystematic impression of the leading high school textbooks for civics and government (pdf). Bennett analyzes the big three, which are published by Prentice Hall, Glencoe, and Holt. She finds that they present American government as a well-organized system for implementing what the people want. Voting is by far the most commonly mentioned form of civic engagement, which makes sense if the government is basically satisfactory, and majority-rule is the essence of democracy. Since the existence of profound disagreement is not acknowledged in any of the leading textbooks, little is said about tools available to electoral minorities, such as “boycotts, lawsuits, protests, and civil disobedience.” Because the government is portrayed as capable of handling all public issues, virtually nothing is said about citizens’ roles in social movements, voluntary associations, and (more generally) civil society. “The Holt text refers to civil disobedience during the section on the civil rights movement and indicates that the method was used in the past to defy laws that were thought to be wrong.” Overall, politics is portrayed as a formal system that offers a limited role for citizens (basically, voting). It is not described as a struggle over contested issues.
If young people study the three branches of government and the Bill of Rights, but they are not made aware of any particular controversies about economics, war, or moral issues, I would predict no impact on their interest in politics. Surveys tend to find a positive relationship between taking a civics class and political participation. Perhaps that relationship is misleading. (Maybe students who are already interested in politics are more likely to take civics classes.) Or perhaps courses really boost interest in politics–but no thanks to the textbooks.
Bennett’s findings are consistent with our surveys, which find that most students are taught about the excellence of the American political system. Only 5.2% recall studying “problems facing the country today.” Contrary to the fears of conservatives (who dwell on scattered anecdotes about leftist teachers), most students receive a civic education that is “conservative” in a particular sense. Textbooks do not introduce them to right-wing ideas, such as reducing the size of government or banning abortion. That’s because textbooks contain few political ideas of any kind. Instead, students are taught that the status quo is desirable and uncontroversial–a form of conservatism that both right and left should reject.
a few cheers for bipartisanship and comity
I knew Zach Clayton back when. As a high school student, he was one of the two young people who contributed to the Civic Mission of Schools Report, a consensus document otherwise produced by 58 non-youth, including me. Now Zach is helping to organize Unity08, which proposes to field a bipartisan presidential ticket in 2008. David Broder writes in the Washington Post:
[Lindsay] Ullman and [Zach] Clayton, former presidents of the National Association of Student Councils, certainly are right when they say that many of their contemporaries are frustrated by the spectacle of both parties catering to entrenched interest groups and ideological extremes. Even though a senator from his home state, John Edwards, was on the Democratic ticket, Clayton said many of his friends ‘didn’t like the choices and didn’t vote’ in 2004.
Notwithstanding Zach’s personal experience, I have to disagree with his theory that partisan disagreement generally suppresses turnout. The ’04 election was a fierce competition between left and right, and voter participation was the highest since 1968–another year of political polarization. The increased competition seemed to have an especially beneficial effect on youth turnout, which was sharply up, above all in the “battleground” states.
I also disagree with the principle that we should avoid sharp disagreements between the national parties. On the contrary, voters deserve clearly defined choices. There are real disagreements in the population, not just in Congress. Politics is how we address those differences, and we shouldn’t paper them over.
However, there are reasons to favor a dose of bipartisanship at this particular moment. In Washington today, there is true partisan enmity: mutual hostility that prevents the parties from making progress even on those issues on which they happen to agree. Neither side is willing to make any sacrifices (e.g., to promote their own economic principles), because they know that the other will exact a political price for anything that causes short-term pain.
on sincerity in public life
There is obviously a hunger for politicians who speak from the heart. That’s the theme of Joe Klein’s new book, Politics Lost, which evokes the (supposed) sincerity of Bobby Kennedy in contrast to the falseness of today’s leaders. I have not read the book, but this excerpt is impressive.
I think Klein is exactly right that techniques for understanding audiences have become more sophisticated since 1968. The public “has been sliced and diced by … pollsters, their prejudices and policy priorities cross-tabbed, their favorite words discovered by carefully targeted focus groups.” People know that they are being analyzed, sorted, and manipulated (by politicians as by corporations), and they resent it.
At the same time, citizens have more information about politicians. All the public remarks of public officials are online and searchable, which makes them more cautious. In the name of “accountability,” pressure groups force candidates to sign pledges and then keep track of their votes. In this context, unscripted authenticity is especially dangerous.
But politicians have never been known for widespread sincerity. Lear, for example, imagines that Gloucester is a “scurvy politician” who “seem[s] to see the things thou dost not.” Politicians, whether in Shakespeare’s time or ours, are people who compete for favor. That competition is desirable in a democratic system. But it is abidingly difficult to win favor through straightforward honesty.
Furthermore, there are virtues of leadership that militate against sincerity. For instance, I think a full and honest appraisal of the alleged massacre in Haditha would be complex. It would recognize the extremely difficult position in which the Marines were placed, yet it would put moral responsibility on their shoulders (if they really massacred civilians). I’m not sure, however, that we want a president to lay out all these complexities. It may be better for him to state clearly that the United States has no tolerance, and makes no excuses, for murder.
Another example: I like rhetoric that calls us back to ostensibly traditional, American values of multilateralism and human rights. However, I couldn’t use such rhetoric myself in full sincerity. The United States has a long tradition of unilateral military adventures and human-rights violations. But saying so doesn’t call us to our best values, as good leaders do.
Klein uses Bobby Kennedy’s Indianapolis speech as an example of honesty and courage. Indeed, Kennedy took a huge risk when he broke the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination to an unsuspecting Black audience. As Klein notes, Kennedy couldn’t know in advance how they would react, and that uncertainty gave his speech an authenticity that is absent today. Klein is also correct that Kennedy respected his audience, which is the opposite of today’s manipulative campaigning.
However, consider statements like the following from the 1968 speech: “But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.” Was that literally true? Was it the whole story? Or was Kennedy trying to move his audience to support his ideals (and his candidacy) by appealing to their sense of their own virtue?
Kennedy quoted Aeschylus that night, calling him his “favorite poet.” If Kennedy really did prefer Aeschylus above all other poets, then he admired a pagan who believed that goodness lay beyond our control and that implacable fate was amoral. Yet Kennedy cited a passage from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon in a translation that made it sound Christian. (“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”) Invoking divine “grace” was perfect for the occasion, but it was not what someone would believe who truly loved Aeschylus.
Obviously, that’s not a valid criticism of Kennedy’s speech. We ought to prize courageous moral leadership without making sincerity its hallmark. I suspect that we seek authenticity partly because of modern celebrity culture, with its public confessions and disclosures. We’re used to people who have nothing much to say but who are willing to expose their private lives and feelings. Most celebrities do not claim to be good, only to be candid; and the very fact that they are lying causes us to value sincerity. But candor is not the highest virtue for politicians. We ought to judge them on the content of their speech, not the fit between what they say and what they believe.