May
28, 2002, 8:45 a.m. Old-School
Civics
Wish we knew
what they knew then.
By Albert Keith
Whitaker
n
a bookshelf near my desk stands a copy of a diary my great-grandfather
Winfield kept in 1897, when he was around 16 years old. Though the copy
quality makes it a bit hard to read, there is a fetching liveliness to
Winfield's daily record. He devotes much space to keeping track of the
growth of his "spawn," a school of minnows he hatched in a converted
hen trough. He notes his grades on exams, which rarely rise above the
mediocre, and family comings and goings, which are numerous. Once he begins
studying French, he takes pleasure in tossing in the occasional cependant
or c'est a dire. There is a somber subplot — the daily update
on an uncle, dying of an undisclosed ailment — but for the most part
he writes with the freshness (in every sense of that word) of a teenage
boy, often punctuating his observations, with "Well! Well!"
"By God!" or, at the appropriate times, "War!"
For, I must add,
most of Winfield's diary concerns politics. He followed closely the Greco-Turkish
war over Crete (he was for the Greeks) and the Cuban revolt against Spain
("Cuba Libre!"). But his real passion was die kleine
Politik. For example, January's entries flutter with excitement over
the attempt of a certain state senator, Lomasney, to keep another local
eminence, Mitchell Galvin, from being elected city clerk by the Boston
Board of Alderman — the plot fails. By January 27, he proudly notes,
he has visited the state house of representatives twice. At the end of
the diary, he lists the entire "Boston City Government, 1897,"
mayor, alderman, and common council — all 25 wards — taking
note of the party affiliation of each official. In contrast, things that
would appear of transcendent importance to a teenager today he barely
mentions. For example, in half a line at the bottom of the entry for January
7 he jots, "I am going to Harvard."
In today's lingo,
Winfield possessed "advanced civics knowledge," which would
set him apart from about 98 percent of present 16-year-olds. Moaning over
youth's political ignorance and apathy is as old as politics, but according
to a recent Washington
Post
story on civic education, the present situation may be particulary
bad. The most recent NAEP
Civics Report Card (1998) showed that 75 percent of 4th, 8th, and
12th graders lack proficiency in civics. (The figure is closer to 90 percent
for black, hispanic, and American-Indian students.) In response, the Bush
administration plans to use some of the moral and political capital of
September 11 to beef up civics education. How they will do so is the subject
of a White House "working group," but, according to the Post,
the approach will likely include a mix of "federal incentives for
states to adopt civics education classes and standards in public schools,
expansion of 'service learning' classes that give credit for community
volunteer work, drafting of a broadly accepted civics curriculum and use
of the presidential bully pulpit."
It's hard to argue
against making civics a prominent part of young people's education. The
most serious thinkers — from Plato and Aristotle through the American
Founders and beyond — agree in this case with common sense that no
one is born a citizen; education, of some sort, must do the job. But learning
to be a citizen is like learning a language: You have to do it.
That is, the principles of citizenship, unlike say the principles of mathematics,
cannot be learned from a book; they come to one through practice.
Refusal to appreciate
this point has led many contemporary theorists astray, and may do the
same to the Bush administration. The NAEP's widely accepted 1996 Civics
Framework, for example, argues that civics includes certain knowledge
about the United States, intellectual and participatory skills, and "civic
dispositions." Very well, but how does one transform these abstractions
into a citizen? The general solution, voiced also in the Post article,
is through a combination of coursework and community service. Coursework
can't hurt, but it can only do so much; after all, the Iraqi intelligence
agency surely contains agents who have closely studied American government.
It's also hard to see that required or even extra-curricular community
service will teach the principles of specifically American citizenship.
Volunteers in a charitable organization usually enjoy shared, narrowly
tailored, unobjectionable goals — the very things lacking in the
political arena. Likewise, unless they're fulfilling some "academic"
requirement, they usually act out of a sense of charity or compassion.
No one doubts young people should learn to share and help others, but
no amount of charity or compassion leads citizens to sacrifice great goods
— such as their lives or freedom — for their fellow countrymen.
Finally, it's precisely by doing concrete, helpful things, rather than
advocating or debating, that most community service organizations achieve
success. But while serving food, planting trees, or painting over graffitti
might give young people some reason for pride, it will give them little
practice in ruling themselves or others within the difficult demands of
Right.
My great grandfather
never took a civics course, and I don't know what kind of citizen he became.
Certainly there is a difference between collecting political gossip and
citizenship. Still, he enjoyed avenues to and incentives for civic learning
that have grown scarcer over the last century. In his classes he learned
about great citizens of the past, not only Americans but also such men
as Cicero and Demosthenes, people who risked or even gave their lives
to keep their nations free. Also, in his day, the actions of such bodies
as the Massachusetts General Court or the Boston Common Council possessed
primary political importance, and had not yet been circumscribed by an
overactive Congress or judiciary. Finally, Winfield's diary reveals that
he possessed a concrete sense of the individual goods that his natural
rights and the American Constitution intended to secure, a sense not blunted
by technological comforts or luxury, and impossible to replicate by any
amount of "service learning." Every few days he dutifully recorded
that he had filled the woodbox. I like to imagine that it was a big chore,
one deserving such notice, and that part of his seriousness about political
life derived from a lively sense of the difficulty and the importance
of keeping your own family warm.
—
Albert Keith Whitaker is a professor of philosophy at Boston College.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
n
a bookshelf near my desk stands a copy of a diary my great-grandfather
Winfield kept in 1897, when he was around 16 years old. Though the copy
quality makes it a bit hard to read, there is a fetching liveliness to
Winfield's daily record. He devotes much space to keeping track of the
growth of his "spawn," a school of minnows he hatched in a converted
hen trough. He notes his grades on exams, which rarely rise above the
mediocre, and family comings and goings, which are numerous. Once he begins
studying French, he takes pleasure in tossing in the occasional cependant
or c'est a dire. There is a somber subplot — the daily update
on an uncle, dying of an undisclosed ailment — but for the most part
he writes with the freshness (in every sense of that word) of a teenage
boy, often punctuating his observations, with "Well! Well!"
"By God!" or, at the appropriate times, "War!"
