Civic Religion: Still Religion
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
Sorry, but life and work are still getting in the way of blogging. I do, however, wish to give my endorsement to these sentences of Will Wilkinson’s:
One of the first arguments against vouchers, tax credits or other systems of publicly-financed, privately-provided education is that taxpayer money should not go to schools that teach this or that allegedly malign belief. It just so happens that, on the way to making certain that children are not taught that the world is 6000 years old (which would obviously neutralize one’s ability to earn a living as a middle manager), children are also imbued with a certain nationalistic civic piety and the belief that, say, FDR saved capitalism from itself. Who knows what chaos might otherwise ensue?
The argument comes with bonus data (pdf), too.
Elsewhere: Per Will’s recommendation, do read Tim Carney on the power of the teachers unions.
Filed under: education, patriotism, politics, religion
I’m kind of sympathetic to the idea that instilling values like citizenship requires some sort of creepy civic religion. Granted, we’re not very good at providing a balanced account of our own history and traditions, but there’s something to be said for national assimilation via schooling in such a culturally diverse country.
I suspect you and Wilkinson were the guys who slouched or fell asleep during the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m sympathetic to this because I was basically in the same boat, but knee-jerk aversion to indoctrination from a couple of cynical, highly-educated commentators may not be the best guidepost for an education policy that really isn’t aimed at your demographic anyway.
In what sense is citizenship a “value”? (I don’t mean to snark; it’s an honest question.) And for the record, I don’t have a problem with “national assimilation via schooling” or even with “indoctrination” per se, but it doesn’t seem to me that “creepy civic religion”, as you put it, needs to be a part of that: speaking in English, and teaching kids (non-mythical!) Western and American history, can do the job well enough; there’s no need to lie to them.
Also: I wasn’t a Pledge sloucher, actually, though I plan to raise my kids to be – but you’re right that the twin demographics of anti-democratic libertarians and, well, whatever demographic it is that I fall into (perhaps: America-skeptical anti-democratic postmodern libertarian Christians?) are decidedly not the ones that our education policy is meant to please.
I suppose I take “citizenship” as shorthand for any number of values, including (but not limited to) an appreciation of our history and some sense of obligation to the United States. Lest I be accused of mindless jingoism, I think our current approach is badly flawed, but I don’t think this discredits the entire notion of national assimilation through public schooling. I also find it hard to believe that private schools would fulfill a similar function.
Full disclosure: I was the pledge sloucher to end all pledge slouchers, so maybe I’m just over-compensating for my high school antics.
Heh. Appreciation of our history and sense of (genuine) patriotic obligation are fine by me, and if there’s a sufficiently light-handed way to mandate that such demands be met by any educational program that receives federal funding, then that’s fine by me. My real objection, which I take it is also Will’s real objection, is to the many ways in which this takes the form of whitewashing or otherwise misconstruing our history, or claiming that things (e.g. voting, devotion to the Cult of the Presidency) are part of what it means to be a good citizen when they in fact aren’t.