The rise of Donald Trump and his nationalist and racist political agenda has been disturbing to many of us. This
morning, a friend asked me, “How could this happen in the United States?”
We agreed that are
many contributing factors. For the past
several decades, the United States (like much of the rest of the world) has
been witnessing a social transformation the likes of which few living people
can recall. Since the end of World War
II, a new societal structure has gradually been taking shape. It is global rather than national. It is technological rather than
agricultural/industrial. Technology has
made geography increasingly irrelevant, breaking down longstanding
cultural/racial identities. It is
profound in its reach and depth. In the
process, it has given rise to fear, anger, and resentment on the part of many
affected people. But the question
remains: How could the United States
fall victim to the radical reactionaries of the likes of Donald Trump, whose
best historical antecedent may well be Adolph Hitler?
One
factor may well be that we are no longer preparing our young people—either in
the public schools or in our colleges and universities—to function effectively
as citizens. Here is a personal
perspective. I was born in 1948, at the
end of the old industrial period and at the beginning of the current societal transformation.
Throughout the 1950s, American
education was focused on how to maintain democracy in this changing world. This was epitomized by the Truman Commission
report of 1947, which proposed outcomes for the undergraduate curriculum and
standards for general education. It
guided curriculum planning through much of the Cold War.
As
a high school student in the first half of the 1960s, I benefitted from a high
school social studies curriculum that reflected the Commission’s goals. The 9th grade social studies
course was divided between a half-year of Pennsylvania history and a half-year
of “civics”—which included an overview of the Constitution and the various
structures of government at the state and national levels. Tenth grade was devoted to American
history. Eleventh grade focused on world
history. And the senior year social
studies class was “Problems Of Democracy,” which explained how our government
worked and explored some of the major issues that American democratic
institutions had dealt with in recent history.
Unfortunately,
my college experience was a bit different.
While we were offered highly interdisciplinary courses in the history of
the humanities and in the biological and physical sciences, civics education
was not given the same treatment. We
were left with the usual discipline-based introductory courses in sociology,
history, and political science. The
distribution curriculum did not guarantee that all student were exposed to
these subjects. The discipline-based academic
department structure has resisted major interdisciplinary innovations.
Today,
civics education seems to have waned even at the high school level. Our culture has been in a period of profound change for much of the past five decades. This year’s radicalism suggests that we need,
once again, to take responsibility for the civic education of our young people
and, especially, for college students who may lead our communities in the years
ahead. However, this must not be “your
grandfather’s civics class.” If we are
to ensure that our communities—and our broader society—can thrive in the new environment,
we need to prepare young people to live in the global, multi-cultural, technology-based
society and economy that has been growing for the past half-century and that is
now blossoming around the world.
Much
has been said lately about whether our educational system is a benefit to
society or simply to the individuals who learn a vocation in our schools and
universities. Now is the time to
re-imagine the social role of American education and to build a new curriculum—and
revitalize our institutions—to meet the needs of this new society.
