(Ed. Note: A version of this essay appears in today’s edition of The New York Daily News. Both are based on ideas in E.D. Hirsch’s new book The Making of Americans)
In town hall meetings and the Internet people address fellow citizens with whom they disagree as though they were dangerous creatures from another planet. The animosities on display have an almost tribal flavor — Hutus versus Tutsis, white versus black, Democrats versus Republicans.
“People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along?” Rodney King, a man whose beating by the police became a flashpoint in U. S. race relations achieved with those words a place in national memory. Coming at a moment of tension and resentment, they resonated with Americans’ deep desire for comity – just as we now wish for greater civility at health-care town hall meetings and more cooperation among members of Congress.
Quasi-tribal domestic hostilities constitute a mortal danger to our nation that the founders of the United States were anxious to overcome. They believed that the deepest threats to any republic were the two F’s: faction and fanaticism. When Ben Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a lady asked him: “Well, Doctor, what have we got?” To which he replied: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” His remark reflected a worry shared by other delegates to the convention, including George Washington and James Madison. Washington bequeathed part of his estate to the creation of a system of schooling that would “do away local attachments and state prejudices.” And Madison acknowledged in the Federalist Papers that we need to develop a new kind of citizen through our schools: “As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust; So there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” Unless we could educate citizens and leaders who could rise above personal ambition and special interest to seek the common good, our new republic would fail as had all prior republics in history.
Throughout the nineteenth century, American schools deliberately fostered a sense of commonality with other Americans. It was the great era of the common school movement which featured a benign conspiracy among the writers of schoolbooks to teach many of the same things across all subjects in the early grades, and especially in American history. As one early textbook author put it, the aim was “to exhibit in a strong light the principles of religious and political freedom which our forefathers professed . . . and to record the numerous examples of fortitude, courage, and patriotism which have rendered them illustrious.” During the 19th century, American politics were as hardnosed as now, but compromise in Congress and civility in the public sphere were greater then. During the 19th century the French observer Alexis de Tocqueville reported that the schools of the United States were being far more successful in the effort at citizen-making and allegiance to the common good than the schools of Europe.
Today, our schools are failing to raise the language proficiencies of high school students. We see clear evidence in disappointing scores on college entrance exams like the SAT. It is no coincidence that we are seeing a rise in public incivility along with this decline in verbal skills. The key point in understanding the profound connection between the two is that language proficiency is chiefly based on wide knowledge, and more specifically on knowledge that is silently shared by every competent member of a speech community. This tacitly shared knowledge constitutes the public sphere — the commons upon which civic discourse takes place. The key to being a good speaker, reader, and writer is the possession of the broad unspoken knowledge that is shared by other effective speakers, readers, and writers within a nation.
Space won’t permit an elaboration of the strong scientific consensus that explains the connection between shared, unspoken knowledge and effective communication. I’ve done that at length in various books, most recently in The Making of Americans. Here I’ll simply assume that basic point about communication and make a further point about the decline of civility. The shared knowledge that enables communication in the public sphere also induces a sense of community, and helps overcome tribal antipathies. Horace Mann, often described as the father of public education, said: “The spread of education, by enlarging the cultivated class or caste, will open a wider area over which the social feelings will expand; and, if this education should be universal and complete, it would do more than all things else to obliterate factitious distinctions in society.”
Mann, and education pioneers like Noah Webster, as well as our brilliant founders understood that shared knowledge and loyalty to the common good could only be fostered through a common elementary education – a shared core curriculum in the early grades. By 1950, that insight became neglected and, indeed, aggressively rejected in our schools. The subsequent fragmentation of the elementary-school curriculum is the root cause of our students’ low verbal scores, and of the wide gap in verbal proficiency between our low-scoring white students and far lower-scoring black and Hispanic students. We will recover verbal proficiency, economic justice, and social comity only if we institute more coherent substance and greater commonality in our elementary schools.
I’m generally favorable to this argument, but do you really want to say: “During the 19th century, American politics were as hardnosed as now, but compromise in Congress and civility in the public sphere were greater then.”
I seem to remember the odd caning in the Senate, Bloody Kansas, and a certain Civil War. I can’t imagine how you’d quantify this, but I would be surprised if the quote statement were accurate.
Comment by Kevin Miller — September 24, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
We should never forget that the ‘common school’ of the 19th century was the conduit for the introduction of look-and-say, learning through play, and the idea that teachers were experts in child development. In modern times, the notion of a ‘skills’ based curriculum would make little headway but for the enormous coercive power of the state.
Although I have always fervently supported the idea of a common curriculum based upon out intellectual and cultural heritage, I am just as strongly opposed to the idea that it should be enforced by the state. As Andrew Coulson has so wisely pointed out, people with greatly differing ideas can live harmoniously as neighbours, but once you force them to accept each others’ beliefs, they will become enemies.
We were warned–172 years ago, by the Massachusetts legislature’s education subcommittee: “The establishment of the Board of Education seems to be the commencement of a system of centralization and monopoly of power in a few hands, contrary, in every respect, to the true spirit of our democratical institutions; and which, unless speedily checked, may lead to unlooked-for and dangerous results.”
Comment by Tom Burkard — September 24, 2009 @ 11:49 pm
Well said, Tom. We will never achieve social comity by giving one side the power to tell the other side to “shut up.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWHgUE9AD4s
It is also very disingenuous to compare people who participate in democracy through town hall meetings as equivalent to “Hutus versus Tutsis.” Without the internet we would not know about the black conservative who was beaten, the white conservative who has his pinky bitten off, and the gun-toting, second-amendment supporter who was portrayed as being white but turned out to be black; although you’d never know any of that if the “mainstream” media had complete control over information. Three cheers for the internet.
Those who control government now would love to erase the memory of the principle of individual sovereignty that this country was founded on. As Newsweek so hopefully proclaimed “We Are All Socialists Now”.
We are not tribes, Mr. Hirsch; we are individuals and families. And we are trying to keep the government out of our health care decisions at least, since the government already has access to our personal, private, confidential, and privileged medical information.
I will not “shut up.”
Comment by T. Morgan Willemse — September 27, 2009 @ 3:18 pm
In the 1960′s the radicals referred to what you are speaking of as America’s civic religion. It was the common understanding of the original intent of the constitution and it was taught in civics and in history. It held up an ideal of a certian public civic personality of constitutional and historical American-American character. The Left hated this ideology calling it a lie because it did not include Black Americans and with that, they erased it and replaced it with a new and improved race-based tribalism which they call “diversity.” The basis or ideology of diversity happens to be the ideals of socialism rather than the American constitution and a post-segregation racial order with white men on the bottom of the elites’ preference in law and opportunity and the remaining majority above them. This new and improved race hate order is called “social justice” and it is as unconstitutional as the racial order it replaced.
The two sorely conflict in one is the ideal of the the elite deciding the good of the collective and the other is the ideal of an indiviudal’s importance for self determination in consitutional freedom. One involves man’s meaning derived from skin color and meaning based on historical tribal and sex narratives and the other derives meaning from the character of individual man standing and his guilt or innonece based on his individual actions.
Therein lies the impossible division in our nation. The constiution evolved into a culture and the Left refers to it as “white culture.”
They call it racist and want it cleansed; replaced with the diversity socialist culture they invented. That is called the socialist eltie’s imposition of political correctness. The American-Americans do not cooperate and act like the Native Americans acted towards their “superior” cultural cleansers of history. They will one day “progress” to taking scalps. In reality the American-Amercian culture socialists refer to as “white culture” is not all one color. They chose this language of racial division for power.
I never thought I would say this, but the division between those who want to live in a constitutional republic and those who want to live in a race based socialist Nation are irreconcilable and the Nation should divide between the two; one free constitutional republic and one nanny state socialist democracy. One with people who like to be taken care of and directed by the elite and the other who perfer to direct and take care of each other and themselves. One with a culture where people are viewed by the content of their character and the other where people are viewed by the content of their historial race victimhood and conformance to political correctness. Trying to blend the two kills both and makes our people crazy – divided against each other and within themselves. Look at the culture of screaming, stupid people in a constant battle it produces. Let’s make a divorce orderly and not spill a lot of blood about it. Liberals deserve their Utopia and American-Americans deserve their freedom.
Comment by Sara — September 27, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
Sara, I strongly recommend that you read E.D. Hirsch’s The Making of Americans. It explains how public schools used to unify a diverse people without erasing all differences. Now that multicultural fever has passed, I think we have a shot of doing this again –steering a middle course between Left and Right.
Comment by Ben F — September 27, 2009 @ 10:51 pm
Ben,
Multicultural fever has passed?! Is that because one of the most hated of the multiple cultures has been destroyed? I think you need to re-read Sara’s brilliantly written post.
Dr. Hirsch, how far are you willing to go to shred everything you’ve worked for in the last 30 years? The fight to keep government out of our health care decisions is right up there with the desire of Colonial Americans to keep British soldiers out of their homes.
Oh, by the way, fear not: if you’ve had an abortion or an STD, you need not report it to the Central Health Committee. Patrick Kennedy said so.
You know where to find me.
Comment by TM Willemse — October 1, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
I lived in Los Angeles for 30 years, and was there during the Rodney King riots. It was no fun.
Every country deals with race differently. The two biggest mistakes in American history once one gets beyond slavery: (1) forced integration by court rulings – you can’t force people to want to associate with, get along with, or respect you; and (2) affirmative action – no matter how one looks at it, it smacks of unfairness and does not make people respect you.
What we have today are simply the long-term ramifications of bad racial policies. What is perhaps more fascinating is that many think that 50 years of legal integration has somehow negated or counterbalanced the treatment afforded blacks prior thereto.
The reason that American society is incapable of addressing the racial issue is because we view it from the wrong perspective. We talk all around the fundamental, underlying reasons for racism, and make it an emotional issue. How does one expect to cure the cancer without focusing on the cancerous cells? Focusing on the symptoms is an ineffective mechanism to employ. Consider this.
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