Kindle Notes & Highlights
put this in presentation for june 8
“To become an American is a process which resembles a conversion. It is not so much a new country that one adopts as a new creed.”10
political philosophers generally agree that the fundamental purpose of any legitimate government is to help create the good life, the good society.11
To some American philosophers, the good society is “. . . a widening of democratic participation and the accountability of institutions; an interdependent prosperity . . . that enables everyone to participate in the goods of society.”12
When we speak of the good life or the good society we are referring to a set of values that reflect what’s most important to us as a nation, as a society, and as a people.
The first theme addresses the relationship between individual liberty and the interests of the community and the common good.
Although in tension with one another, neither liberty nor community is sustainable without the other.15
A sense of commonality, of community and place, can encourage cooperation among self-reliant individuals and autonomous organizations and institutions.18
The second theme addresses the relationship between liberty and equality. In general, greater liberty leads to greater inequality, while efforts to create more equality limit liberty.
The third theme addresses the relationship between economic prosperity and equality. Tensions between these values exist because the political sphere emphasizes equal rights and equal opportunity while the economic sphere creates few rights and produces less equal opportunity.22
four core values of the public good—liberty, equality, community and prosperity.
while freedom, from an Indo-European root shared with “friend,” connotes the right of belonging within a community of free people.25
Liberty is the value of the individual, of the “I.” Liberty is about rights, personal freedom, choice and individuality.
The answer lies in understanding that liberty cannot be made absolute without causing harm.
As Thomas Jefferson explained, what we should seek is rightful liberty, not absolute liberty. “Rightful liberty,” Jefferson wrote, “is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
Liberty is not just something I enjoy, but something you must enjoy also, or the day may come when I no longer enjoy my liberty. In other words, there is a certain element of equality to be found in our liberty.
liberty and freedom are within the boundaries of for all in the community...it works until it doesnt then one gets sacrificed for the other...comon purpose heps create a bigger circle in which communities can have more of both
Equality is the value of the group. In order to realize our individual aspirations we sometimes address issues as a group, e.g., equal access, equal rights, and equal opportunity.
“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good plac...
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As Aristotle observed, “The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.”
Liberty and equality enjoy a certain tension in their relationship with one another. Greater freedom tends to accentuate inequality, while attempts to create truly equal societies require freedom to be restricted.
“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free, and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically . . . To check the growth of inequality, liberty must be sacrificed.”
Tocqueville offers this solution. “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, soci...
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Tocqueville is suggesting that if democracy is based on freedom, we must seek equality through liberty, rather than in lieu of liberty. If Paine and Jefferson suggest there should be a certain equality in our liberty, Tocquevill...
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wrote Herman Melville. “A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men and women; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
We invoke the meaning of community when we consider the boundaries between public and private, such as public displays of religion. And we invoke a sense of “we” when we call for conservation, preservation, and restoration, and when we join together to take collective action on behalf of all of us.
our verbal homage to community is only one side of a deep ambivalence that runs through the American character—the other side of which is a celebration of unfettered individualism.”27
Prosperity is the value of capitalism and utilitarianism. Prosperity maintains a close relationship with liberty, as it values the freedom of the market and of individual actors and decision makers, so-called rational actors, to make their own choices and decisions. As characterized by Ayn Rand, “In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions and interests dictate.”
When we invoke the “free market,” for example, we are joining liberty and prosperity.
the difference here is intention
These questions are about the public in public schools. They involve our visions of the good life and our understanding of the public good. They are not technical or expert questions about how we teach arithmetic or about whether state history should precede U.S. history in the curriculum or vice versa. They are value-based questions about the social and political context of public schools and about our vision for the future—what kind of society we wish to create and perpetuate.
One great truth about our political beliefs is that the aspirations of the American Creed and American Dream unite us, but our interpretations of those aspirations and how best to achieve them divide us.31
As playwright Eugene Ionesco wrote, “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”
public schools come to grips with their responsibility for cultivating the public life of our communities?
inculcate any sense of political, ethical and moral responsibility in its citizens?32
If public schools serve no other purpose, they should serve this one.
A public role in education was often linked to preserving liberty and the ideals of the American Revolution. “There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable,” wrote Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, “and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”
commerce education reflected wealth and materialism but not to the point of greed
morality capitalism framed early public education
No common history or experience as a nation in working together and taking collective action, other than uniting against the British.
wow... thats important ibn thinking about govt and collective beliefs... community
Ideological tension between Jefferson’s republicanism, emphasizing freedom and individual interests and Hamilton’s federalism, emphasizing social order and collective interests.4
Today we have multiple and competing visions of public education, but no national consensus about the fundamental purposes and roles of public schools.
many of the founders and framers, believed that public education held the key to both preserving independence and creating a united America among very independent states. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives,” wrote James Madison. “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right...and a desire to know,” wrote John Adams.
To preserve liberty and prevent the newly united states from fragmenting into independent states, a balance between freedom and independence on the one hand and unity and social order on the other needed to be struck.
From its very beginning, the national government believed strongly that the public prosperity of the nation depended on the vitality of its religion.
Woodrow Wilson. We would soon learn that while the war for independence had been won, the battle to preserve the ideals of the Revolution would be never-ending.
For Dewey, a fundamental purpose of education is to help prepare individuals to be self-governing, the ultimate expression of personal liberty.
self governance and liberty
Individuals, Dewey argued, don’t acquire the self-governing skills and virtues of citizenship that a democratic society requires simply because they procure diplomas and degrees. Rather it is through the process of education, particularly civic and democratic education that requires them to make room for different people and different views, that individuals become self-governing citizens.
Within the context of the founders’ “grand experiment,” the public purpose of public schools is not to produce the same results or to make us the same. It is to provide us with a common socializing experience that preserves the energy and vitality of our individual and cultural differences and yet allows us to recognize and accept each other as fellow citizens and Americans. “We dare not forget, cautioned John F. Kennedy, “that we are the heirs of that first revolution.” Developing self-governing individuals within the context of a shared and common heritage is the critical task of public
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Teaching the 3 R’s was no longer sufficient for this new good society. Public schools would be asked to address issues of assimilation and socialization in order to preserve the American way of life.
schools change from educating for individualizm and liberty in industralized nation to nation building for community and socializing of immigrants
