The Unique Challenges of the U.S. System of Governance

• In Event: How Can the Science of Human Learning and Development Inform Preparing Students to Engage in Civic Reasoning?

Abstract

The U.S. represents a unique model of democratic governance in human history. It is a system that seeks to create structures and pathways for navigating difference (Tarrow, 2011). It creates a system of checks and balances among the powers of the federal government and states, differentiated powers within the federal system, between majority and minority populations, and the rights of the individual. Because of this complexity and because it is a system that was designed to allow dissent and difference, what young people need to learn and value to engage this system is equally complex (Gould et a, 2001; Gutmann & Thompson, 2004; Kahne & Bowyer, 2017). This paper examines the history of how the nation has navigated these persistent sources of difference and tension (Anderson, 2006, 2007; Anderson et al, 2020; Williamson et al., 2007)) , how these navigations have and continue to be infused with meta-narratives around difference (e.g. race/ethnicity, immigrant status, poverty, gender, sexual/gender orientation, perceptions of ability). The paper then extrapolates from this history and this documentation of the underlying logic and possibilities of our system of governance to articulate a set of core propositions around what students need to know and be able to do in order to be proactive in their roles of citizens (including citizens broadly defined to include those with formal and informal immigrant status) (Crocco et al., 2017;Clark & Avery, 2016; Clark & Grever, 2018). The propositions articulated in this paper are particularly timely in this era of divisive and sometimes violent dissents over how our students should be prepared in the civic domain, including how we teach history (Sullivan et al. 2020; VanSleidright, 2015; Wineburg, 2002).

Author

• James D. Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign