This essay went in a direction that was entirely unanticipated, but which offers a stinging rebuke to the motivation and structure of such civic institutes- if their purpose is to restore faith in democracy, ask the big questions, and inculcate values, why limit their focus to a sanitized corpus of exclusively W.E.I.R.D. texts?
Seems like a good example of the importance of inserting additional iterative prompting in between "definitive" responses whenever possible. Not just the right prompt, but recognizing when it's necessary to insert one.
I wonder how it might have engaged with feminist movements and literature; the sociology of those fields must be very different. (I mean outside the specific context of Black Studies, where it’s not an explicitly intersectional perspective).
I’m not sure the individuals behind this push to teach civics are demanding methodological “innovation” (from your conclusion), nor do I think they would necessarily exclude these weighty African-American thinkers that you reference from a civics curriculum. In fact, if they did urge something like that, I would resist their project with as much energy as I could muster since, by doing so, they would reveal themselves as captured ideologues and partisan/racist hacks.
I think what they are looking for is not methodological innovation, but a change in methodological emphasis. Black Studies approaches American civic life, by dint of its own methodological emphasis/focus, with a highly critical lens. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but a more general grounding in civic education must also inculcate in the student — to quote from the AEI article — “the willingness to take joint responsibility for the challenges facing one’s country…refusing to adopt a posture of ‘estrangement’ from it, an attitude of unquenchable ‘dissatisfaction…and disgust with things as they are,’ [but]…striving rather to understand oneself as implicated…” The article goes on: “To cultivate the capacity for taking joint responsibility, one must strive to know and love [!] the object of one’s efforts…”
In my experience that is not a primary focus of the average Black Studies program, and for sound methodological reasons.
This is the conversation I hoped to provoke and very much want to have. Black studies is pluralistic and the "civics" centering revealed here has not been centered in many places, it is true. But for Civics to wholly disregard the field is something else too.
This is fascinating. On one hand, I loathe identity politics. On the other, I feel like our highest ideals and struggles shine brightest when looking at the history of African Americans.
I really like this example of how LLMs are useful with certain research tasks and their ability to surface interesting insights. Many of my colleagues remain ignorant and somewhat naive about the capabilities of AIs for this sort of work. I guess that gives “us” an advantage but it is sometimes tedious listening to someone hold forth about how bad LLMs are when they have no grasp of what they can do.
LLMs are excellent at pointing out the common within-discipline ignorance of related work in other disciplines. It's just as prevalent in science and social sciences as in humanities. Thank you for highlighting a particularly interesting case.
This essay went in a direction that was entirely unanticipated, but which offers a stinging rebuke to the motivation and structure of such civic institutes- if their purpose is to restore faith in democracy, ask the big questions, and inculcate values, why limit their focus to a sanitized corpus of exclusively W.E.I.R.D. texts?
Thank you and yes.
Seems like a good example of the importance of inserting additional iterative prompting in between "definitive" responses whenever possible. Not just the right prompt, but recognizing when it's necessary to insert one.
I wonder how it might have engaged with feminist movements and literature; the sociology of those fields must be very different. (I mean outside the specific context of Black Studies, where it’s not an explicitly intersectional perspective).
I’m not sure the individuals behind this push to teach civics are demanding methodological “innovation” (from your conclusion), nor do I think they would necessarily exclude these weighty African-American thinkers that you reference from a civics curriculum. In fact, if they did urge something like that, I would resist their project with as much energy as I could muster since, by doing so, they would reveal themselves as captured ideologues and partisan/racist hacks.
I think what they are looking for is not methodological innovation, but a change in methodological emphasis. Black Studies approaches American civic life, by dint of its own methodological emphasis/focus, with a highly critical lens. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but a more general grounding in civic education must also inculcate in the student — to quote from the AEI article — “the willingness to take joint responsibility for the challenges facing one’s country…refusing to adopt a posture of ‘estrangement’ from it, an attitude of unquenchable ‘dissatisfaction…and disgust with things as they are,’ [but]…striving rather to understand oneself as implicated…” The article goes on: “To cultivate the capacity for taking joint responsibility, one must strive to know and love [!] the object of one’s efforts…”
In my experience that is not a primary focus of the average Black Studies program, and for sound methodological reasons.
This is the conversation I hoped to provoke and very much want to have. Black studies is pluralistic and the "civics" centering revealed here has not been centered in many places, it is true. But for Civics to wholly disregard the field is something else too.
Thank you for this valuable and timely piece. For what it's worth, I responded here:
https://peterlevine.ws/?p=35627
Thank you! Hi!
very fascinating!
Love this and it might make it into the graduation speech I am going to have to give in two weeks....
Good!!!
This is fascinating. On one hand, I loathe identity politics. On the other, I feel like our highest ideals and struggles shine brightest when looking at the history of African Americans.
I really like this example of how LLMs are useful with certain research tasks and their ability to surface interesting insights. Many of my colleagues remain ignorant and somewhat naive about the capabilities of AIs for this sort of work. I guess that gives “us” an advantage but it is sometimes tedious listening to someone hold forth about how bad LLMs are when they have no grasp of what they can do.
LLMs are excellent at pointing out the common within-discipline ignorance of related work in other disciplines. It's just as prevalent in science and social sciences as in humanities. Thank you for highlighting a particularly interesting case.