While there are many definitions of deliberation – and many substantive debates about what constitutes ‘good’ deliberation (or perhaps it must be good to count as deliberation) – I like Jane Mansbridge’s ‘minimalist definition’ as a good starting point for understanding the term.
Deliberation, she writes, is “mutual communication that involves weighing and reflecting on preferences, values and interests regarding matters of common concern.”
While there is much that may be missing from this definition, I do think that it captures the core of what deliberation is all about. It is, fundamentally, a form of communication which engages reason and normative beliefs about shared concerns.
But the simplicity of this definition, perhaps under-states the value of deliberation; the power people can have in shaping their own communities.
Dewey writes that:
Democracy is much broader than a special political form, a method of conducting government, of making laws and carrying on governmental administration by means of popular suffrage and elected officers. It is that, of course. But it is something broader and deeper than that…It is, as we often say, though perhaps without appreciating all that is involved in the saying, a way of life, social and individual. The key-note of democracy as a way of life may be expressed, it seems to me, as the necessity for the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together: which is necessary from the standpoint of both the general social welfare and the full development of human beings as individuals.
When Dewey writes that ‘democracy is a way of life’ he means that the ideal of democracy can only be achieved when we co-create our values and institutions together; when we deliberate to answer the question, what should we do?
But more fundamentally, the Deweyian invocation to democracy as a way of life, tells us that deliberation is democracy. It is not “just talk” or isolated blather. Deliberation is the very stuff of democracy itself – and when we live our lives as good citizens, engaging regularly and rationally in conversation with all members of our community; when we treat every conversation as a chance to improve ourselves and co-create our world; when we take democracy as a way of life –
Then we are indeed creating democracy itself.
We know that exposing students early to, and helping them contextualize and understand, primary sources is vital to helping them begin thinking within a disciplinary lens while also building literacy skills. This means that we really need to begin the work of social studies and civic education while our future citizens are still in elementary school. In pursuit of this idea, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, in collaboration with the renowned folks over at the DBQ Project, are excited to offer an opportunity for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers to work together in extending the DBQ Project towards lessons around civic action. If you are at all familiar with the C3 Framework, this also fits wonderful within that ambitious effort at inculcating within our students a passion for civic engagement, inquiry, and informed action. Take a look at the flyer below. We do hope to see you here this summer, and we are grateful for the opportunity to work with you! For more information and to register, visit this page and sign on up!
Hello friends. The 2017 Florida Council for the Social Studies Conference is now accepting proposals for this fall.
This is the 60th annual conference for FCSS, and we expect some excellent opportunities for engagement with social studies teachers and leaders from across the state and country. The conference will be help on October 20-22, 2017 in Palm Harbor, Florida.
More information about the conference can be found on the FCSS homepage. We look forward to seeing you in Palm Harbor!
As many in our network know, NCDD had a major transition on our Board at the beginning of this year. On January 1st, we were excited to have four new leaders from the field join our Board, and at the same time, we said goodbye four of our outgoing Board members.
The outgoing Board members – Barb Simonetti, Marla Crocket, Diane Miller, and John Backman – all worked tirelessly over the last six years to help steward NCDD through important transitions in our organization and guide our work to new heights. We can’t thank the four of them enough for all of the hard work they put in over the years, and if they weren’t all term limited, we would have kept them on forever! But thankfully, none of these incredible leaders will be going far, and you can expect them to remain regular parts of the NCDD network.
But as Barb, Marla, Diane, and John step off the Board, we couldn’t be more excited to be welcoming on four amazing new additions! These new Board members will be joining our remaining Board members – Martín Carcasson and Susan Stuart Clark – in helping provide vision and leadership for NCDD and our field more broadly, and we wanted to officially introduce them to our network! We encourage you to join us in thanking them for taking on these new roles and to learn a bit more about them below.
Simone Talma Flowers is the Executive Director of Interfaith Action of Central Texas (iACT), whose mission is to cultivate peace and respect through interfaith dialogue, service and celebration. Simone Talma Flowers brings over 26 years of extensive experience in non-profit management.
Simone promotes a culture of high performance, support and collaboration. She advances the mission of the organization by bringing people of diverse faiths, cultures and backgrounds together, to break down the barriers that divide us. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and believes everyone should have access to opportunities, so they can live up to their fullest potential. Simone has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Business Administration from St. Edward’s University.
Jacob Hess is the author of 14 peer reviewed articles exploring contrasting health and socio-political narratives and has (co)authored three books: You’re Not as Crazy as I Thought, But You’re Still Wrong, Once Upon a Time… He Wasn’t Feeling It Anymore, and A Third Space: Proposing Another Way Forward in the LGBT/Religious Conservative Impasse (Disagreement Practice, Treasonous Friendship & Trustworthy Rivalry in the Face of Irreconcilable Difference). His work with Phil Neisser at State University of New York has been featured on This American Life and was also recognized by Public Conversations Project (Essential Partners). Jacob enjoys being a part of Living Room Conversations and the Village Square – and is grateful for a chance to serve NCDD, as an organization he has loved for many years.
Betty Knighton is the director of the West Virginia Center for Civic Life, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that promotes public dialogue on issues that affect the quality of life in West Virginia. A primary focus of her work has been building a network for civic engagement in the state through collaborative partnerships with educational, civic, faith-based, and governmental organizations. Through the Center, she works with West Virginia communities to develop balanced frameworks for local issues, to convene and moderate community discussions, and to develop processes to move from dialogue to action.
Wendy Willis is the Executive Director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium , a global network of major organizations and leading scholars working in the field of deliberation and public engagement. Wendy is also the Founder and Director of Oregon’s Kitchen Table, a program of the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Wendy is also a widely published poet and essayist, writing often on issues of public life. She is also the former Executive Director of the City Club of Portland and has served as an Assistant Public Defender for the District of Oregon and law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court. Wendy graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds an M.F.A. from Pacific Lutheran University and a B.A. from Willamette University. Her next book, A Long Late Pledge, is due out in September.
We are so pleased to be working with this amazing new class of Board members and hope that you will join us in honoring their commitments to playing such key leadership roles in our field! You can learn more about all of NCDD’s Board and staff by visiting www.ncdd.org/contact.
Did you know that there used to be a quasi-autonomous European jurisdiction with a land area of 3.5 km and a population as large as 3,500 that used Esperanto as its official language?
Moresnet (Esperanto: Amikejo, or “friendship place”) lay among Belgium, Prussia/Germany and the Netherlands in roughly the location shown on this Google Map. It was established in 1816 and absorbed into Belgium in 1920. I exaggerate by calling it a “country,” but it was an international condominium with sovereignty shared by Prussia (later, Germany) and Belgium, official neutrality, its own tricolor flag, and a high degree of self-rule. In 1918, a project began to make it Esperanto-speaking; many residents learned the language, and the World Congress of Esperanto named it the capital of the global Esperanto community.
I learned this after reading about Alexander Dubcek, the face of Socialism with a Human Face and a Czechoslovak leader during both the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution. Dubcek was conceived in Chicago but born in what’s now Slovakia. He and his family moved to what’s now Kyrgyzstan at age 3. There he and his family lived in an experimental co-op called Interhelpo, where first Esperanto and then Ido (Esperanto for “offspring,” meaning a kind of Esperanto 2.0) was spoken as the main language. In 1943, Stalin liquidated Interhelpo and shot many of its crunchy residents, but by then Dubcek was back in Czechoslovakia, flighting the Nazis. He survived to be a thorn in the side of totalitarian communism, but not–as far as I know–a dedicated Esperantist.
Any dreams of uniting Moresnet and Interhelpo into a confederation of Esperanto states proved (shall we say) utopian.
View #1: The same two parties have alternated power since 1854 and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Today, the most serious threat to small-d democratic norms and institutions comes from the Trump Administration, and the Democratic opposition is an essential counterweight. A Democratic House in 2018 could begin serious investigations; a Democratic president in 2010 2020 would end the Trump era. You may or may not agree with the platform of the Party, but it’s a big tent, and you have your choice of intraparty factions to back, from Sen. Manchin to Sen. Warren. Moreover, any Democrat would endorse positions on some issues that are preferable to those of the Trump Administration. The Party is accountable to communities most threatened by Trump: for instance, half the voting delegates at the Democratic National Convention were people of color. That fact pushes the Party to defend basic rights for all. The Democratic Party is a bulwark of democracy; it must win the elections of 2018 and 2020.
View #2: At the root of our problems is partisanship. Most of us (including me) use partisan labels as heuristics for assessing policies, candidates, news sources, and opinions. As a result, we are prone to misunderstanding the situation and demonizing half of our fellow Americans. “Partisanship is a helluva drug.” What we need is less reliance on party labels and more cross-partisan or non-partisan dialogue. Maybe it would be better if more Democrats won elections, but that is up to the Party apparatus and should not be our focus as concerned citizens.
View #3: The party duopoly stands in the way of progress, for reasons specific to our moment. Once industrial unions declined and working-class whites migrated to the GOP, we were left with two parties controlled by economic elites. Main Street business interests and extractive industries like coal and oil control the GOP, drawing votes from working-class whites who are not likely to see their interests served. Highly educated coastal elites control the Democratic Party, with votes from people of color who have no better choice. The result is hard-wired neoliberalism, with modest distinctions between the parties on civil rights and environmental regulation. Democracy (in the sense of government that responds to mass economic needs) requires a major reorientation of the whole duopoly. Trump actually enables that in a way that Hillary Clinton could not, in part because of his potential to blow up his own party.
For those keeping score, these three views are most consistent with the first, sixth, and second boxes in my flowchart (below). They can be posed as stark alternatives, demanding a debate. But it’s possible that they all contain truths and that we need people working on all three.
I am heading out later today to head to the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) conference. My advisor, Nick Beauchamp will be presenting our joint work on “The Joint Effects of Content and Style on Debate Outcomes.”
Here is the abstract for that work:
Debate and deliberation play essential roles in politics and government, but most models presume that debates are won mainly via superior style or agenda control. Ideally, however, debates would be won on the merits, as a function of which side has the stronger arguments. We propose a predictive model of debate that estimates the effects of linguistic features and the latent persuasive strengths of different topics, as well as the interactions between the two. Using a dataset of 118 Oxford-style debates, our model’s combination of content (as latent topics) and style (as linguistic features) allows us to predict audience-adjudicated winners with 74% accuracy, significantly outperforming linguistic features alone (66%). Our model finds that winning sides employ stronger arguments, and allows us to identify the linguistic features associated with strong or weak arguments.
