​Lessons from the 2016 USA Presidential Election

It's the last week of July and I'm watching the USA Election news. I'm shaken and invigorated by what I see coming to the surface.

I want to understand what's going on; and I want to learn from it. 

​Whoever wins the election, and whoever becomes President of the United States, the people of America will still be neighbours with each other and with the rest of the world and we will all need to find ways to continue to live, work and study together.

So what does this have to do with Co-Activity in Education?

What the USA Elections have to do with Education

Mainly. Education is political. In any country.

And Co-Activity is about Big Change. Change at an evolutionary level. And the change includes all of us, it's about collaborative, creative change.

As promotors of Co-Activity (or change in general) we meet different kinds of reactions from people and it's useful to understand what's going on in people's minds so that more people can be included in the ongoing changes. 

We want to empower people (students) by empowering educators. Educators meet different kinds of students, with different nationalities, religions, cultures and political backgrounds. We need to understand what they are thinking, and what realities they meet and expect to create.

Co-Activity in Education is based on the belief that change will come more quickly, smoothly and elegantly when done with the support of trained teachers and informed parents; and coaches. 

Change is inevitable, right?

Finally, Whoever wins the election will be in a position to set the agenda for what is taught in schools; and how it is taught, for the next decade or so. Schools are the places where people are taught, based on what's believed to be right, according to the prevailing world-view.


What can we learn from observing the election process?

The process of choosing a leader reflects what people believe is right.
Both the What and the How.

Currently, according to George Lakoff*, there are two main world-views in the USA. The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative). 

*George Lakoff is Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, and Director of the Berkeley Center for Brain, Mind, and Society.

George Lakoff writes clearly, so I have quoted a lot of what he's written at https://georgelakoff.com/2016/07/22/understanding-trump/

Conservative and Progressives

The conservative and progressive worldviews dividing the USA can most readily be understood in terms of moral worldviews that are encapsulated in two very different common forms of family life: The Nurturant Parent family (progressive) and the Strict Father family (conservative).

What do social issues and the politics have to do with the family? We are first governed in our families, and so we grow up understanding governing institutions in terms of the governing systems of families.

In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of. When his children disobey, it is his moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty. This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others — who are responsible for themselves.

Moral Hierarchy
The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a well-ordered world, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate. The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, America above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.

Cause and Effect
Empirical research has shown that conservatives tend to reason with direct causation and that progressives have a much easier time reasoning with systemic causation. 

The reason is thought to be that, in the strict father model, the father expects the child or spouse to respond directly to an order and that refusal should be punished as swiftly and directly as possible.
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Tips for communicating progressive views

George Lakoff provides some tips for communicating progressive views during this election. I think we can learn from these tips and incorporate them in the stories we tell about Co-Activity in Education.

• Give a positive truthful framing to undermine claims to the contrary.
• Use the facts to support positively-framed truth. 
• Use repetition.
• Start with values, not policies and facts and numbers. 
• Say what you believe, but haven’t been saying.
• Civility, values, positivity, good humor, and real empathy are powerful. 
• Calmness and empathy in the face of fury are powerful. 
• Give up identity politics.

And remember JFK’s immortal, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Empathy, devotion, love, pride in our country’s values, public resources to create freedoms. And adulthood.