This column series offers replies to what is published in the current “text books,” which are adopted by the State and school districts.
BY HAMILTON HANSON
This textbook – previewed but not used by Hernando County School District – that I am reviewing is Magruder’s Florida American Government Interactive by Savvas Learning Company, promoted to the District in 2023 for the six years of student learning from Aug 2024 to Jun 2029.
By continuing the theme that the US is a democracy, the teaching materials deliberately minimize the unique operation of our Republic form of government – distinct and apart from socialism (forced on the people), monarchy (inherited from generation to generation), dictatorship (imposed by the strong-man in any nation), etc.
Our Republic government stands alone in the written, voted on, approved and accepted checks and balances of the Constitution that have maintained a stability on the levers of government for 235 years. A democracy – of the people – has none of the separated responsibilities of our Republic, and is open purely to the will of a majority of all the voting people at any time.
The US is a different and unique form of governance in which the people elect representatives who have sworn to uphold the principle of separation of powers meaning that the Republican form of government is separated into different parts of the national government that do not overlap and, therefore, no one branch has more power than the others, while democracy has no such restrictions built into its fabric.
The national government has NO powers which conflict with, are subordinate to, relate to, or overlap with state governments.
The chapter goes on to speak of these ideologies as being a part of democracy. In truth, these ideologies are a part of the fabric, the character, the values of our US national culture, not Republic “law.”
The textbook concept of democracy – what we believe democracy means – rests on these basic notions:
1. Recognition of the fundamental worth and dignity of every person;
2. Respect for the equality of all persons;
3. Faith in majority rule and an insistence upon minority rights;
4. Acceptance of the necessity of compromise;
5. Insistence on the widest possible degree of individual freedom.
These concepts form the very minimum with which anyone who professes to believe in democracy ought to agree. Again, differences between democracy and our Republic are that we don’t use “majority rule” of the masses to make law, we elect representatives to do that for us hoping that we have elected people who believe in our beliefs, we have a “separation of powers”, and compromise is not as important as operating our national government according to the procedures established clearly in the US Constitution.
In essence the textbook teaching materials are very good in describing and discussing “democracy.” However, the United States government is NOT a democracy. Better education would be to put the same effort and intellectual information into the study of our Art IV, Sec 4 “Republican form of government.”
