posted by Mike Madison at 10:13 PM /
A Blog-Lebo reader who observes connections between recent episodes of adolescent misbehavior in Mt. Lebanon schools suggested that I post this link to a recent USA Today op-ed calling for a renewed focus on character education in the public schools.
It's a provocative piece. I'm not convinced that school-based "character education" is a solution. "Character" isn't always the problem; some of the recent adolescent episodes in Mt. Lebanon reflect ignorance, or stupidity, or some combination of the two. When character is involved -- when the flaw is arrogance, or bigotry -- it is often more productive to emphasize the family and the community rather than the classroom. Teachers have enough to worry about with basic education and discipline; testing pushes their limits already; why dump "character" on them, too?
The real problem, of course, is that kids today are exposed to stresses, temptations, peer expectations, and a pace of life that is simply unimaginable to us parents. All of us were kids once, but none of us were kids like this. And Mt. Lebanon is just like thousands of communities all over the country in dealing with that. We're not special; in some ways, if all we have to worry about is excitable high schoolers running onto a basketball court, then we don't have to worry about much. Maybe the blog should focus on drug and alcohol abuse -- by parents as well as by kids.
The differences between then and now shouldn't excuse the kids' behavior or parental recklessness. No one should be indifferent to ignorance or stupidity or arrogance or bigotry, and when we see indifference, we should call it out just as we call out the underlying problems. But we should understand before we blame, and we shouldn't expect results from quick fixes. Start by loving and teaching your children, and work outward from that core.
It's a provocative piece. I'm not convinced that school-based "character education" is a solution. "Character" isn't always the problem; some of the recent adolescent episodes in Mt. Lebanon reflect ignorance, or stupidity, or some combination of the two. When character is involved -- when the flaw is arrogance, or bigotry -- it is often more productive to emphasize the family and the community rather than the classroom. Teachers have enough to worry about with basic education and discipline; testing pushes their limits already; why dump "character" on them, too?
The real problem, of course, is that kids today are exposed to stresses, temptations, peer expectations, and a pace of life that is simply unimaginable to us parents. All of us were kids once, but none of us were kids like this. And Mt. Lebanon is just like thousands of communities all over the country in dealing with that. We're not special; in some ways, if all we have to worry about is excitable high schoolers running onto a basketball court, then we don't have to worry about much. Maybe the blog should focus on drug and alcohol abuse -- by parents as well as by kids.
The differences between then and now shouldn't excuse the kids' behavior or parental recklessness. No one should be indifferent to ignorance or stupidity or arrogance or bigotry, and when we see indifference, we should call it out just as we call out the underlying problems. But we should understand before we blame, and we shouldn't expect results from quick fixes. Start by loving and teaching your children, and work outward from that core.
23 Comments:
Thanks Mike for posting the USA TODAY article. I am the blogger you refer too, and though I said I wasn't going to post any more I will just this once more on this topic.
I find this article to be as you say "provacatve" and am interested in hearing what others think. Its not just about kids running on a basketball court-- bullying has been an ongoing problem in our schools and one which the district has spent considerable time on, Top 25, Teen assembly, others.
No, its not solely the teacher's problem, it does start with the parents as you say.
But the article alludes to some interesting correlations in improved grades. Perhaps the thinking, participation and philosophy invovled in character development is one key to raising student performance we have yet to explore?
Thank you for posting this interesting article. However, it begs the question: is character educated or instilled? It appears in the article that the school leaders "walked the walk." So why are we having some of the same board members and Glenn Smartschan (who lead the decline of our district) choosing the next superintendent? We don't need a school official who "fits." We need a superintendent who would lead by example and instill civility and character.
I think our schools do an OK job with character education, but not enforcement. And it's problematic generalizing the lessons from the school district in the article - that district has a very different SES and they're working on some issues that might seem foreign here. For example, they're trying to combat rampant truancy and chronic achievement issues with tough love measures. Ours is a somewhat different debate and I recognize the privilege of not needing to worry about such problems.
The "character-enforcement" void I'm most concerned about is from the general community. I remember as a girl being rebuked by adult strangers for all sorts of infractions ranging from jaywalking and littering to talking too loudly in public. Gosh, the clerk behind the cash register proffered criticism when I forgot to say thank you, commuters waiting at bus stops reminded me to say "excuse me" when I walked through their throngs. These were important reminders of social rules and they played an important part in forming my "character".
You don't see this anymore. Why? Do helicopter parents ready to do battle with anyone who criticizes their child breed indifference in their children? Fear of legal action? A too-accepting society? Most likely all of the above factors have contributed to this general decline. Question is - who's brave enough to step up and buck the new norm?
Anonymous Mom of 3
Character Education--hmmm
Does anybody see a problem with hip-hop dancing elementary school??
I have grade school age kids at one of our elementary schools- which is hosting a variety show this week. I happened to see one of the rehearsals and was shocked to see a number of hip-hop dance routines performed by 2nd graders.
What does all the hip rolling and shaking by these young girls say about character???
Sorry folks, I guess I'm sort of like an ostrich with its head in the ground because I don't really pay attention to pop culture until I see it on my elementary school stage.
After my previous post, I happened to look at the Mt Lebanon Rec Center website and found that they teach hip-hop dancing to 6-8 year olds! So I guess these kids are just performing the "suggestive" dances that they learn at our Rec Center or many other dance studios around town.
AMo3 -- The community that you remember fondly strikes me as stifling and oppressive and conformist; I for one am relieved that my kids didn't grow up in that environment. "Helicoptering," however, isn't the only alternative; there is a third way. My kids spent their earliest several years in a genuinely diverse community (which is to say, not Mt. Lebanon) where there was essentially no choice but for everyone -- kids and adults -- to learn to be both respectful and accepting of each other. I think that they still benefit from that foundation.
Anon 11:08 [I wish Blogger would invite people to create pseudonyms!] -- Hip hop isn't a problem, and hip hop dancing (I'm not sure what that is; your description sounds like the film "Dirty Dancing," which was a lot of things but not hip hop) isn't a "character" issue. The problem is sexualization of young children. Parents and other adults are oblivious to the fact that they are enabling it. Remedy: Clear rules about appropriate behavior by children in school; close monitoring by parents of their own [parental] behavior and media/entertainment choices.
Hello Mike--
Apparently you didn't see the piece tonight on Cnn with Paula Zahn called "Hip-Hop Art or Poison"
Thankfully, no. The title is idiocy itself.
Mike - I guess my post read like nostalgia, but I think most communities in the 60's operated in a similar fashion. Call it oppressive, if you wish. I don't equate a reminder to say thank you or a reprimand about running between cars with oppression. Even my spouse, who grew up in the "People's Republic of Berkeley" (now I'm a little less anonymous) remembers strangers, adults, remarking when he littered or was outright rude in public. No one does that anymore (reprimands, not act rudely).
Anonymous Mom of 3
And my reaction may have sounded more defensive and judgmental than I intended. I grew up in the 1960s, too, and in a professional suburb, and, well, felt stifled. I like the way that members of the Mt. Lebanon community look out for each other; I like knowing my neighbors. I don't like the impulse extends that sense of community into questions of personal development, and conversations about "character" programming -- with the obvious ambiguity about what "character" means -- run precisely that risk.
Mike -
It seems to me that societies work or run smoothly because people willingly and voluntarily act in a rule abiding way, not because they fear retribution. People realize,
not innately but through education and experience, that interactions/transactions are smoother when they follow the rules and norms our society has established. When transgressions occur, our society imposes different levels of sanctions, ranging from admonishment to the enforcement of laws. This is where your people ;-), the attorneys, find their work and fuel their passion. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know - I'm just thinking this argument through.
So, back to the thesis - people willingly act in a rule abiding way and they learn the rules through education and experience. Where do we gain this education and experience? First and critically we learn through the family, but that nucleus is only a starting point. The education in social norms extends out into the community, including our schools, as it must, because a person is a social organism and not completely self-sufficient. The broader community has a responsibility, born of self-interest, in ensuring behavior stays within certain boundaries and we can't assume the family's education provides that. So, when a neighbor admonishes my child for running through their yard with cleats on or for yelling loudly outside their window at 11 p.m. - that becomes part of my child's education in becoming a productive member of society. He/she learns to respect others' property and respect others' well-being. Now, I've needed to zip my lips when a neighbor called the police because several neighborhood kids were playing street hockey on their own street, but I look at these responses as minor aberrations in a reasonably functional structure.
I certainly appreciate your aversion to "character programming" and its connotations of Orwellian dystopia, brainwashing and repression of the individual, but I think there's no escaping that we have an obligation to educate each other in proper social behavior. The dilemma is in defining the scope of that behavior in a way that respects the individual and protects society.
Or, at least, that's what I learned in the 70's! Peace. Anonymous Mom of 3
Well put, and I don't want to quibble with any of that. I'll draw a distinction -- a fuzzy distinction, but a distinction nonetheless -- between "inward-oriented" acculturation and "outward-oriented" or externally directed acculturation. These aren't *really* distinct except in a common sense kind of way, but I think that there's value in looking at them separately.
The "running with cleats" and "noise late at night" kinds of neighborhood self-policing are part and parcel of the "outward" side of human development: How sociable are you? To borrow a phrase that's current for me in another context, do you play well with others?
You can play well with others, and the community has a legitimate interest in that, and still be a selfish creep from an "internal" or inward-directed perspective. I hope that isn't the case, obviously, but as a neighbor who occasionally has kids run through his backyard, I would like to avoid damage to my plants. I don't care whether they are noble people (good "character") inside. The latter may be an immediate parental interest, and in a very indirect, long-term way it's my interest too. "It takes a village to raise a child," as someone wrote recently. But it's one thing for me to try to model civil and civic behavior; it's another thing for me to discipline every violation of Kantian norms.
The Mt. Lebanon School District administration is closed to self-reflection and a genuine search for root causes. Observe any board meeting and you will find that anyone who asks a question or indicates that there might be something amimss, whether it is with the budget, construction, student behavior, leadership, fill in the blank, is labeled as the problem. It's classic transference...remember Psych 101?
When Dr. Dellesaga told the truth about student behavior she is labeled as a media hound who just wants a moment of celebrity.
A male student comes to an assembly prepared with a dress to wear. Was this the response to a "boring" speaker or a pre-planned opportunity for disrespect and incivility? When community members ask why the superintendent, principals, teachers, and counselors didn't intervene and correct students to stop the behavior the questioner is accused of being a bully.
Does anyone remember reading "Enemy of the People" by Henrik Ibsen? The leadership of the town would not abide Dr. Stockmann telling them that the baths were polluted. Insted, they said he was an emeny of the people, discredited him, and drove him and his family from the town.
Could this explain the departure of outsiders from the Mt. Lebanon Schooll District?
How can a well-educted citizenry not see what the game is?
If you don't mind, I'd like to extend that line of thought....It is my opinion that a great number of our children don't have this social awareness because their parents do not have it. Ever drive down Ralston Place at 3:25? Parents are parking directly under the "No Parking" signs on the rights side, double parking behind the metered spaces by the bank, and simply parking in the MIDDLE of the street and waving their children across so they don't have to pull over or worse yet, put a dime in the meters of the Overlook lot. While driving through Mt. Lebanon, I have seen similar scenarios happen at every school in this district. Similarly, every time a character issued comes up in this district, from the "top 25" to the website with the drunken photos, I've heard parents defend poor behavior vigorously and aggressively. There is a group of parents, certainly not exclusive to Mt. Lebanon who is missing this "chip" in their own makeup and I don't know how they would pass it on to their own kids, and I believe we are seeing the result.
I agree with the last two posters. This is not about "character enforcement", in fact the website in the USA TODAY article scares me a bit with its focus on spirituality.
I believe a curriculum with character education included helps to jump start the "THINKING" process.
As an example, history teachers spend a lot of time getting kids to memorize facts like -who Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin were and the associated dates. Its very easy to teach and grade on a test, therefore making evaluation of the success or failure of teachers and curriculum easy too.
But, how much time do they spend discussing the founding fathers' philosophies, their comments and the risk their participation in a rebellion might bring. How do their actions relate to the student's life today and what should their participation be in our republic.
This is just one simple example of how character education might be injected into the curriculum. It doesn't force, mold or manipulate anyone.
There's an element of semantics in this debate. As the 2 posts that follow yours illustrate, I suspect most people perceive character education as instruction and reinforcement of external behaviors and a code of conduct, when character itself is an internal system and representation of morals, values, and perceptions. While I shudder to think about the avenues this instruction may take and in fact, I have taken exception to some of the sex-discrimination programming in our elementary schools (I'll discuss later), I accept that some measure of this programming is not only inevitable but beneficial.
Let's take an extreme example - pedophilia and child pornography. Our society has clearly established its belief that sexual exploitation of children is wrong in a range of sanctions, from shunning to criminal laws. We disapprove of direct (exploitation) and indirect (viewing pornography) acts. We've created a web of sanctions to identify and capture perpetrators of these deviant acts, and yet these acts are increasing. Where and how do we communicate to people that the internal impulse is as amoral as the external action if not through some sort of community education effort?
Our teenagers are invited to parties where increasing numbers of parents provide alcohol. Do I accept that these parents are exercising their individual beliefs? I well remember the response when MADD undertook their initial and massive effort to change a social norm - the perception that drunk driving was an unfortunate and forgivable expression of human weakness. The firestorm of debate was searing! Yet in just 25 years, this effort has been so successful that the moral lessons are integrated seamlessly into our schools' anti-substance programs. Good or Bad? Right or Wrong?
I agree that character education can take some silly and scary turns. When the school district launched a sex- discrimination & awareness initiative several years ago, one of my kids brought home a "What is sex-discrimination" flyer from the elementary school. I was stunned to see an example like thisL listed:
"You and your (girl) friends are swinging on the playground swings. A boy comes up and asks to join your group. You don't want to include him because he's a boy and you're playing girl games. What do you do?" The example was written to lead kids to conclude that excluding an opposite-gender peer was an act of sex discrimination. I used it to establish a conversation with my son. Quite frankly, I think it is every little boy or girl's right, duty, and obligation to want to play with their same sex peers. There's time enough to integrate your play with the opposite sex. In fact, as our kids will most likely live to be 82+, they have over 70 years to include the opposite sex in their activities. Now I'm rambling.
Point is, character education presents a slippery slope and needs to be monitored, but it is a critical foundation of stability for any society.
Anonymous Mom of 3
This is an interesting conversation, but we're doing philosophy now; we largely agree about the excesses of "character" instruction in school.
My view is that society condemns pedophilia and child pornography on consequentialist grounds (it hurts children; external), not deontological ones (it's immoral; internal). See the Supreme Court's opinion in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition
535 U.S. 234, 122 S.Ct. 1389 (2002).
The MADD example shows the same thing. Social norms surrounding drunk driving have clearly changed, but not because drunk driving is now perceived as immoral. Drunk driving kills and injures people, and thanks to MADD, we're all aware of that to a degree that we weren't before. We don't teach people, including kids, that drinking and driving is immoral; we teach them that drunk driving is dangerous to others and to them.
Anon mom of 3
Your so right. It is a dangerous slope, and because of that, the difficulties in grading, monitoring and curriculum development are probably why school districts avoid the concept like the plaque. It is very dangerous since teachers could "inject" their personal beliefs. Example: some teachers are doing exactly that with our students on the HS building issue.
But, I took some philosophy courses in college where religion, politics, morales, civil discourse, pornography were all investigated without bias. Those classes were influential in leading me to investigation and opinions I might not have explored without the class.
Though the sex-discrimination flyer may be a poor example. If the kids engage in conversation they may discover something about relationships, themselves and others, that they wouldn't delve into otherwise. It is a tough subject and exactly why I asked Mike to post it here.
Anon mom of 3-
I just thought of a better example on my thinking on this issue. Anon 2:29 offered this question.
"A male student comes to an assembly prepared with a dress to wear. Was this the response to a "boring" speaker or a pre-planned opportunity for disrespect and incivility?"
I suggest - why couldn't a topic like this be investigated in say a HS english class? Students would have a discussion and then create a paper presenting their view on the subject. There's no right or wrong answer. Just a requirement that they develope an analytical opinion and present it in paper. It developes their writing skills and at the same time requires analysis of themselves, others etc.
Geez, I hate this blog, its addicting.
DAS -- Just put yourself in my shoes. ;-) Mike
We learn from our mistakes .......
Sex ranking list of high school girls has Mt. Lebanon abuzz
Thursday, April 27, 2006
By Laura Pace and Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06117/685523-55.stm
... "I'm not seeing a crime. I'm not seeing a crime on school property," said William H. Difenderfer. "I think this thing is way out of control."
Mt. Lebanon may add security for hoop rematch
By Rob Amen
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, January 19, 2007
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/today/s_489289.html
... Rodella is demanding an apology from the Upper St. Clair School District and considering legal action, said William Difenderfer, his attorney. "The father is looking for accountability and an apology," Difenderfer said.
We learned that accountability matters ...........
How did Mr. Difenderfer, who may have thought the commotion last year was much ado about nothing, find himself in the middle of the USC basketball incident looking for accountability?
A lawyer's view reflects his client.
Post a Comment
<< Home