Covenant for a Value-Based Education

Covenant for a Value-Based Education ©
Can Virtue Be Taught? Whose Values?
preached* for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing
by the Rev. Kathryn A. Bert
January 7, 2007

So, I guess my story begins with the interview for my last teaching job. It was one of those fortuitous interviews. I had applied to the district years before, with no response at all. I was happily employed in another school district when all of a sudden I got a call based on my old application to this other district. I was intrigued, especially since I didn’t need the work, and so decided to interview. It’s important for you to know that context, to explain why I wasn’t nervous in the interview or tempted to tell the interviewers what I thought they wanted to hear. I didn’t need the job, so I felt quite free to be completely honest with them. I figured, they could offer me the job if they liked who I really was, and if they didn’t, then, well, I didn’t want the job. So there were two questions they asked which I surprised even myself by my own answers. One was, "what makes the biggest difference in classroom learning?" The second question was, "what do you expect to be doing five years from now?"

My answer to the first question was "love." The words that popped out of my mouth in response to the second question were ones I hadn’t admitted in public before that moment, and certainly not something I talked freely about in a public school setting -that in five years time, I wanted to be back in school again studying for the ministry.

The answers were related. I felt like talking about love in a public school setting was somehow out of limits. The bottom line was learning as defined by narrowly defined learning objectives, and I wanted to work in a place where love, caring, compassion could be a part of the bottom line and we could examine it openly and work toward it more consciously and explicitly. Love, it seemed to me, was fair game in a church setting, and that was in large part why I wanted to change careers.

So, when the Spiritual Covenant With America says "we support education that fosters children’s capacities to be loving and caring human beings and helps students grow into responsible, ethically and ecologically attuned adults," my reply is "Yes! That’s what we should be doing."

But then, I get oddly nervous when it comes to the section: "we will teach our highest values: generosity and compassion, kindness and responsibility, respect and caring for others, joyous celebration, awe and wonder in response to the grandeur and beauty of the universe, gratitude and humility, intellectual curiosity and love of learning, emotional and spiritual intelligence and a powerful commitment to freedom, justice, nonviolence, and peace."

"We support education that fosters children’s capacities…" that language I like.

"We will teach our highest values…" that language, makes me nervous.

I think my squeamishness comes down to two questions: Can virtue be taught? And whose values?

Teresa Putnam, our Director of Lifespan Faith Development loaned me a book that her son, Adam, studying at Earlham College discovered - Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education by Nel Noddings. I just read the introduction and first chapter, but it helped me frame my thoughts for this sermon. It’s been a few years since I’ve read any serious scholarly work in the field of education. Says Noddings,

"The supposition that one can enumerate the
virtues, teach them directly, and even assess the success of the process has drawn fire from several quarters. Hartshorne and May (1928-1930) studied the effects of character education in the schools and concluded that it just did not work; children subjected to such instruction behaved well while under the direct supervision of adults, but they did not otherwise display the virtues taught." Lawrence Kohlberg (1981) and many others, complain that "character education…usually relies on indoctrination, and indoctrination is not an acceptable method of education. Thus the attack that begins with the Socratic question of whether virtue can be taught takes two forms: One challenges outright the contention that virtues can be taught directly, as we might teach arithmetic facts;the other objects that attempts to do so are forms of indoctrinating, not education."

I wrote a lousy paper in seminary on the influence of Unitarian Universalism on character education and values in our public schools. Fortunately, I couldn’t find it to review for this sermon. I hope I don’t repeat the flaws in that paper in this sermon, but it’s a messy topic. I’ve always been keenly aware of the influence of Unitarian Universalism on our public school system. (probably because the members of the family I grew up in are all teachers and Unitarian Universalists) - But I’ve known for a long time about Horace Mann, educator and statesman who advanced the cause of universal, free, non-sectarian public schools and who was a member of First Parish (Unitarian) Church of Dedham, Mass. and John Dewey who was, as they say, a close friend of the Unitarian movement, and whose memorial service was held at the Community Church of New York - John Dewey, educational pioneer and philosopher and initiator of the Lab School at the University of Chicago where I substitute taught when in seminary.

One of Mann’s most controversial work for the Massachusetts Board of Education was his promotion of nonsectarian religious education. He believed that children in public schools should be taught the ethical principles common across Christianity but not those doctrines about which different sects disagreed … which, of course, was a very Unitarian standpoint, and was criticized as such. Whose values?

Noddings, in this book, offers what she calls a caring alternative to character education - what she calls an ethic of care that is fundamentally relational. "Care ethicists" she writes "depend more heavily on establishing the conditions and relations that support moral ways of life than on the inculcation of virtues in individuals."

Theologically, I immediately relate to her goal. My belief in our deep interconnections tells me that given the right circumstance or conditions or relations, any single individual can do just about anything - good or evil, however you might define them. No other conclusion, for me, explains the Holocaust of the last century and the ongoing violence in Darfur as I speak.

This is why I like the first statement in the Covenant for Values Based Education - "We support education that fosters children’s capacities…" which focuses on the conditions and relations that support moral ways of life…over the second statement in the Covenant - "We will teach our highest values…" which suggests inculcation of virtues on individuals.

Please don’t attribute what I’m about to say to Noddings, because, as I said, I read carefully only parts of the book. But here is my take on the subject.

Love, the love I talked about in the job interview so many years ago, love does not really exist in the abstract. It only exists in relationship. What matters to students most in schools are their relationships with those around them.

So rather than talking about abstract values such as love, generosity and compassion, kindness and responsibility, respect and caring etc., I wish Michael Lerner in this Covenant for a Values-Based Education would suggest the conditions that make generosity and compassion possible. I wish he would talk about the concrete manifestations of such. Let me read to you from my e-mail to Michael Lerner when I applied to be on the clergy cabinet for the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Let me warn you, it’s an email - a laundry list - or brainstorm, rather than carefully articulated plan.

"Here are some of my ideas: Ban marketing in the schools. Teachers get bombarded with "incentives" from businesses (MacDonalds, Taco Bell, etc) to offer coupons for ice cream or hamburgers to hand out as "rewards" for reading or whatever - at the teacher’s discretion. Get the marketplace out of our schools! Ban the TV shows that advertise from the schools. Ban pop machines and candy machines. Mandate that the food which is served be locally grown and actually healthy. Make sure all kids who need it get served breakfast and lunch - and make sure that it is healthy food. Healthy food will go a long way to improve the behavioral problems in some children. I love the idea of a sabbatical for teachers - and I think that is along the line of what is needed. Teachers don’t need to be told more things to teach, but rather they, like the children they teach, need more space in their day to be reflective about what they teach and how and a chance to get to know students deeply. More teachers and fewer students in each class is needed. Students need it for learning, and teachers need it for teaching. In seminary, I substitute taught at the Lab School at the University of Chicago - a school with such a good reputation. I had put my own son, in kindergarten, in the public school a few blocks away. I was ready to discover how innovative and improved the Lab School would be over the local public school, but when inside the doors, the only difference I really saw, was the socio-economic level of the families that sent their children there, and the ratio of adults to children. There was one certified teacher and one aid in every classroom, and the class sizes were half to two thirds the size of my son’s class a few blocks away. My son’s public school experience included the worst teaching I have ever encountered in my life, and the best. And it confirmed for me that teachers make the most difference in the system - more than anything else. Somehow, we need to reform the system to help teachers be the best they can be. Stopping the testing madness is clearly first priority and you named it. I am just less confident that the values discussion is very helpful, as its my opinion that schools think they are already doing it."

I’ll add here, that schools, at least when I was last researching this for that not-so-good paper I wrote in seminary, are using the character education model that was proven not to work as early as 1928.

This is a tough discussion. Because our own Unitarian Universalist history is so intertwined with the development of our public schools, and our notions of education and character education, or as Channing called it, self-culture. We are complicit with the idea of public schools in America, with the formation of them, and those ideals and practices which make them work, and not work so well. Just curious - don’t answer if you don’t wish, but how many of you work for an educational institution or study at one at one right now? (1/3 of the congregation raised their hands, at least!) That’s why we’re complicit.

Over the holidays, I saw the movie of Little Women to refresh my memory of the story before I read a book my sister had recommended, March. March, like Little Women, tells the story of the March family, but instead of the perspective of the women in Concord, it tells it from the father who is absent in the original story by Luisa May Alcott.

Alcott…daughter of Bronson Alcott, founder of the unconventional Temple School… Bronson Alcott was well known for his controversial teaching methods which relied more on student involvement and a belief that children should enjoy learning. The Alcotts lived some time in Concord, close to good friends, the Emersons and Thoreaus. Alcott was influenced by Unitarian Trascendentalist writers--who were always around--like Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Orestes Brownson, and Margaret Fuller.

Though the classic, Little Women, is a work of fiction, it is also based on her own experiences growing up with three sisters in Concord. The author of March, this 2006 novel, Geraldine Brooks, takes this fictional account of the Alcott story further… writes the Los Angeles Times Book Review, "A beautifully wrought story about how war dashes ideals, unhinges moral certainties and drives a wedge of bitter experience and unspeakable memories between husband and wife." It’s the unhinging of moral certainties that intrigues me this morning.

The problem with teaching virtues like mathematics is that they aren’t. Moral laws do not exist outside of real people and real relationships. Moral certainty only exists in the abstract. Inside relationships, our certainty vanishes and values are manifest. There are lots of examples in Brooks’ story that unhinges March’ morals - from his vegetarianism to his commitment to both non-violence and the abolition of slavery. That’s what makes the novel so good - that the context makes real the moral dilemmas.

And I guess that’s what I think we need from our public schools - contextualized, relational, demonstration of working through moral dilemmas and the embodiment of compassion and love and caring, rather than concentrating on the inculcation of such virtues. What we don’t need is another curriculum mandated for teachers to teach, but rather embody the virtues we value in the curriculum we do teach. Easier said than done, I realize.

Story and literature will always be in the curriculum for many reasons, and Noddings affirms the use of stories by both character theorists - proponent of character education - and care theorists - proponents of care ethics. Character educators, she writes, "tend to favor heroes and inspirational accounts," which I think describes Louisa May Acott’s Little Women. Writes Brooks in her afterward to the novel, March,

"I was about ten years old when I read Little Women for the first time, at [my mother’s] suggestion. Though she recommended the book, she also counseled that I take it with a grain of salt, ‘Nobody in real life is such a goody-goody as that Marmee,’ she declared. In that, as in almost all things, she was correct. Louisa May Alcott’s real family was far less perfect, and therefore much more interesting than the saintly Marches."

This early exposure to Little Women and her mother’s warning about it, led Brooks to write March, the kind of story that care theorists would suggest we tell - "Stories that problematize ethical decisions and arouse sympathies."

I don’t know if I’ve done that this morning… problematized ethical decisions and aroused sympathies. Can virtue be taught? And whose values? Those are my problems with this covenant for a values-based education, and yet I deeply sympathize with the intent. Love, afterall, it seems to me, is what matters most. I can’t deny it. I don’t believe it exists in the abstract, but through our actions - through the caring we show to one another and the world. The fact that I got the job in that last interview, says to me, that others know it too. Love matter most.

But, it would be theologically inconsistent for me to end my remarks here. Love matters, but is not enough. It is not enough.

Our closing hymn expresses the fact that this sermon is not complete, our work is not done, the answers are not formulated - will you please rise as willing and able to join in hymn #151 I Wish I Knew How?

* Sermons are meant to be spoken and not written. I have not edited this homily to written form.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing
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