Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 5: Fostering the 8 Strengths of Character—Outcome 4students in identifying “morally pivotal points” in the developmentof the story’s central character. She writes:Characters in literature provide us with a window to the soul.By prompting students to pay attention to how fictionalcharacters respond to the truth, we help them acquire greaterrespect for integrity, contempt for hypocrisy, and sensitivity towhat accounts for moral growth or moral decline. 16Susan Parr’s The Moral of the Story is another valuableresource that illustrates how to pose questions that highlightthe ethical issues in a work of literature. 17 Seewww.centerforlearning.org for teacher-written units andlesson plans that link character and curriculum in literature,social studies, and religion.Teachers of literature, history, science, and other disciplinesoften find that bringing the ethical dimension ofsubject matter to the fore makes it more meaningful andmotivating for students. A high school girl on our StudentLeaders Panel confirmed this. She said:When students ask, “Why are we learning this?”, we’re nottrying to be rude or obnoxious. Chances are the lesson hasan embedded moral value that the teacher should take timeto expose. When students see this value, they are more likelyto work conscientiously.“When students see the moral valueembedded in a lesson, they are likelyto work more conscientiously.”Use Research to Study Lives of CharacterPsychological research is another source of lives of character.One such work is Anne Colby’s and William Damon’sSome Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment. 18Colby and Damon asked a group of “expert nominators”—theologians,philosophers, and historians of varyingpolitical ideology, religious beliefs, and socioculturalbackgrounds—to define criteria for a “moral exemplar”and then to suggest persons who fit those criteria. Therewas a surprisingly high degree of consensus on five criteriafor moral exemplars:1. a sustained commitment to moral ideals2. a consistency between one’s ideals and means ofachieving them3. a willingness to sacrifice self-interest4. a capacity to inspire others5. a humility about one’s own importance.Using these five criteria, Colby and Damon proceeded toidentify and interview 23 moral exemplars. The exemplars’educations ranged from completion of 8th-grade toM.D.s, Ph.D.s, and law degrees. They included religiousleaders of different faiths, businessmen, physicians, teachers,charity workers, an innkeeper, a journalist, lawyers,heads of nonprofit organizations, and leaders of socialmovements. Ten were men; thirteen were women. Theircontributions spanned civil rights, the fight against poverty,medical care, education, philanthropy, the environment,peace, and religious freedom.One of these 23 exemplars was Cabell Brand, a businessmanwho, over three decades, has developed a small familycompany into a multimillion dollar corporation. Duringthe same period, he has been the volunteer presidentof a social action program in the Roanoke Valley calledTotal Action Against Poverty (TAP). Through TAP, Brandhas devoted much of his life to giving others “a hand up”out of poverty. TAP created one of the nation’s first HeadStart programs; went on to add programs for high schooldrop-outs, the elderly, ex-offenders, drug addicts, and thehomeless; and developed a food bank, a program tobring running water to rural people, economic developmentprograms for urban areas, and community culturalcenters.Brand’s story reveals an integrated ethical thinker withkeen discernment (including sophisticated economicunderstanding), a conscience driven by a sense of justiceand compassion, an identity centered on his moral commitments,and abundant know-how for executing hisvision. In one interview, he said:The weakness in our capitalistic democratic system is thenumber of people who don’t participate. That’s measured bya poverty index which is currently 14%. There’s another 14%or so that are the working poor, who struggle to get along.They don’t have health insurance or quality education.If we start off with children early and they have the properhealth care, and if the family is in a positive mode and theyhave a chance for a decent job and are trying to improvethemselves and the children are caught up in that, the fami-Moral education is impossible apartfrom the habitual vision of greatness.—ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD134Smart & Good High Schools