Smart & Good High Schools - The Flippen Group

CHAPTER 1The Call to Character:Performance and Moral ChallengesFacing American High SchoolsMy 9th-grade civics teacher, Mrs. O., nurtured my performancecharacter in its young stages. When I was afreshman, I found that most of the study habits I hadlearned in middle school were just not good enough. WhenMrs. O. gave us assignments, she’d walk us through anexample of how it was to be done. When it came to tests,she taught us how to make flashcards. When we hadresearch projects, she showed us different search engines wecould use and how to set deadlines for the different parts ofthe project. She encouraged us to attend community eventsthat pertained to history and brought in information aboutcolleges she thought we might be interested in. Every studentwas one of her children.—A HIGH SCHOOL GIRLStudents today are growing up in a world where it seemsokay to cheat to get ahead. When I find out about an incidentof cheating in my class, I give a little talk to my students:“There are two roads in life: a high road and a low road.The high road is harder, but it takes you somewhere worthgoing. The low road is easy, but it’s circular—you eventuallyfind yourself back where you started. If you cheat now,you’ll cheat later. Your life won’t get better—and you won’tget better—on the low road.”—A HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER“Within the character of the citizen,”Cicero wrote, “lies the welfare ofthe nation.” The Greek philosopherHeraclitus said, “Character isdestiny.” “Education worthy of the name,” said MartinBuber, “is essentially education of character.”“Education worthy of the nameis education of character.”Character matters. As a society, we are recovering thisancient wisdom. Cultural indicators from every sector ofAmerican life—political and military, business and education,sports and entertainment, families and communities—demonstratethe need to develop citizens of all ageswho lead ethical and purposeful lives and contribute to aproductive, just, and caring society.In recent years, there has been a growing societal effortto meet this need for character. Evidence of this responseincludes increased public discourse about character,employers’ emphasis on character in the workplace,attention to character in educational research and socialscience, and, perhaps most notably, a resurgence of charactereducation in our schools and communities.With remarkable swiftness, character education has growninto a national movement. Thus far, however, this movementhas been overwhelmingly an elementary school phenomenon,with modest progress at the middle school level.By contrast, intentional, schoolwide attention to charactereducation in high schools is relatively rare—at the verydevelopmental stage when the need is arguably the greatest.We define character to includeboth performance character andmoral character.For several compelling reasons—to develop the positiveintellectual and ethical potential of adolescents, reduce negativeteen behaviors that injure self and others, and createsafe, caring, and effective schools—high schools mustembrace educating for character as central to their mission.Currently, it is the missing link. Information on existinghigh school character-building practices is little known, nottheoretically integrated, and vastly underused by the administratorsand teachers in a position to make a difference.In this report, we offer a blueprint for developing characterin high schools. What is character? Asked that question,one high school student answered, “Character iswho you are. It’s a way of life.” There is a rich history ofefforts to define character. The box on the next page, ACharacter Lexicon, provides some of the definitions,metaphors, and distinctions we think contribute to anunderstanding of this important concept.In this report, we define character in a new way—toinclude both performance character (striving for excellence)and moral character (striving for ethical behavior).We describe promising practices culled from the researchand from high schools and individual practitioners acrossthe country that are helping adolescents learn to do their1Smart & Good High Schools