Month: February 2018

Battling perfectionism in school culture

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A recent study reveals that perfectionism—an obsession with getting things perfect—has increased significantly in college students in the U.S., Canada, and England over the last few decades, a trend researchers believe is driven by social media.

The survey, published last month in the Psychological Bulletin, is highlighting a problem college parents and counselors believe is impacting students’ mental health, as well as the role schools can play in addressing the issue, The New York Times reports.

“Millennials feel pressure to perfect themselves partly out of social media use that leads them to compare themselves to others,” Thomas Curran, a lecturer at the University of Bath and lead author of the study, told the news site.

Curran believes the situation leads to “increasingly unrealistic education and professional expectations for themselves,” though he noted that the link to social media is a hypothesis that requires further research.

Curran and his team examined 41,000 student responses with the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale to measure their degree of perfectionism and classify it into three different aspects: self-oriented, other-oriented, and socially prescribed. Results showed perfectionism increased by 33% overall since 1989. And while self-prescribed perfectionism can increase productivity, conscientiousness, and career success, parents are concerned it can cause depression and anxiety.

“Sometimes it’s paralyzing,” Columbia University professor Katherine Dieckmann told the Times, adding that she struggles with perfectionism with her 20-year-old daughter, a college sophomore. “I understand, because we were both born that way.”

Others, like Columbia graduate student Hannah Miller, have learned to cope with her perfectionism.

“When it’s not out of control, it’s a good thing to have,” she said. “When it overwhelms me, which is less often than it did when I was an undergraduate, I have to force myself to step back and make an accurate assessment of how important the task is and consider it thoughtfully rather than emotionally—like, how good does it have to be?”

Parents who spoke with the Times said they’ve tried to talk to their children about obsessing over perfection, but contend it’s ingrained in college culture.

“He’s not striving to meet our standards, they’re his own,” an unnamed father of an Ivy League student said. “I keep reminding him that perfect is the enemy of good, and he says, ‘Yeah, but good’s not enough to get into med school.’”

Resent research into character formation in America’s schools provides a glimpse of how schools can help students relieve the pressures of perfection through a focus on more important things.

Education researcher Kathryn Wiens studied six prestigious independent schools—coed and single-sex, day and boarding—to ask how they formed character in the context of what one student called “the neurotic level of success” that schools and parents expect.

Wiens summarized her findings in The Content of Their Character, published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and singled out one elite boarding school in particular for its balanced approach.

“The school’s focus was not on the students’ professional life to come, but rather on ensuring the students’ values, dispositions, and decision-making were consistent with the school’s Quaker worldview,” Wiens wrote.

The East Coast school rejects perfectionism in favor of a different standard: “the primacy of sound moral character.” Wiens reports that “the students seemed not to experience a conflict between academic achievement and personal honor, even though East Coast Boarding School provided a challenging top-tier education and expected students to work hard and excel in the classroom.”

The school demonstrates that it’s possible—though certainly not easy—in an age of intense performance pressures and pervasive perfectionism, to cultivate a school environment where students work hard and thrive by intentionally eschewing socially prescribed perfection.

For educators looking for ways to focus on character in the classroom, the Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues offers numerous resources.

Catholic students learn, serve, lead, and succeed

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Catholic schools around the country are celebrating Catholic Schools Week under the theme: Learn. Serve. Lead. Succeed. Students at Notre Dame High School in Burlington, Iowa, will serve in nursing homes.

The week of service will be the highlight of the year for the school, said religion teacher Nita Carlson.

The week kicked off on Monday morning with a prayer and games. A visit to local nursing homes was scheduled for later in the day. There, the students were to sing with residents and help them make Valentine’s Day cards. The students will wear different shirts each day of the week to match the theme of the activity, which offers a break from their usual school uniforms.

“Students will get a chance to write about what they like about Notre Dame,” Carlson told the Burlington Hawk Eye, “and the fifth-graders will even get a chance to record those essays on the local Catholic radio station.”

Catholic Schools Week has been around for decades, Carlson said. This year’s theme focuses on spiritual, academic, and societal contributions provided by a Catholic education.

“Educationally, we have much in common with the public schools,” Carlson said, “but our faith base sets us apart.” Indeed, many schools include service learning or volunteering as part of their educational plan.

How does a faith base set apart Catholic and other religious schools? One way is through the schools’ sources of authority. “Underwriting these various frameworks of moral understanding were different sources of moral authority that provided the standards for ethical action,” write Ryan S. Olson and James Davison Hunter, editors of The Content of Their Character, which summarizes field research in school culture and character formation in a broad range of educational settings—including Catholic schools.

It is not merely the “Catholic school effect” that Catholic schools provide a better education than the surrounding public schools. These schools have sources on which to draw—scriptures, traditions, and saints—by which to invite students to service. This is what can and sometimes does set Catholic schools like Notre Dame High School apart from their peers.

Educators in Catholic schools looking to do similar work can look to Notre Dame’s Philosophy of Education, which states: “The Burlington Notre Dame School System exists because we believe that God has a central place in the education of our children.” When students serve in a nursing home, it is an expression of their mission to “respect each person as a reflection of the glory of God.”

Educators: Shaping “Crooked Timber”

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Kids today can be demanding, defiant, mouthy, disrespectful, and fiercely independent.

“At no time,” lamented school principal Hilderbrand Pelzer III in The Philadelphia Citizen, “has educational work been so difficult for teachers,” because they must spend their time dealing with “challenging student behavior.” Instruction suffers.

Most of us know dedicated educators who would agree with Mr. Pelzer.

But think of your own childhood. Were you a model of saintliness? Think of your own life now. Do you behave in ways you wouldn’t want children to emulate? I do.

Teachers have a nearly impossible job because humans aren’t born acting like angels. We’re “crooked timber,” the philosopher Immanuel Kant said. All of us require efforts to shape our “crookedness”—to find meaning and purpose, especially if traumatized.

Teachers are on the front lines—hopefully with parents—attempting to form students into skilled, kind, responsible citizens of good character to lead flourishing lives.

That’s why educators took on the vocation. They believe that this difficult work deserves their dedication because our country needs a generation of citizens and leaders who are good, truthful, and tolerant. Especially now.

In a new book, The Content of Their Character, scholars from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia investigated how teachers, leaders, and school cultures form students morally. We studied ten types of American high schools—urban, rural, and charter public schools, as well as Jewish, Islamic, evangelical Protestant, Catholic, alternative-pedagogical, prestigious-independent, and home schools.

Researchers met scores of educators who, like Mr. Pelzer’s teachers, have their “dedication and resolve tested every day.” Those heroic educators persevere in teaching and leading because they believe students—though “crooked” like many of us who may have learned to restrain our appetites—are worth their love and commitment.

One teacher in San Diego said he started teaching “partially because I want to . . . teach good character,” and another there said she wants to teach students “not to have a false sense of entitlement or self-confidence.” A teacher in Charlotte talked about a student calling her by her first name and how she explained to the student that it’s “disrespectful,” even as she tried to “understand that’s where they’re coming from.”

A principal in New York City patiently sat with a girl who had a fight with other girls that had escalated on social media, telling her, “You’re a kind person . . . you can’t let yourself fall off track.” A biology teacher at a rural school in New England operated with the conviction that the “best thing every teacher can do is to love the kids,” meaning “doing what’s best, serving that kid.”

One charter school principal said, “If they’re not getting the right message elsewhere, we need to supply it.”

A principal of an evangelical Protestant school affirmed that “no one is hired here who does not first and foremost have a sense of mission . . . helping kids become all that God wants them to be.”

The dean of students at a Catholic school emphasized how educators need to be “in [the students’] business” . . . “building closer mentoring relationships . . . because the kids will come to follow you as a sort of model of Catholic life or intellectual life.”

When confronted with a student caught stealing, the head of a Midwestern Haredi Jewish school disciplined him with every means possible—the Ten Commandments, moral reasoning, and the student’s divine origin. No argument was off limits in the rabbi’s effort to correct the wayward student.

Appreciating dedicated, compassionate school staff, one student in an Islamic school observed, “You can be honest with teachers here. If you have an issue or something, you can go straight to a teacher and let them know.”

An independent school’s 40-year veteran teacher affirmed that “the classroom is only the beginning,” a commitment to forming students common among educators.

And teachers know that “if you don’t walk the walk, [students are] not buying it and they know the difference,” as one Friends school teacher sized up the daunting responsibility that educators embrace.

We don’t have enough of these kinds of adults in our schools, someone will object. That’s no doubt true. But there are more than you think, as our research found.

And it only takes one or two in a student’s life. How many did you have?

Though demanding, character formation remains the primary focus of education. Encourage a good educator like Mr. Pelzer today. Steer them to resources like those at CultureFeed and the Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues. We’re counting on these heroes among us.

Ryan S. Olson is director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and co-editor with James Davison Hunter of The Content of Their Character: Inquiries into the Varieties of Moral Formation. Permission to reprint this piece in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and source are properly cited.

Heroism and villainy in the forge of shared convictions

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In a historical moment when public figures can be removed from organizations or offices because of an accusation of transgression, Frederick Hess and Brendan Bell invite educators to present heroes with their flaws and in all their complexity.

“Maybe we’re spending too much time talking about who the heroes are and far too little talking about what heroes actually do,” they write in U.S. News & World Report. “After all, it’s hard to talk about virtue when it seems like people are just born good. Heroes are far more instructive when it’s clear that their heroism is earned and that it comes with real costs, when it’s clear that they’ve had to overcome mistakes and missteps.”

Hess and Bell, of the American Enterprise Institute, believe that teaching students about both heroism and villainy forges a sense of shared purpose and common values. They remind us that much of the teaching of the ancient Greeks was rooted in tragedy and that the character flaws of such heroes as Odysseus and Achilles were inseparable from their heroism.

“After all, the most gripping and instructive accounts of iconic figures are those that depict their humanity, their indecision, and the price they paid along the way,” they write. Hess and Bell cite the moral complexity of such U.S. historical figures as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Learning about our history through heroes is a central—and fun—part of civic education. Presenting airbrushed figures and trashing flawed leaders both miss the point.

Sociologist James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, writes in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America: “Implicit in the word character is a story. It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self. Though this purpose resides deeply within, its origins are outside the self, and so it beckons one forward, channeling one’s passions to mostly quiet acts of devotion, heroism, sacrifice, and achievement.” Without telling stories of complex and flawed heroes, we cannot learn how we might become complex and flawed heroes.

So go ahead, learn about some of our nation’s heroes and villians from the Bill of Rights Institute—and help students to see that they, and we, are complex people.

DC school book club breaks stereotypes

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A newly formed book club for young minority boys at Washington, D.C.’s Truesdell Education Campus is changing the dynamic at the struggling school, where a mere 18% of students met expectations on the English portion of standardized tests in 2016.

The change stems from a student who complained in December that his results on city English tests don’t accurately reflect his reading abilities, which prompted principal Mary Ann Stinson to suggest the boy read Walter Dean Meyers’ Bad Boy: A Memoir, The Washington Post reports.

Vice-principal Michael Redmond assigned the same book—about Meyers’ childhood growing up in Harlem—to two other students, as well, and he was soon flooded with student requests for more copies.

Redmond, a doctoral student working on educational advancement of minority boys, used the enthusiasm about the book to form an all-male book club with 10 students, who now meet for a half-hour before school twice a week to discuss themes like race, identity, and adolescence, the Post reports.

“There is a line in ‘Bad Boy’ where he says, ‘I prefer not to be seen as black,’ and he didn’t want his accomplishments to be viewed as ‘Negro accomplishments,’” Redmond told students at a recent meeting. “He wrote that line not because he was ashamed of being black, but why?”

“Because you can be smart, not because you’re black, but because you’re smart, period,” 10-year-old Kemari Starks said.

Students have already moved on to a second book, another Meyers novel titled Monster, about a teenager facing a murder charge. Truesdell resides in a neighborhood of mostly black and Hispanic students, and engaging students in stories that reflect their reality has been a key to shattering stereotypes about minority students, Redmond said.

“What a beautiful thing, for teachers to be able to see boys who look like this be so into reading,” Redmond said. “We did not imagine that kids would be this serious about reading and about doing something that we didn’t ask them to do.”

The club has also inspired a girl’s book club, as well, and both groups plan to visit Meyers’ Harlem neighborhood on an upcoming field trip.

“The books that we read here, we can relate to,” Devon Wesley, 11, told the Post.

“In our classes, there are way less interesting books, and these books are way more interesting,” said Kemari, who read the 200-page Bad Boy in two days. “These books are about people.”

Literature plays a unique and important role in presenting plots, heroes, and villains to whom students can relate. The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture led the School Cultures and Student Formation Research Project to examine the role that schools play in forming character.

Editors James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson write in the The Content of Their Character, which summarizes the research findings: “Citizenship may be taught in a civics or social science class; character may be incorporated into a religion or ethics class, and moral questions may be included across the curriculum, as we found in English literature classes.”

The Truesdell book club provides a magic recipe: substantive stories that are so good that these boys are reading in all their spare time, and eagerly showing up early for school.

Walter Dean Myers’ personal life story is compelling, and Bad Boy is a creative way of inspiring young readers, who are in turn drawing in their classmates. For educators who want to use literature to build a coherent focus on character in any classroom, the Jubilee Center for Character & Virtues offers Knightly Virtues lesson plans.

And while the impact of the reading club on Truesdell’s English test results remains unclear, things seem to be trending in the right direction with 33% of students meeting or exceeding national expectations in 2017.

High school students lead anti-bullying program in Ohio

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Mentor Public Schools in Ohio are using a unique approach to bullying and mentorship as part of a nationwide program in partnership with the nonprofit Stick Together, and companies Duct Tape and Avon.

The program—which includes 50,000 students in 15 states—encourages high schoolers to teach kids in grades 2 through 6 about the harmful effects of bullying, and how they can stick together to promote kindness instead, WKYC reports.

“It is a powerful message for our younger students to hear about the importance of kindness and acceptance of others from high school students, rather than just hearing it from adults,” district spokeswoman Kristen Kirby said.

Former local news personality Danielle Serino, who serves as Stick Together’s national ambassador, discussed the program on WKYC’s “Donovan Live.” “In 97 percent of the cases, the schools tell us, 97 percent of the students are kinder to one another, bullying is reduced, and the graduation rates increase,” she said. “So it’s a win-win.”

Serino believes the program is helping at an opportune time, “especially nowadays with social media, and the pressures these kids are facing.”

“Suicides are on the increase . . . so it really helps these kids,” she said.

Mentor High School guidance counselor Marc Nemunaitis said students in MHS’ bullying prevention program are leading the discussions locally, and he believes it will have a significant impact on both the younger and older students who participate. High school students typically lead 45–50-minute discussions on bullying and kindness, and encourage younger students to sign onto a pledge banner to treat each other with respect.

“One of the target areas we’ve noticed is in the middle schools, when bullying happens, and so hitting them before that hopefully they will go to the middle school and bring a good message and help change the culture of the school,” he said.

“The kids (high schoolers) do all of the program, I don’t do anything. I am just behind the scenes. They have two main speakers and four or five other students who help facilitate the program as we go along,” Nemaunaitis said. “The best part is when high school kids talk to elementary kids, the elementary kids are going to listen. But it has dual reasons, because the high school kids get a lot out of it too.”

Research conducted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture shows the dynamic rings true in many schools.

The Institute’s James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson write in The Content of Their Character, which summarizes research in ten sectors of American education, emphasize the importance of “school practices” in shaping students:

How a school is organized, the course structure and classroom practices, the relationship between school and outside civic institutions—all of these matter in the moral and civic formation of the child.

The Stick Together program, is an initiative developed by Values-in-Action Foundation’s Project Love that leverages the collaboration of multiple schools, businesses, and a non-profit to strengthen the school practices, which has the potential to strengthen local communities, as well.

Since 2016, Stick Together has trained over 70,000 K-8 grade students in 55 Ohio counties in over 200 schools to push back against bullying.

Montgomery charter school to focus on character development

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Charter schools were first approved in Alabama in 2015, and there is currently only one in operation in that state. Potentially the second, LEAD Academy in Montgomery, is on track to open in the fall of 2018, and it is focused on character development.

“There’s a real possibility we’ll have a charter school in Montgomery by the fall. This is an official step in the process,” LEAD Academy Chairwoman Charlotte Meadows said in the Montgomery Advertiser.

Meadows spoke following a public hearing that LEAD held to solicit feedback from the public. If the school’s charter is approved, Meadows and fellow board members hope to make 360 seats available in the first year.

Initially, the school will serve only grades kindergarten through 5th, and it will plan to grow to serve all primary and secondary grades by 2024. On Feb 12, the board will find out if their charter has been approved by the state’s public charter school commission.

The public hearing provided an opportunity for LEAD’s leadership to lay out this growth plan. They also addressed the school’s mission and its unique components that would set it apart from Montgomery’s current educational options.

Lori White, a LEAD Academy board member, “spoke of focusing classes on STREAMS: science, technology, reading, engineering, art, math and social/emotional learning,” according to the Montgomery Advertiser. This focus on STREAMS is meant in part to built on the concept of STEM education, which traditionally refers to science, technology, engineering, and math. The addition of social and emotional learning into the curriculum is intentional.

“It’s essentially character development,” said LEAD Academy board member Lori White of the addition. She said the school would, “Start from kindergarten on to help children learn social skills needed to survive in this world.” Another board member, City Councilman William Green pointed to the power of “the right educational atmosphere.” He described his own experience as a child, being “a victim of the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Green said that LEAD will be a place where, ““We don’t care about your background. We’re going to have a high expectation.”

Charter schools are unique in their ability to define a vision—such as the STREAMS approach—and establish an educational atmosphere to fulfill that vision. Patricia Maloney, whose research in character formation in charter schools appears in The Content of Their Character, a publication of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, observed: “Coherence correlated strongly with articulation. Teachers, students, and administrators at all the charters but [one] were generally able to articulate the school’s mission and favored virtues, usually in an easily remembered acronym. This articulation fit with the concept of unified and well-publicized moral ideals and logic.”

Meadows, White, and Green all articulated a common vision for what they want LEAD to provide students. The school’s desire to build career-focused skills, like technology and engineering, in conjunction with social and emotional traits is laudable.

The Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues can help any type of school cultivate character in its students, through their online resources for both primary and secondary educators.

Austin, TX increases access to Garcia boys school

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School choice debates are often framed around competition; public district schools vie against public charter schools and private schools to enroll students. However, in Austin things look a little different. The public district celebrates the variety of schooling options available to parents, including Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy.

Last week, the Austin Independent School District announced their plans to provide transportation for any student wishing to attend Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy. The announcement was made at a press conference, which the Austin American-Statesman covered.

The school is a all-boys campus serving grades six through eight. Artist Tyson, an 8th-grade student, was invited to speak at the press conference. He told the audience that Garcia’s single-sex composition was a major factor in its unique value.

“Something we get that you don’t obtain at other schools is brotherhood. The teachers here are phenomenal, but they are not our only educators. Our brothers teach us,” said Tyson. As a single-sex school, its culture and curriculum are tailored to its students. And, like other schools that families choose, it reaps the benefit of buy-in from that selection process.

The Austin district is eager to capitalize on this successful initiative. The school has room to grow in its enrollment, and officials are expecting that the decision regarding transportation will increase the number of students in attendance by at least 120. With enrollment currently at 400 students, this would represent growth of 30%.

Tyson is an example of a student whose family was so drawn to the mission of Garcia that they moved into the district just so he could attend. He summed up the trajectory that the school strives to move students through: “Boys yesterday. Men today. Leaders tomorrow.”

The school’s focus on developing students as young men, as well as scholars, clearly resonates. Sterlin McGruder, Garcia’s principal, said he regularly spoke with parents who wanted to enroll their children if not for the issue of transportation.

Now, thanks to the efforts of the Austin Independent Schools District, more students will benefit from the unique and holistic culture that exists at Garcia.

The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia conducted an extensive field research project in ten sectors of American secondary education. This field research included “pedagogical schools,” which Notre Dame sociologist David Sikkink, writing in The Content of Their Character, describes as “attempts to realize a full-orbed vision of education that [includes] a guiding mission or philosophy and fairly precise guidelines for school structure and teaching methods.”

Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy has just such a defining mission:

In an environment of brotherhood, the Gus Garcia Young Men’s Leadership Academy develops scholars who are empathetic, service-oriented problem-solvers—lifelong learners who succeed in high school, college, career and life.

Tyson also noted that he is “surrounded by positive influences, particularly by men of color” and is taught to be a leader.

Education Week provides an interactive snapshot of the location of public single-gender schools for interested parents and educators. As it turns out, Gus Garcia operates in the state with the most single-gender schools.

Lutheran school builds leaders through student council

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Many students at St. Paul’s Lutheran School have a natural inclination for leadership and responsibility, and a move to start the school’s first student council is providing formal opportunities for them to apply their skills.

First-year principal Larry Wooster told the Pilot-Tribune & Enterprise that teachers suggested the idea and created an application process that required students to fill out paperwork and gain approval from their teacher. Selected students crafted posters and campaigns, and gave speeches to their classmates, who voted for a president and vice president, secretary, and a representative for 3rd/4th, 5th/6th, and 7th/8th grades.

“One of the fears with something like this is it becomes a popularity contest and we tried to not make it that,” Wooster said, adding that he believes students voted wisely. Jamey Rhea, an 8th-grader and new student council president, is a good example, he said.

“He has always been a good leader, but I don’t know if he’s had the opportunity to use that leadership in a formal environment,” Wooster said. “It gives him more structure and the opportunity to practice leadership skills he already has, but in a different way.”

Rhea is joined by vice-president Emma Misfeldt, secretary Carisa Brazelton, 7th/8th-grade rep Luke Hammang, 5th/6th rep Brooke Hilgenkamp, and 3rd/4th rep Erika Krusikshank, according to the news site.

“If [the faculty] had chosen representatives, these are probably the students we would have chosen,” Wooster said.

The principal said the group is already off to a good start, helping take on projects that were previously left to teachers. The students have also organized special dress up days and the school’s Lutheran Schools Week celebration in January. “We had a pretty big hand in the Veterans Day ceremony,” Rhea said.

Wooster said students have already gained valuable experiences through public speaking, organizing, and working together, and he believes the group’s creativity will eventually help tackle issues outside of school.

“I’d like to see them come up with suggestions for new playground equipment and service projects,” Wooster said. “They may come up with service projects we have not thought of that would give them the opportunity to serve the community.”

St. Paul’s new student council mirrors the approach of pedagogical schools studied by David Sikkink, whose findings appear in The Content of Their Character.

Editors James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, noted that these schools “teach character and citizenship through experiential learning opportunities such as ‘town meetings,’ student government, grade-level meetings with administrators, and practices that fostered mutual commitment to every student’s success.”

St. Paul’s is a school that rests on its religious foundation, while also incorporating elements of pedagogical schools that allow students a formal venue to practice leadership and encourages their desire to improve their school and community.

“I wanted to help the school before I leave for high school,” vice-president Emma Misfeldt said.

The National Association of Student Councils (NatStuCo) provides a framework for student councils to develop civic action plans that clearly define community needs, action recommendations, and action steps, as a way for leaders like the students at St. Paul’s to make their schools a better place.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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