kindness

Kids say kindness is not their parents’ priority

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Highlights magazine recently released its “The State of the Kid 2017” report, which focuses on “caring, compassion and empathy in the next generation.”

This year’s theme for the annual survey is kindness, and Highlights asked over 2,000 boys and girls ages 6–12 from all over the country about their perception of the world today.

When posed with the question, “What do you think is most important to your parents, that you’re happy, do well in school, or are kind?” the response was eye-opening.

Forty-four percent of students said their parents most want them to be happy, and 33 percent said doing well in school was the top priority. Only 23 percent pointed to being kind.

The results prompted Harvard University’s Making Caring Common Project to weigh in on the situation, to spotlight the apparent disconnect between what students perceive and what parents say they want, and to offer advice for parents looking to raise compassionate kids.

The Making Caring Common initiative pointed to the “Culture of American Families” report by the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. The study documented parents’ explicit commitment to moral character.

“The overwhelming majority of American parents (96 percent) say ‘strong moral character’ is very important, if not essential to their children’s future,” according to the Institute report.

The Highlights survey, as well as a 2014 survey of kids by the Making Caring Common Project, both illustrate a persistent “rhetoric/reality gap” that’s distorting the message to students. Much like the State of the Kid report, the 2014 survey found 81 percent of students believed their parents prioritize happiness or achievement over kindness.

From the Making Caring Common Project:

Why does this “rhetoric/reality gap” matter? When parents’ daily messages about achievement and happiness drown out their messages about concern for others, children tend not to prioritize caring and fairness in relation to their self-concerns. They’re more likely to be preoccupied with their own needs than others’ needs. When caring is not a priority, there is also a lower bar for many forms of harmful behavior, including cruelty, disrespect, dishonesty, and cheating. Not only that, the focus on happiness, and the focus on achievement in many affluent communities, doesn’t appear to increase either children’s achievement or their happiness.

The State of the Kid report shows the “rhetoric/reality gap” likely stems at least in part from the example parents set for their children. Many students told Highlights they’ve witnessed their parents or other adults acting unkindly or saying mean things, most commonly while in the car, on the phone, or watching television.

Nearly half of students said the experience made them uncomfortable, while a total of 93% reported some sort of negative reaction to adults behaving badly.

The gap between what parents want for their children, and what children perceive in practice, should serve as a call to change.

The Making Caring Common Project offers parenting tips to help focus on kindness. Teachers can share the advice with families at parent-teacher conferences structured to discuss character formation first, ahead of academic performance.

Parents and educators can also use the Project’s quiz “Are You Teaching Your Child to Be a Good Person?”

Indiana third-graders cheer to learn kindness from “Wonder”

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Rosedale Elementary teacher Mary Sampson is weaving lessons on character into her 3rd-grade classroom, and her students can’t get enough.

“When you have third graders clap because you’re reading another chapter of a book, I mean that tells you something, that you’re doing something right,” Sampson told My Wabash Valley.

Each day after recess Sampson takes 20 minutes to read the book Wonder to her class of 9-year-olds, and they’re soaking up the lessons on kindness, sharing, empathy, and listening through the story of a young student who suffers from a craniofacial disorder. The disfiguring condition means the main character looks much different than his classmates, a reality that leads to both bullying and lifelong friendships.

The story hits home for many in Sampson’s class, which includes several students with disabilities.

“They had to learn to deal with kids that make a lot of noises or kids that need to walk around the classroom or not sit in their chair the whole time,” Sampson told the news site.

The book, along with classroom activities that encourage students to recognize kind acts and share them with others at the school, is making a big impact.

“We just learned about being kind to one another, don’t judge a book by its cover,” 3rd-grader Avery Cottrell said. “You have to treat others how you want to be treated if you want to be treated good.”

Lionsgate Films, which adapted Wonder into a motion picture, is putting that theme into action with 50 free movie tickets for Sampson’s class to watch the new film on the big screen—one of only 20 classrooms nationwide to earn the honor.

Sampson’s class shared the tickets with a 5th-grade class at Rosedale that’s also reading Wonder.

“It was just so exciting we all started screaming,” 5th-grade student Marley Kilzer told My Wabash Valley, adding that she’s learned powerful lessons from the book. “You shouldn’t judge people by what they look like, you should judge them by how they treat you and what’s within them.”

James Davison Hunter, founder of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, underscored a focus on others in his book The Tragedy of Moral Education in America.

“Implicit in the word ‘character’ is a story,” Hunter wrote. “It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self.”

What books have you found that draw children from quick judgments about others toward true care for each other?

Students take anti-bullying pledge to promote kindness, compassion

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Carroll County Public Schools’ Winfield Elementary School in Maryland launched an anti-bullying campaign this month that’s designed to instill kindness and compassion among young students, skills lost with the erosion of character education in American schools.

As students streamed into Winfield on Monday, they were greeted with chalk messages including “bully-free zone,” “be kind,” and “Wildcat Warriors,” as well as the school mascot “Winfield Wildcat,” who encouraged students to sign up for a new “bully-free pledge,” the Carroll County Times reports.

The pledge was spelled out on a big blue board where students signed their names alongside their teachers, promising to treat each other with dignity and respect.

“(Winfield is doing) what we can do here as a community to change the life of the kids starting in elementary school, which I feel is the biggest thing,” Jackie Diachenko, the school’s nurse, told the news site.

The nurse said that throughout Winfield’s Bullying Awareness Week, students will learn to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate behavior, the importance of treating themselves and others with respect, and other lessons about good character that were once part of the curriculum in schools.

Diachenko also told the Times that the Bullying Awareness Week follows a Bullying Awareness Club she launched at Winfield last year. It also coincides with National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.

“What empathy we feel may help us understand someone else’s needs, and even feel the desire to help that person. But without embedded habits and moral traditions, empathy does not tell us what to do, nor when, nor how,” according to James Hunter in The Tragedy of Moral Education.

Signing a pledge is a good idea if students learn to keep their promises and get in the habit of treating others with dignity and respect. This can be reinforced by teaching and modeling character in the school and the home, establishing habits of kindness and empathy so that when students are tempted to bully other students, they have the habits of resisting that urge and a community of other students and adults who will reinforce the students’ self-restraint.

“The way the world is now and what we’re growing up in—I feel like if we’re able to make a difference and stop the negativity at such a young age, then it’s going to radiate through their life,” Diachenko said.

“The NED Show” at MLK Elementary (Youngstown, OH) points to habits of kindness

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A recent character education presentation at Youngstown’s Martin Luther King Elementary School is helping young students understand the benefits of being nice, and some are already grasping the snowball effect the lessons could have on the school’s culture.

The October presentation underscores the importance of character education in schools. It also provides an avenue for expanding lessons to encourage students to learn from each other.

Youngstown students in kindergarten through 5th grade met with yo-yo aficionado Chad Adams and NED—the star character of The NED Show and acronym for “Never give up, Encourage others, and Do your best,” The Vindicator reports.

Throughout the roughly 45-minute assembly, the characters engaged students through yo-yo tricks, humor, and stories about good character to illustrate important concepts like focus and persistence, kindness and shared learning, and diligence and excellence.

“After the assembly, educators have access to our extensive collection of resources. The lesson plans, videos, and classroom activities center upon NED traits and easily integrate into existing curriculum,” according to The NED Show website. “The excitement begins with the assembly and continues year round to promote a culture of kindness and excellence at your school.”

King Elementary counselor Kristen Campana told The Vindicator that officials chose The NED Program to promote good behavior and “instill good traits in our students as early as possible so they can all grow and be successful in all aspects.”

Students who attended the assembly quickly recognized the potential the lessons have to reduce bullying.

“People need to start being nice,” 5th-grader Trent Young said. “We are all the same here.”

Other insightful students, like 3rd-grader John Barden, pointed to another big benefit often highlighted by character education advocates.

“You should show younger kids to be nice so that when they’re our age, they’ll continue to show kids younger than them to be kind,” Barden said.

Barden’s comment shows he understands the importance of cultivating habits in students when they’re young so they can be kind without thinking twice about it.

That’s the essence of character education, and it’s a foundation that schools should build on and infuse in the school community.

To help students dive deeper into the ideas planted by The NED Show, a lesson on kindness suggests that teachers help students to “visualize the community-building effects of practicing kindness.” Older students can often mentor their younger schoolmates to begin developing kindness habits early.

Eva Moskowitz on “Why schools should teach moral character”

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Success Academy is well known for outstanding academic achievement: With 15,500 students, our network of 46 charter schools is the size of the seventh largest school district in New York State and had the highest percentages of students passing last year’s state math and reading exams. Last year, we received the prestigious Broad Prize for the “greatest academic performance and improvement while reducing achievement gaps among low-income students and students of color.” Four of our schools have earned National Blue Ribbons.

But we believe our students’ academic accomplishments are nothing if they do not also possess strong moral character. So in addition to teaching our scholars to be good readers, writers, mathematicians, and scientists, we believe they need to be people of high moral character who are self-reflective about their actions.

Teaching moral character scares many educators. That’s commonly because of a belief in relativism, an appropriate concern not to impose ideas by simple authority on a diverse student body. True, our school community is diverse. Our families, scholars, teachers, and staff do all not share the same values. And as educators we must be careful not to impose our own political or religious values on students. Yet I think we can all agree that schools can and should teach students honesty and kindness.

Ethics and good character are a part of our daily instruction. We do not have a character development curriculum because we don’t believe learning right from wrong is something that happens from 11:05–11:55 twice a week.  Rather, we have core values, and we teach them at the beginning of the year so that all new students know our north star—and we re-teach them throughout the year, since it’s easy to forget the what and the why.

At Success Academy, we mostly worry not about the kids, but the grownups. Ethics start with adults and filter to children. Respect for others and proper behavior are not just taught, but expected, modeled, and rewarded at Success Academy.

We spend much time on articulating and reinforcing what it means to be an ethical educator.  Our core beliefs include academic integrity, of course, but also center on respecting children and treating them with kindness and consistency.

We believe it is unethical to tell students reflexively they are doing a “great job” when in fact their work is poor. We believe it is unethical to pretend to valorize thinking but actually valorize procedures. We believe that, as educators, we must give students as much independence as possible, but not so much that their mistakes are fatal.

We expect our scholars to prize integrity and to make smart, ethical decisions. We know and fear the irreparable consequences that can result from one lapse in good judgment. But we also expect moral lapses and gaps. When we find them, we stop and address them with radical candor.

This has been one of the most important ingredients to our success. It is impossible to imagine our current academic excellence without this emphasis on high moral character.

 

Social-emotional learning and achievement at Valor

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Valor Collegiate Academies in Tennessee is crediting a sharp focus on social and emotional learning (SEL) for students’ astonishing academic success, which propelled its Tennessee schools to the top 1 percent of all middle schools in the state in its first year.

The success at Valor not only sheds light on the value of social-emotional learning, but also provides an opportunity to connect those lessons with broader discussions about good character and morals.

The Charter School Growth Fund, which invested $1.5 million for Valor’s first two schools launched in 2013, featured the schools in a recent “CSGF Portfolio Spotlight” on the organization’s website.

Todd Dickson, CEO of Valor Collegiate Academies, explained that the concept for the charter school was inspired by his work at a high-performing charter school in California that focused heavily on academics, and his twin brother Daren’s time helping children in social services with social and emotional skills.

“Students at Valor spend more time on their social and emotional growth than most traditional students. We first work on self-awareness and self-management to help them develop a strong sense of who they are. Then, we work on social awareness and social management to help them develop positive relationships with others. We believe that doing both things well helps develop healthy kids and communities,” Dickson said.

“We also hear from students that they feel safe here and that they have trusting relationships with peers and adults in the building. This has been beneficial in an academic setting; scholars are more willing to take academic risks. They listen to other people’s opinions and accept a diversity of perspectives.”

Valor schools use “The Valor Compass” to guide student growth and help them focus on four primary objectives: Sharp Minds, Noble Purpose, Big Hearts, and Aligned Actions.

“Mentor time, Expeditions, and academic courses all incorporate explicit and experiential experiences to help scholars develop sharp minds, big hearts, noble purpose, and aligned actions,” according to the Valor website. “Valor scholars develop character strengths such as kindness, determination, curiosity, gratitude, and integrity within a supportive community.”

Ryan Olson, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies on Culture at the University of Virginia, points out in “Character Education” that an SEL researcher argued that “the orientation of social-emotional learning toward action and skill” in SEL programs can complement the “concern for volition and intention often found in character and moral education programs.”

Adding curriculum resources on why students should do and be good—reasons outside oneself and for the benefit of others and a community—improves the stickiness of character formation, and getting students to go deeper by working on developing good sense when there is conflict between the social and emotional skills they’re learning, is an excellent next step, Olson argues.

The UK’s Jubilee Centre offers a worksheet to assist teachers to help students think about the kind of person and type of life they want to pursue.

On bullying and learning: A Girl Scout’s “buddy bench”

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MUSCATINE, Iowa – Iowa Girl Scout Nicole Frisbie knows what it’s like to face bullies, and she doesn’t want young students to face the harassment alone. She decided to do something about it, to combat bullying with kindness. And when it comes to character formation, kindness is essential.

The 17-year-old recently received the Girls Scouts’ highest honor, the Gold Award, for her work to create a “buddy bench” at her former grade school, McKinley Elementary, that’s already making a positive impact.

According to the Muscatine Journal:

Frisbie’s award-winning project involved the creation of a “buddy bench”—a space where students who are feeling bullied or left out can go to sit on the playground that alerts teachers or other students that they need help or would like companionship. Frisbie’s project involved not only the construction of the bench at her grade school alma mater, McKinley, but a training program for students and administrators regarding use of the bench and its impact, backed up by various studies in education and social science.

“It felt awesome to be a part of this and earn this award, but it’s an even more amazing feeling to know that my work is going to help kids from being bullied,” Frisbie told the news site. “I went to school at McKinley and I was bullied and it was terrible. My goal was to help the school and other kids so they don’t have to go through what I did.”

The buddy bench, she said, has already improved learning in measurable ways in its first year.

“The number of disciplinary reports have gone down and attendance has gone up,” Frisbie said. “The first is pretty explanatory, but the second—kids who are being bullied sometimes won’t want to be in school and will try to avoid it if they can.”

“I had a parent tell me that her son used it and it helped him and that was really cool,” she said. “When you do a project like this you want it to work, but you’re not really sure if it will. You hope it will. And when it does, especially a project like this, it feels really good.”

Many believe the epidemic of bullying in schools is tied closely to the disappearance of character education, which helps students develop important traits like empathy, compassion, and kindness without regard to the social costs.

“It is easy to affirm a general idea of kindness, but quite another to believe that other people are intrinsically worth being treated kindly, and that because of that belief, one has an obligation to actually treat them kindly,” James Davison Hunter, founder of University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, wrote in his book The Tragedy of Moral Education in America.

“The first is a much more flexible and convenient morality than the second, and it is one that is easier to ignore when the cost of holding to it rises.”

Lessons on character would help students identify classmates in trouble, even without the buddy bench. But while efforts to teach good character are organized, Frisbie’s project can be an effective way to address a lack of kindness. For instance, elementary-school educators could try a lesson on the virtue of kindness by asking students to become “secret agents of kindness.”

Frisbie’s own character provided the fortitude to persevere through the two-year project while balancing many other demands as a top student at Muscatine High School, where she participates in dance, color guard, and band, the Journal reports.

She raised $700 to buy the bench, as well as other funds for the frame and training materials, which the teen collected through bake sales, by soliciting donations, and other fundraising efforts.

Maura Warner, spokeswoman for Girls Scouts of Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois, said the Gold Award is an earned achievement and that it requires a lot of time, effort, and determination to bring a meaningful service project to life.

It’s an experience that builds character.

“She’s the first girl in about five years to win the honor from Muscatine,” Warner said. “It’s a really prestigious award. There’s a lot of time put into it. You have to create and manage a project and get it done successfully. It’s not about winning it; it’s about earning it.”

State police speak out on bullying

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PAW PAW, Mich. – Michigan State Police are reaching out to students and parents to combat bullies both online and in schools, a persistent problem research suggests could be addressed through a stronger focus on character education.

Parents raising concerns about bullying in Kalamazoo schools over the last month prompted the Michigan State Police to speak out on the subject, and offer parents and students advice on how to respond to the harassment.

“They say 71 percent of students have seen bullying while they were in school, so it’s quite frequent for students to see it happen,” Paw Paw Post Sgt. Andrew Jeffrey told WWMT. “Roughly 25 percent of students who have been bullied never even tell an adult that they’re being bullied. It’s very important that you let somebody know what’s going on.”

Jeffrey suggested students not respond with anger or physical attacks, but rather “act brave” and walk away when they’re targeted by bullies. MSP encourages students to talk about incidents with friends and adults, and to speak up if they see others under attack.

He also spoke about online harassment, and told WWMT state police have authority to investigate cyber bullying.

“Bullying does not have to be face to face. It can be behind people’s backs, like spreading rumors and things like that especially on the internet,” Jeffrey said. “A phone is also a computer, so if you’re using that you’re also using a computer which can potentially be a crime.”

University of Birmingham education researcher Tom Harrison studied the intersection of bullying and technology for “Virtuous reality: moral theory and research into cyber-bullying,” published in Ethics and Information Technology.

Harrison’s team interviewed 60 11–14-year olds from six schools in England about bullying online, and “themes emerging from the interviews included anonymity; the absence of rules, monitoring and guidance, and the challenges associated with determining the consequences of online actions,” he wrote.

“The new opportunities that the Internet has opened up for young people require them more than ever to ‘do the right thing’; not so much motivated by rules, duties or consequences (since these may not always be explicit), but by having the character to choose wisely between alternatives,” according to Harrison.

The situation not only calls for ways students can handle bullying once it occurs, but also a strong character foundation to prevent it from occurring to begin with.

Schools should focus on character education—public schools especially, using a virtue ethics approach highlighted in Harrison’s research—to change a school culture so that it defuses bullying and encourages the practice of virtuous habits of kindness, empathy, patience, and forgiveness.

The UK’s Jubilee Center provides resources for schools to create a framework for virtue ethics lessons, and they’re available free online.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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