responsibility

PA student calls for focus on moral issues to address root causes of school violence

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A student at St. Louis de Monfort Academy in Herndon, Pennsylvania is pointing to moral issues in America as the root cause of school violence, and he’s explaining why he doesn’t think new gun control laws will help the situation.

Student Gregory O. Murphy recently penned a letter to the editor of The Daily Item to highlight why he believes student walkouts across the country to call for gun control in the wake of school shootings is a misguided mission.

“Seeing the reactions from a few schools around America, as a student from St. Louis de Monfort Academy, I believe that the school walkouts are a wrong way of trying to solve the problem,” Murphy wrote. “All of us realize the tragedy of these killings, and we don’t want to see it happen again.

“However, more gun laws won’t solve the problem,” Murphy argued.

This view will be seen as shocking to many, for the default position today is that politics is the first recourse to solving social problems. And yet social science shows that “the amount of law that exists in any society is always inversely related to the coherence and stability of its common culture: law increases as cultural consensus decreases.”   Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture Professor James Hunter of the University of Virginia warns, “It is only logical that problems affecting the society are seen increasingly, if not primarily through the prism of the state; that is, in terms of how law, policy, and politics can solve them…. This is the heart of politicization and it has gone so far as to affect our language, imagination, and expectations.”  In fact, the reality of these pressing social concerns is often beyond the simple solution of passing more laws. Character and culture also play a decisive role in ways that are often overlooked.

Murphy contends school violence is a moral issue with roots in government and politics, largely guided by a modern society that’s lost focus on the true purpose of life. He pointed to a recent column by author and scholar John Horvat II, published in Crisis Magazine shortly after the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida that left 17 people dead in February.

Murphy wrote:

John Horvat II, author of “Return to Order,” puts it well saying in his article “When Will the Shooting Stop?,” that “the nihilistic nature of these dark crimes signals a much deeper problem that strikes at the foundation of modern society.” He continues showing how these mass shootings are the result of a liberalism, which deprives life of purpose, because truly “Nothing makes sense without God.” Without God, there is no longer anything stopping people from evil. Mr. Horvat continues that, “When taken to its final consequences, liberalism presents a despairing worldview, in which man is the product of random causes inside an unintelligible universe.”

Murphy concludes that student walkouts, more gun control laws, and more government intervention will undoubtedly do little to curb violence in schools, particularly school shooters.

“ …(W)e need to change our mentality,” he wrote.

“We have to realize that big problems are only solved with big solutions. We should first address the moral issues,” Murphy continued. “While this is not dealt with, we can only expect the shootings to continue.”

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening the moral culture of their school can find information and support at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

Parents get heated during community meeting on bullying

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Dozens of parents shouted down Waterford School District officials at a town hall meeting in March to discuss what they perceived of as rampant bullying in the district’s schools.

The heated three-hour meeting centered largely on students and parents relaying the horror stories of bullying to superintendent Keith Wunderlich and board members John Torres and Bob Piggott, with most alleging the district’s efforts to address serious behavior problems isn’t working, the Oakland Press reports.

Several folks in the crowd who spoke up shouted their frustrations directly at Wunderlich.

Fourteen-year-old Brooklyn Longacre told district officials the sexual harassment she’s faced at Mott High School convinced her to quit playing sports, and she now sees a counselor. Longacre said school officials haven’t taken her complaints seriously, and she’s not alone.

“I’ve seen her get bullied, and her,” Longacre said, pointing to classmates in the crowd.

“Peer mediation doesn’t work. I had to walk down the hallway with the same guy who was touching me every day … I’m really tired of it,” she said. “I’m tired of the excuses. I did go to my principal and the principal said I lied. This is real. This is happening.”

The meeting followed recent allegations of assault and sexual abuse shared widely on social media.

Kaila Partlo told the Press she posted to Facebook about her third-grade daughter’s experience with bullies and the post generated over 65,000 shares and over 100 calls from other Waterford parents with similar concerns.

Parents of a Cooley Elementary School third grader who committed suicide in January have also spoken out recently about the district’s bullying problem.

Ashley Wright, a community organizer who planned the March meeting, told the Press her now 18-year-old daughter suffered depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts during her two years in Waterford schools, but those problems seemed to evaporate when she started a new school in Illinois.

Makenzie Benning, a Pierce Middle School eighth-grader, also spoke at the meeting, relaying how she punched a student in self-defense after he repeatedly sexually assaulted her. Benning said she received a three-day suspension, while her harasser faced no punishment, the Detroit Free Press reports.

“I (was) sexually harassed last year and got in trouble for standing up for myself,” she said.

A district spokesperson told the Press Waterford schools uses several nationally recognized anti-bullying programs – including Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, The Leader in Me program and Mindfulness – but have assembled a task force of parents, school officials, social workers and anti-bullying experts to implement changes.

Parents like Kaila Partlo, however, seem skeptical the effort will make much of a difference.

Parents and students alike are now highly sensitive to the dangers of bullying. Even as national statistics show a national decrease in bullying behavior, it is imperative that all involved address the problem with the seriousness that it deserves. A problem exists at this school that is deeper than bullying. There is skepticism by parents that the administration and teachers care about addressing these moral dilemmas. Researchers at the University of Virginia found that in some cases public high school teachers are reluctant to get involved in controversial issues. They observed, “This failure to provide a fully developed and broadly coherent moral message was partly due to public school teachers’ reluctance to opine on controversial issues.” They often refrain from “providing serious direction on what was right and what was wrong.”[1]

Teachers and principals interested in strengthening moral formation in their students can find support and strategies to do so at the UK’s Jubilee Centre.

[1] Hunter, James Davison and Ryan S. Olson. The Content of Their Character (Finstock & Tew Publishers, 2018), p. 67.

Ohio school to start International Baccalaureate program

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Claire Foltz is excited that multiple-choice tests are becoming somewhat passé at Glen Oak High School in Ohio. Foltz and her classmates will soon be able to enroll in International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, which aim “to develop lifelong learners who think globally and act locally to create a better and more peaceful world,” reports CantonRep.com.
Glen Oak High School has gone through a three-year process of preparing to become an IB school because of the way that it forms and shapes learners and citizens. The school is only one of 22 in Ohio that offer the program, and part of an international community of 2,500 IB schools.
CantonRep.com says that the main difference between IB and traditional classes revolves around the methods through which students are “demonstrating knowledge.” Traditional classes frequently rely on students regurgitating information to determine whether they’ve reached a certain level of mastery. IB classes ask students to go deeper, researching topics and applying that learning to their local community.
At Glen Oak, the IB classes will allow students to demonstrate knowledge through oral presentations, large research papers, and completion of community service projects. Foltz described her excitement with the transition: ““I like to be able to explain myself and I like presentations . . . so I think it’s going to be a lot more effective for me. I think it’s a good change.”
Classes will be offered across the spectrum of academic content, including: “varying levels of English, French and Spanish, global politics, biology and physics and varying levels of math, music and visual arts.”
Administrators at Glen Oak are excited about the benefits that IB classes will have for students beyond their time in the classroom. Emily Palmer, the program’s coordinator, feels that by exposing students to a more robust learning process they are better prepared to become lifelong learners. She said the goal is to have students, “believe in the heart of IB, which is to create a better world.”
In The Content of Their Character, Notre Dame sociologist David Sikkink describes the IB model as “built on a broad and demanding liberal arts curriculum that includes ‘language acquisition’ and study of ‘individuals and societies,’ both of which help encourage an awareness of cultures worldwide. The program also requires the completion of an independent research essay and a service project.”
The IB model provides coherence for the work of a school beyond granting diplomas. Through its required capstone project, students must build the skills of independent inquiry. Sikkink says that the IB students studied in the School Cultures and Student Formation Project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture had to “be experts at managing their own time, since they were urged to maintain high academic performance in a very rigorous program.” The required service project can form dispositions of social concern that extend beyond the school walls.
Glen Oak anticipates that the IB program will draw families and students that are committed to this model of learning and service. Already, they have students and families who are excited about pursuing the character and skills outlined in the IB learner profile.
The IB learner profile is helpful to educators in defining the qualities that they seek in their students—and then matching their curriculum and pedagogy to those goals.  It is also useful in helping a school determine whether it should offer the IB program.

This school requires students to lead in learning

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At the Denver School of Innovation, high schooler Amida Nigena is responsible for getting her work done—and for figuring out what the work is. DSI, like a handful of innovative schools, pushes its students to take responsibility for learning.

In most high schools, everyone travels at roughly the same pace, regardless of aptitude or interest. Some schools are resisting that trend, and in doing so are establishing school cultures that require students to engage rather than requesting them to engage, reports The 74 Million.

At first, “I hated the school,” Nigena said. “The first year was really rough on everyone. We were just thrown in. We didn’t know what personalized learning was, and neither did our teachers.”

Principal Lisa Simms agreed.  “We hired 10 teachers who were rock stars in a traditional setting, she said. But the approach was so new the staff had to start with such basics as establishing a common vocabulary. For example, it was hard to even find a definition of competence. “What does it mean to be competent? How do you show mastery?”

It is the unconventional practices of these schools that make them stand out. James Davison Hunter and Ryan S. Olson, editors of The Content of Their Character, a study of school culture and student formation from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, frame the importance of practices this way: “The moral and missional ethos of a school [is] reinforced through a range of practices, or routinized actions—some formal, some informal—all oriented toward giving tangible expression to the school’s values and beliefs.”

Many pioneering pedagogical schools don’t have a “character” mission. What unifies them is their passion to give “expression to the school’s values and beliefs.” In the case of DSI, Amida Nigena says that the experience of being required to take responsibility for her learning was frustrating at first, but, “It’s taught me to be patient and to persevere, and also that it’s OK to fail. That process has really changed me, especially when things don’t go exactly well.”

That is precisely the power of formative institutions with a clear “missional ethos . . . reinforced through a range of practices.” Those practices, in turn, shape students’ confidence and competence in learning and in life.

Practices take practice. They require a commitment to culture. Schools that are developing or considering unconventional approaches can consult Michael Niehoff’s recommendations for creating and cultivating school culture.

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.

Learning responsibility by growing salad greens

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In Montpelier, VT, biology students are tending to both their own education and a greenhouse serving their whole school district’s food system. The high school students are thriving with the responsibility of growing salad greens, which are purchased and served by all three schools in their district, as covered by Edutopia.

The greenhouse is part of an extended service-learning project led by Tom Sabo, science teacher and sustainability educator at Montpelier High School. He says, “When we’re producing food, there’s that purpose and that brings relevance. It’s all about student engagement and by engagement I’m not talking about just paying attention. I’m talking about an emotional, psychological commitment to their learning.”

All educators strive for the student engagement that Sabo describes, but it can be difficult to get there. One of the teachers he collaborates with on the project, Anne Watson, a physics teacher, breaks down the initial plan for a service-learning project: “I first look at, what are my objectives? What do I want kids to walk away with by the time this unit is over? How are the kids going to get from not knowing anything to a final product that is useful and helpful?”

In the case of Montpelier High’s greenhouse, that means all biology students tend daily to two trays of salad greens, that are harvested twice a week. Students handle all the necessary tasks of planting, watering, monitoring of harmful pests, and “thinning.” They also blog about their experience and constantly have to be on the lookout for new ways to apply their learning.

Local cafeteria staff feel that the project has positive results outside of just food production. They’ve noticed that students who played a role in the growing process are more likely to choose the nutritious greens for lunch.

Sabo reports, “The level of responsibility—we didn’t realize how big it was going to be . . . If you skip a day [the salad greens] die.”

It turns out having meaningful responsibility is the key to the engagement that Sabo described earlier, as well as forming character, and having the learning stick. As Watson reflected: “The kids are going to remember it forever.” She adds, “It’s not just about the grades for them.”

“I’ve seen students who are not really that engaged in school come alive when they get to a project that is going to mean something to someone else.”

Building responsibility and care for others through service learning is possible in all sectors of American education. The School Cultures and Student Formation project at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture studied secondary schools in ten sectors—public, private, and home. Notre Dame sociologist David Sikkink studied pedagogical schools, which frequently use service learning. “Local service projects and social activism were seen as important forms of engagement” in caring for the local community, Sikkink writes in The Content of Their Character.

Vanderbilt University offers this definition of service learning: “A form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves.” It doesn’t have to be a greenhouse. Edutopia offers a guide for planning a service unit.

School outreach to students, parents paying off

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Administrators at Wyoming’s Albany County School District #1 are building trust with students and parents by engaging them in important decisions about curriculum development and graduation requirements, among other issues.

ACSD #1 Superintendent Jubal Yennie explained how the district is using student voices and feedback from the community to inform the district’s strategic decision-making in a recent webinar for K12 Insight.

The education website’s blog, TrustED, outlined how the process is paying off, for both school leaders looking to improve academics as well as student and families in the district.

“One of the things we’ll be working on this year is the whole graduation requirement,” Yennie said. “We’re finding that students have a great deal to say in this conversation. One of the things that’s resonated really well at the high school is this whole notion of purpose, where they’re actually saying the choices they’re provided in their programs is driving their desire to learn.”

Yennie explained that one of his top priorities as superintendent is to build trust among students, parents, and staff, and a comprehensive school quality survey for all three groups is providing valuable feedback on things like academic support, school leadership, and safety and behavior.

“We picked up very early on that our community and our students and staff all felt that we were doing a good job,” Yennie said. “We certainly celebrated that. I think the metric we picked up out of that was nine out of 10 people said we were doing excellent or good.”

The survey also showed where local schools could do better, he said, including better connections between what students are learning in class and how they can apply it in the real world.

“I think there’s some opportunity here with the curriculum—with how we’re structuring teaching and learning in Albany County,” Yennie said. “From the survey instrument, we’ve spent a great deal of time over the past year developing a strategic plan that echoes a lot of these concerns we’re seeing here.”

By establishing trust with students, ACSD #1 is also offering a sense of purpose—an element University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter explains is crucial to developing good character.

“Implicit in the word character is a story. It is a story about living for a purpose that is greater than the self,” Hunter wrote in The Tragedy of Moral Education in America. “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.”

In other words, student voice is important not as mere self-expression, but in connecting to a purpose that’s bigger than the self.

The Jubilee Centre offers a resource on connecting to a purpose in one’s life, asking students to imagine that they are looking back on their lives 70 or 80 years from now and to reflect on whether they have lived well.

When our heroes falter: lessons from 3 UCLA athletes

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The recent arrest of three University of California Los Angeles players in China for shoplifting, and their subsequent return to the United States, provides valuable lessons on character, humility, and taking responsibility as role models.

In October, President Trump intervened to facilitate the release of three UCLA freshman basketball players who were caught shoplifting at several stores during a trip to China for an exhibition game.

The players—LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley—were suspended indefinitely from the basketball team once they arrived home, and they held a press conference in mid-November to own up to their misdeeds, which could have resulted in up to 10 years in a Chinese jail, NPR reports.

Each player at the press conference admitted to stealing, apologized for their actions, and pleaded for forgiveness in what’s become an embarrassing international incident for the university and the United States.

“I take full responsibility for the mistake I have made, shoplifting,” Riley said. “I know that this goes beyond me letting my school down, but I let the entire country down.”

“I take full responsibility for my actions, and I’m sorry,” said Ball, younger brother of Los Angeles Laker Lonzo Ball.

Jalen Hill told reporters “what I did was stupid, there’s just no other way to put it.”

The students also recognized the impact of their actions on their family, friends, teammates, university, and the United States.

“I apologize to my teammates, my coaches, and my family because of how much negative attention that I put on them that they do not deserve,” Hill said.

All three students stressed that the stealing is not their origin or destiny, and vowed to learn from the experience so it doesn’t happen again.

“I’d also like everyone to know that this does not define who I am,” Ball said. “My family raised me better than that and I’m going to make myself a better person from here on out.”

While these young men are not necessarily role models for most children, as parents don’t want their kids to become shoplifters, they are role models for some, a fact that Riley addressed in a message to his younger brother at the press briefing.

“To my younger brother, Ben, this is not the example that I want to set for you,” he said. “But from here on out, I promise I will be the best role model I can be . . .  for you to look up to.”

Taking responsibility is tough, but the players’ comments show their willingness to own up to their action, to ask for forgiveness, and to enter the slow process of rebuilding trust. Children who watch their athletic heroes humble themselves learn this is the only way to grow. People who can publicly admit their failures, seek the forgiveness of those they’ve wronged, and actively seek to change are the only ones worthy of emulation.

In the book The Death of Character, University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter wrote that the most essential feature of character “is the inner capacity for restraint—an ability to inhibit oneself in one’s passions, desires, and habits within the boundaries of a moral order.”

In this case, the student athletes failed by shoplifting.

But Hunter notes that “character is, in explicit ways, the embodiment of the ideals of a moral order . . . ” and the contrition and apology offered by the students illustrate their submission to a moral order they’ve violated.

This is the world we live in: one with fallible heroes who grow only by humility and taking responsibility.

Coaches looking to build strong character in students can find resources in University of Virginia’s basketball program, which coach Tony Bennett built on Five Pillars: Humility, Passion, Unity, Servanthood, and Thankfulness.

Parents vs. administrators on cameras in the high school bathrooms

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Administrators at Colorado’s Windsor Charter Academy Early College High School are now monitoring students on surveillance cameras inside bathrooms, and parents aren’t very happy about it.

School officials frame the situation as a safety precaution, and parents are raising privacy concerns, but the issue also raises questions about the school’s ability to instill character and responsibility in students.

Parents recently learned that officials at the high school installed four cameras in student bathrooms—two in men’s rooms and two in women’s rooms—as part of a new design that also includes floor-to-ceiling stalls, the Greeley Tribune reports.

“I was floored,” parent Trevor Garrett said.

Garrett and his wife Annie, along with another parent, confronted school officials about the new cameras in October, and demanded to know why parents were not informed. Annie said her daughters contend some girls change in the bathrooms and have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” phrasing used by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Rebecca Teeples, executive director of Windsor Charter Academy Schools, told the news site the cameras, which allegedly focus only on the bathroom wash stations, were included in a redesign of the school, which opened this year.

She confirmed that academy officials did not inform parents about the change, but noted that signs about the increased surveillance went up days before the cameras. Windsor Charter Academy attorney Bill Bethke argued that the wash stations are technically a public space, and insisted the new cameras and floor-to-ceiling stalls are designed to improve privacy.

“I would urge people to consider that the charter school is trying to improve the protection of privacy, but in doing that drawing a line between the private space and the public space that is new and that people will learn to use appropriately,” he told the Tribune.

Teeples added that the cameras are part of the school’s focus on monitoring all public spaces on campus to ensure students are safe.

“Every decision we make, we make to make sure our students are safe as possible in our school,” she said.

The Garretts, meanwhile, have vowed to pursue a lawsuit if necessary to force school officials to remove the cameras.

While much of the debate about the cameras centers on privacy, it also raises serious questions about responsibility and character.

How have we arrived at a place where we can’t trust students to use the bathroom?

In her book Adult Supervision Required, Markella Rutherford observed that, “Parents have been told [since the 1980s] that children and adolescents must be adequately supervised at all times, which has had particularly dramatic effects on how children spend their free time and engage in peer relationships. The need for constant adult supervision has also constrained children’s opportunities to demonstrate meaningful responsibility and be recognized for their independent contributions. By stressing parents’ supervisory role, the boundary line between adult and child is reinforced, and childhood is constructed as a period of dependence, irresponsibility, and incompetence.”

The ultimate goal is to cultivate moral autonomy in students, so they can make responsible decisions on their own and be held accountable for their actions.

Resources on “good sense” from the Jubilee Centre help educators assist students in cultivating a moral compass that helps them make good decisions.

©2017 Advanced Studies in Culture

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