Groundbreaking research from
the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
Includes a chapter on Islamic Schools
The Content of
Their Character
Case studies of character formation in American schools. New insights into helping our children.
V
This is a one-of-a-kind book exploring varieties of moral formation through on-the-ground research in ten different types of American high schools.
Explore all the chapters
Islamic
Jewish Day
Homeschooling
Prestigious Independent
Alternative Pedagogy
Islamic
About the chapter: Private schools with an Islamic character and mission are a recent phenomenon in North America. The focus of this study was Islamic schools established by immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East, mostly over the last 30 years. These immigrant schools have not been extensively researched.
Excerpts: “One student expressed appreciation that the Islamic school ‘feels actually kind of safe. You know everyone’s just like you, you’re not the outcast or seen as different or any of that. It’s really like, it’s a healthy environment and really just safe . . . So, I love it.’ “
“In discussing how Muslims should relate to the American political system, the school staff we interviewed were concerned to make two points that exist in some tension: that Muslim Americans are fully participating and loyal citizens, and that they do not agree with all of the assumptions and values by which public life in the United States is shaped.”
“Our most striking finding was that, contrary to our expectations, staff, parents, and students did not have a great deal to say about the difficulty of reconciling their religious beliefs with life as active participants in American society. The students we interviewed, indeed, seemed rather taken aback by the suggestion that this would be a major problem for them.”
“[C]hristian schools were spoken of approvingly and Christian organizations and parents seen as potential allies; students told us of making friends with students in Catholic and other faith-based schools, of volunteering at churches. We did not get an impression of religious competition, but of deep contrasts between those with and those without religious motivations and faith-based behavioral norms.”
About the author: Dr. Charles Glenn is professor emeritus of educational Leadership at Boston University. Dr. Glenn received his A.B. and Ed.D. from Harvard, and his Ph.D. from Boston University.
Jewish Day
About the chapter: The Jewish day school sector is divided into subsectors differing considerably in religious orientation, educational goals, and comfort with American popular culture and mores. The commonality of these schools is that they all offer a mix of general studies and Judaica, ranging from one or two school periods daily to a full day devoted to Jewish studies. How do these curricular choices shape the character of students?
Excerpts: “Educators wished to establish in students’ minds a normative approach to behavior and an understanding that moral decisions were connected to a personal relationship with the Divine.”
“For all their distinctive features, Jewish day high schools share a good deal in common with their public and private school counterparts when they address matters of private virtue.”
“There was a widespread adoption of a therapeutic framework, the findings of developmental psychology, and contemporary pedagogical methods, with their intensely learner-centered approaches.”
About the author: Dr. Jack Wertheimer is professor of American Jewish History at The Jewish Theological Seminary. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Homeschooling
About the chapter: As proponents of homeschooling like to point out, education was predominantly conducted in the home for most of history, until mandatory state-sponsored schooling emerged in Western countries in the 19th century. Prior to that, most formal and informal education occurred in the home, around the hearth or table, led by parents or, if the family was so privileged, a tutor. So how do homeschooling families form character in the 21st century?
Excerpts: “These kids get to interact with people who are really, really different on every level. They learn how to respect a baby, how to respect an old person who doesn’t know what they’re saying anymore. They spend time being with people who are dramatically different.”
“We know that all parents want ‘good kids.’ What set all our homeschoolers apart was that they were committed to, and intentional about, the environment that they thought was most fertile for growing that goodness.”
“Contrary to the assumptions of critics about the isolating, fragmenting, and homogenizing force of homeschools, we found examples of the opposite effect.”
About the author: Dr. Jeffrey Dill is affiliate professor of sociology and liberal studies in the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Virginia.
Prestigious Independent
About the chapter: In this study, we defined “prestigious independent schools” as private high schools that charge substantially more in tuition than surrounding nonpublic schools. The prestigious independent school sector includes a wide variety of distinctive high school structures: the schools may be religious or secular, and they may be single-sex, co-ed, day, or boarding schools. How do these elite schools prepare students for responsibility?
Excerpts: “The highest avowed ideals at each school were variations on maintaining person honor [integrity] and showing respect for others.”
“A program that touched every part of a student’s life—even family life—helped these schools create a coherent culture and dedication to that culture.”
“There was some disparity between the priority the schools placed on moral formation and the primary reason parents chose the school [placement at elite selective colleges and universities].”
About the author: Dr. Kathryn Wiens is Director of Schools for Applied and Innovative Learning (SAIL) at Delaware County Christian School. She received her Ph.D. in education from Boston University.
Alternative Pedagogy
About the chapter: Alternative pedagogical schools – both public and private – often are 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. For this reason, this “alternative pedagogy” sector affords insights into the impact of school organizational culture on opportunities for moral and civic formation of youth.
Excerpts: “[T]hese alternative schools often were attempts to realize a full-orbed vision of education that included a guiding mission or philosophy and fairly precise guidelines for school structure and teaching methods.”
“These were not rudderless institutions; each had a fairly explicit understanding of student formation goals, which to a large extent were an outgrowth of an alternative vision of the educational task.”
“The schools rooted their moral authority in their educational philosophies and programs, which often harkened back to charismatic founders and included origin stories about the insights and histories of their new approaches to schooling.”
“[M]oral and civic formation was communicated largely through commonplace practices and structures—a regime that was best understood as something that happens ‘on the ground,’ especially in relationships among students and between teachers and students. In this sense, the moral and civic curriculum was ‘hidden’ but quite powerful.”
About the author: Dr. David Sikkink is associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the lead researcher on both the Pedagogical and Evangelical Protestant sectors. Dr. Sikkink received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Catholic
Evangelical Protestant
Charter
Rural Public
Urban Public
Catholic
About the chapter: Noted education scholar and public intellectual Diane Ravitch has argued that Catholic schools come closer than public schools to the common school ideal of producing similar educational results for students of different backgrounds. Do they also outpace their peers in civic outcomes?
Excerpts: “The primary aim at most contemporary Catholic schools is not necessarily to produce practicing Catholics, but to provide a model of the good life.”
Broadly speaking, the version of Catholicism presented in most Catholic schools has much in common with Nancy Ammerman’s description of “Golden Rule Christians.”
“Catholic schools do not in most instances cultivate strong subcultural identities that encourage students to feel separate from the society around them.”
About the author: Dr. Carol Ann MacGregor is an assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.
Evangelical Protestant
About the chapter: Religious schools may ground moral and civic formation in the social and cultural context of a particular church, synagogue, or mosque, though this is becoming less common. Catholic schools have been built on several of these bases, including ethnic, community, and, increasingly, academic commitments. Evangelical Protestant schools are unlike any of these.
Excerpts: “The schools were intentional about moral formation, and they directed much of their staff effort toward evangelical transformation.”
“Schools achieved much of their moral coherence through the hiring process…. The teacher role ultimately provided a model of how to live sacrificially, putting the needs of others before one’s interests.”
“Ultimately, student socialization within the schools was an outcome of the particular adult roles in the school, which were well-defined through specific expectations and social ties within the school community.”
About the author: Dr. David Sikkink is associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the lead researcher on both the Pedagogical and Evangelical Protestant sectors. Dr. Sikkink received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Charter
About the chapter: The majority of the research about charter schools concerns academic achievement—specifically, whether charter school students are graduating, going to college, and passing standardized tests at the same rates as students in traditional public schools with similar student populations. How does this affect the ideals of those schools?
Excerpts: “Authority was personified by the staff, but the validity of that authority in the eyes of the students came from its grounding in those moral ideals espoused by teachers, administrators, and the books the students had been reading.”
“Despite how differently each school approached moral education, every school’s moral system could be seen as authoritative and as sacred.”
“The adults in the school had an ‘end goal’ in mind about which virtues they wished their students to display, and the students knew it.”
About the author: Dr. Patricia Maloney is assistant professor of sociology at Texas Tech University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University.
Rural Public
About the chapter: Approximately 12 million students attended rural public schools in the United States in fall 2010, and in 2014, Paul Hill noted that schools in remote areas served more students than the nation’s 20 largest urban districts combined. How do schools in small communities in this large demographic cast a unique vision of character?
Excerpts: “If you go down the hall, I know 98 percent of the people. I can tell where they live and everything. Everybody knows everybody. So you can’t do anything too stupid, or somebody will know about it.”
“I think that everyone needs to feel like if they’re a part of something. Kids can get really isolated. When they find a place where they belong, they work more and feel better.”
“The best thing every teacher can do is to love the kids. According to my definition, that’s doing what’s best, serving that kid.”
About the author: Richard Fournier is Director of District Partnerships for Transforming Education. He is completing his doctorate on principal leadership at Boston University.
Urban Public
About the chapter: Urban public schools have, since their founding, been concerned with promoting social mobility and remedying inequality through academic instruction and the imparting of skills. Nevertheless, urban public schools have also, since their founding, been concerned with promoting morality and citizenship. How are they doing that now?
Excerpts: “Urban public schools have, since their founding, been concerned with promoting social mobility and remedying inequality through academic instruction and the imparting of skills. Nevertheless, urban public schools have also, since their founding, been concerned with promoting morality and citizenship.”
“My research produced a straightforward result. Urban public schools were dedicated to two layers of morality: a commitment to “helping” for teachers and to “self-actualization” for students. There was a kind of “moral invisible hand,” a sense in which the schools’ public duty to the nation was best served by helping each student as an individual be successful in whichever way they chose.”
“The schools’ moral vision was a bifurcated one, with teachers understood to be people whose lives were primarily about helping, and students understood to be people whose lives were primarily about self-realization. Whether that self-realization could resemble the lives of the adults in the building—whether, in other words, I should say that a life of service is itself better than a life of individual ambition—was left up to each individual student to decide.”
“Self-actualization was by far the most important moral idea in any of the schools, on both an aggregate and individual level. It represented what schools were supposed to do according to administrators and to district, state, and federal programs. It was what the teachers and principals wanted for the students, and what the students themselves wanted.”
About the author: Dr. Jeffrey Guhin is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Los Angeles. From 2013 to 2016, he was the Postdoctoral Abd el-Kader Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He earned his Ph.D. with distinction in sociology from Yale University.
About THE EDITORS
JAMES DAVISON HUNTER
James Davison Hunter is the Labrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He has written eight books, edited three books, and published a wide range of essays, articles, and reviews all variously concerned with the problem of meaning and moral order in a time of political and cultural change in American life.
RYAN S. OLSON
Ryan S. Olson is Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He served as Fellow in Late Antiquity at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, and received his doctorate in classics from Oxford University in 2007. His book, Tragedy, Authority, and Trickery, a study of classical narrative epistolography in its historical, literary, and cultural contexts, was published in 2010 by Harvard University Press.
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