As I was reading over my facebook stream the other day, a friend and colleague posted this article from the NY Times. The title, "What if the Secret to Success if Failure?" absolutely caught my attention partly because of my own beliefs about student development and my own experiences.
This article talks about the success of students is not just contingent upon academic rigor but by the development of character, emotional intelligence, and the ability to understand and work with others. The story follows to headmasters of two very different private schools. One in the upper East Side of NYC rated as one of the top tier private schools with a tuition of $38,000 per year starting at Pre-K. (Holy crap!) The other school is a charter school in NYC called KIPP. (If you don't know about KIPP its amazing!) KIPP school are for almost all minority students and from low-income families, and a majority are homeless. These two headmasters by chance meet with Martin Seligman, the author of Learned Optimism and a fabulous discussion took off about character and education. From there, the article talked about many research projects centered around character in the classroom. Based on this research "six strengths" were identified that "were especially likely to predict life satisfaction and high achievement. After a few small adjustments (Levin and Randolph opted to drop love in favor of curiosity), they settled on a final list: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity."
The article goes on to talk about how each of the headmasters implemented the education of these 6 characteristics. The KIPP school went on to create a C.P.A., Character Performance Average or character report card that was delivered with traditional G.P.A.s and report cards. The private school chose not to do any sort of report because of the competitive nature of their students and the belief that if something was measured at school, the rigor to achieve would be more important than the learning process.
What intrigued me about this article was the whole underlying tone of the article was that both schools students needed character education and to learn the ability to persevere (they call grit), reflect (called self-control), and find passion in life (called curiosity, optimism, and gratitude) no matter what the level of power and privilege. Is character that universal?
Based on this article a few things come to mind. First, is character education needed in today's schools? I know when I think of leadership skills and ultimately what I want my student leaders to gain from their experience many of my expectations and definitions fit these six core characteristics. It also makes me think, is the combination of character and academic expectations going to enhance the learning process? Based on the example from the article at the KIPP school parent/teacher conference, by talking about both character strengths and academic strengths, the teacher was able to challenge the student in a different way about their grow both personally and academically. Finally, is this transformative learning around character? Based on the limited knowledge I have, the answer is yes. As both and educator and a parent, I would send my kid and hire students who have some development of character and are willing to do the work to grow personally. I tell my student leaders all the time, “the skills that will get you a job and keep a job are the skills you learn in leadership and character development.”
I am curious, do you think character education should be a part of an educational environment? What if you received both a traditional report card and character report card?
At our institution, we recently established 10 Learning Outcomes for Student and Employee Enrichment (basically student learning outcomes) and one of them is Responsibility and Accountability.
ReplyDeleteThe definition of this Learning Outcome is: Employ personal and social accountability, recognize ethical issues, practice ethical behavior, and balance personal freedom with the interest of the community. It was designed as a way to incorporate character development into our Learning Outcomes.
While everyone on campus agrees that this will be one of the more difficult Learning Outcomes to assess, we felt strongly enough about the need for an outcome addressing personal responsibility and ethical practice that we chose to take on that challenge.
In the K-12 system there is much discussion re. the 'shared responsibility' of character education. The players sharing that responsibility in K-12 are the schools/teachers and the parents. In higher education, most of us can probably agree that the parent is no longer a key player (if a player at all). So the responsibility shifts-- but I believe that it is still shared. In our world the responsibility is split between faculty and student affairs professionals. In fact, I think that our responsibility re. character education/development is the basis of much of our value and worth as a profession. From a historical perspective, did character education come to higher education with "In Loco Parentis"? Although we've moved away from that direct-parental replacement model (and it probably wasn’t called ‘character education’ back in the day…), inclusion of these responsibilities in higher education likely dates back to the early establishment of student affairs. Today we continue to hold the shared responsibility for character education and development where parents leave off at the end of high school.
ReplyDeleteAs Darcy indicates, it is most definitely necessary for both these schools, as well as institutions of higher education, to have some sort of learning outcome that relates to accountability. How many stories do we have in our society reflecting poorly on the lack of responsibility taken by an individual in a given situation? Case in point: the first lawsuit involving McDonald’s coffee being hot, where an accident by the consumer leads to the restaurant chain being blamed for the burn. If an institution is to legitimately promote a holistic education, there must be a component of “character development” to the “student development” part of the mission statement. Otherwise, we perpetuate the attitude of entitlement that seems to be oe of the largest complaints surrounding today's youth.
ReplyDeleteKudos to the private school not using the “report card” method for measurement especially as they admittedly acknowledge they are already working with high achieving or “competitive” students as mentioned in the blog. I was leaning more on the side of how does anyone or can anyone really measure someone else’s “zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity." We could look at self-assessment or self-identifying, but to evaluation someone else…………..Wondering what other people think about this? In looking at it from a student perspective, say graduate student perspective, if we had no measurements of grades at the master’s and doctorate level would we perform better not having to focus on some measurement of a letter grade? My hope is that if you want to seek a graduate degree, you are going to develop and become more specialized in that field/topic. Back to the blog-in looking at the “6” half-dozen of characteristics where is culture, language, and globalization falling? I would have to look closer at how they are operationalizing (using Luker here!) “social intelligence and curiosity.” There is some value of moving towards competencies v. hard number/letter grade measurements. When using competencies there is a continuum of learning which will and can take place. When someone says characteristics, it makes more of a statement of needing to inherit these from naturally preexisted traits versus growing, fostering, and learning them over time.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the article reports from both a side of privilege as well as poverty. I am currently reading a book, "The Price of Privilege" by Madeline Levine, PhD. In short, the book addresses the societal issue of kids who are raised by parents who overcompensate for busy lives by buying children every material item. I was reminded of this book in reading your blog because I believe we will need to focus on character education in the college curriculum because a large portion of today's kids are not getting it before they arrive on our campuses. However, with that said, I do not believe that faculty should be responsible for this education. Perhaps it could be interwoven into the curriculum of a college classroom, but I think it is more likely that this type of education would fall more on the shoulders of Student Affairs professionals.
ReplyDeleteTeaching character development and emotional intelligence in higher education? Absolutely, these aspects should be a part of every curriculum in every class. Teachable moments arise across the board in the classrooms. The question is whether the instructor takes advantage of the opportunities to integrate the theories. Instead, it seems there are "pockets" of leadership development on campuses in specific groups rather than across the board. I am impressed with university outlined in the article desire to make it a campus wide initiative.
ReplyDeleteI know the KIPP system and actually love the design and implementation of the values it instills in their students. I would love for that same design to take place in the public sector, but I think that there is some things that everyone seems to be missing with Charter schools, KIPP schools, and private schools. All these schools push their students to achieve at different levels and push their students to gain more ground academically, and some places athletically, than the other schools around them. This keeps their alumni base (and largest supporters financially) happy and their checks flowing.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is, if those students do not achieve, or have any push against teachers or administrators, they could be asked to leave...and not be reimbursed. Therefore, these institutions have more leeway in how they can conduct their classes and how and what they want their students to get when they graduate. Public schools have to follow what the state mandates as essential learning and what needs to be covered over a 4 year period in order to achieve the state minimum standards for a high school diploma. Charter schools, private schools and KIPP don't necessarily need to follow this model. They do need to give the students core classes so they can get into college, but as far as what the state is looking for, they are not required because they are privately funded.
Further, the class sizes are much smaller than what is in a public classroom. Class sizes in Douglas County School District averages out over 30 students. Compare that to much smaller charter schools. Discipline is a much larger issue in public schools because of this, but more importantly, there are more students who are not driven to be in public school because there is not "as much" on the line, such as tuition, fear of family ridicule of being kicked out, expulsion, loss of scholarships, etc.
I believe that if we got rid of the Dept. of Ed from a national standard, and state regulated all schools, and combined the educational world to get to higher education by combining the Charter schools, the Private schools and public school norms and practices, students would be very high achieving and put into a place of a very competitive marketplace. The question is, can that happen? Will there ever be an opportunity for the US to get rid of the Dept. of Ed? Can their be funding to accommodate that many students to give them the proper attention needed for the best success in and out of the classroom?
I recently read that at age four, self-control and delayed gratification are better predictors or success in life that IQ; and that optimism level was a greater predictor of grades in college freshmen than SAT/ACT scores. If character is presenting itself that early on in life to be correlated with success, then perhaps it is an avenue worth looking into. If children are taught basic skills like delayed gratification, self-control, and optimism; then we can better prepare our children to succeed in life.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post and comments. I love the idea of measuring character especially when thinking about multiple intelligences. Excellent character, leadership skills, work ethic, flexible thinking, etc are often what employers are really looking for.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wonder is: How exactly do you measure character? How could this be implemented at the higher education level?
From a faculty perspective, I absolutely believe we are responsible for this aspect of education. Yet, how do you support your belief that someone is failing in their character? Or, is that even the point. I believe many faculty are already doing this. In my program, our faculty are continually mindful of the professionalism of our students. Many of our students in review and retention are there because they are lacking in professionalism, which is essentially a lack of character.
However, the legal system has made it more difficult to remove a student without pretty solid evidence. Solid evidence requires effort by all faculty to create paper trails and work together using similar standards. Faculty have to be prepared to demonstrate this diligence in court.
I think it is exciting to see this formalized at lower levels and hope higher education can adopt similar methods.