Maybe the opposite is true. In an institution attended by young people for six hours per day, 180 days per year, over 12 years; maybe it is true that we are bound to achieve the purposes embedded in the structure of schooling, without regard to teacher performance. It may be true that dissatisfaction with public education is more due to structural purposes that are not educational than to poor teacher performance. In that case, purposes must become more educational before our graduates will be more educated.

Looking at other countries

My experience with Japanese and Jamaican schools helps me examine this possibility. As an outsider who has visited and studied those schools, it may be easier for me to see the relationship between purpose and achievement than it is for Japanese or Jamaican insiders.

Today’s American policymakers seem to believe the world becomes better when young people acquire the knowledge and skills measured on standardized tests. Therefore public educators teach knowledge and skills. This is a good thing, except when it occurs at the expense of teaching virtues, which is exactly what has happened since the publication of “A Nation at Risk” in 1983.

Teachers and principals know this is true. They know we have taken what is peripheral (knowledge and skills) and put it at the center, forcing what is essential (virtue) to the periphery. They also know this is unfortunate because virtue leads to knowledge and skills, but knowledge and skills don’t lead to virtue. Try it sometime — try to learn new knowledge or skills without a generous teacher and the virtue capacities of understanding, strong character, and humility; and the virtue capabilities of imagination and courage. Virtues are at the heart of becoming educated, so modeling and teaching them belongs at the center of public school purposes.

This is not a moral argument. It is a philosophical and educational one. Those who believe virtues should not be at the center of the public school curriculum (for moral or other reasons) should explain why they don’t want their children to develop either understanding, imagination, strong character, courage, humility or generosity.

These have always been, and always will be, the virtues of the educated person. It is time teachers and principals knew that, too.

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So, why don’t educators teach the six virtues of the educated person? We are literally caught in a “vicious cycle.”

TSVOTEP argues that the best public school educators model and teach three virtues — understanding, strong character and generosity. That is the good news. The bad news is they also teach three vices — intellectual incompetence, fear, and pride. Therefore, even our best graduates demonstrate understanding that is unimaginative, strong character that is fearful, and generosity that emerges from pride.

That is why the six-virtue definition of the educated person is so important. Only when all six are modeled and taught can the cycle be broken.

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At a 2006 town meeting sponsored by the World Affairs Council, North Carolina resident Harry Taylor told President Bush that a leader ought to have “a degree of humility.” He then asked the president to describe things he “maybe should have done differently,” specifically mentioning the telephone surveillance of citizens.

The President did not respond to the humility point, but he said, “I’m not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program. . .”

This exchange on CNN caused me to wonder what Americans think about humility. Do we see it as a virtue or a vice? Do we see it as a virtue for those in low-status positions, and a vice for those with high-status? How would Americans respond to a President who displayed humility?

Some are “the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ).” These are the words of David Brooks (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html). His article started with praise for specific HCZ charters, but it turned into a promotional piece for the idea of charters.

I am for charter schools, too; but Brooks and I like them for different reasons.

Before pointing to the book’s support for this claim, I am soliciting comments from anyone whose K-12 experiences taught them to be imaginative, courageous, and humble. Simply click on “comment” at the end of this post and describe that learning. Nobody wants to admit to being intellectually incompetent, fearful or proud; so there is strong incentive to comment.

Other readers recall that the vices of intellectual incompetence, fear and pride were modeled and taught throughout their K-12 experiences. I believe this is a school norm, so I say schools graduate adults whose understanding is unimaginative, whose strong character is fearful, and whose generosity emerges from pride. There I go again — stating this as if it were true. Was this claim supported? Let’s take a look.

Several of the reporters have responded with, “That makes sense.”

When I state the same premise to education administrators and professors, however, the reaction is a big yawn. As I explained in the earlier post about the book’s audience, members of these groups are not interested in discussing what it means to be educated.

Administrators are not interested because they are trapped in our current model of education. They are trapped in the sense that, when they accept supervisory positions, they implicitly agree that public schools and school districts should be governed politically, and organized in bureaucratic hierarchy (the second and fourth elements of our current model). Therefore, their job is to enforce local, state and federal policies, not to challenge them. We understand this agreement because we know that administrators who challenge local, state or federal policies are regarded as not being “team players.” They might even be fired.

The six virtues are defined in the following way:

Understanding – The mind builds this capacity by taking in and processing sensory information and ideas. Constructivist educators say the mind “constructs” meaning from what it takes in. As these constructions accumulate the mind gains deeper understandings.

Imagination – The mind also works in the other direction as it directs action. Most of the time the imagination and body act synchronously and unconsciously, so we are unaware of their interaction. We just “do things,” so we don’t’ see the role imagination plays. Without “imagination,” however–the mind imagining and directing action–the body can’t act. At times the imagination sets out to explore completely new possibilities. The ability to take new, imaginative actions and make new things is the highest form of imagination. We call it creativity.

Strong Character – This capacity is built by confronting internal fears and inadequacies. Parker Palmer (1994) explains that, if we don’t confront the fears within us, we project them onto others. Strong character is built by addressing the fears we have about ourselves. Military boot camp, for example, builds strong character whenever soldiers confront their fear of not being able to go further, as they go further.

Courage – When strong character enables people to confront their fear, they are able to act with courage. Courage is often confused with risk-taking or acting in the face of danger, but dangerous acts may not be courageous in the virtue sense. For example, it is not virtuous courage to put oneself in danger on a dare. Such an act emerges from a fear of being regarded as cowardly. On the other hand, virtuous courage is evident when soldiers risk their lives to rescue wounded comrades. This specific virtuous courage emerges from the strong character that is built from the first day of boot camp.

Humility – This capacity is built by people knowing the following four things “at their core:” (1) they have special talents; (2) others care little about those talents; (3) others have their own special talents,; and (4) the day after they die, the world goes on, just as it did the day before. Because humble people know these four things “at their core,” they don’t need a light on their accomplishments. This enables them to shine a light on the accomplishments of others, and it enables them to make situations better by giving their talents in a multitude of ways that are outside the spotlight.

Generosity – This is the ability to give to others with a humble spirit. Generosity is not virtuous when it emerges from pride. As a Catholic high school development director I was repulsed by the fund raiser wisdom that said: People donate for the three “Gs” of guilt, God and glory. I was repulsed because this wisdom required me to exploit donor pride and pretend they were virtuously generous. Pride seeks the light and casts a shadow on others. In the six-virtue scheme pride is a vice in the same way Medieval philosophers considered it the first of the seven deadly sins.

The Scheme

The six virtues relate to each other in the following ways.

(1) They are an intellectual pair, a character pair, and a spiritual pair. These domains represent how humans differ from other animals. We have an intellect capable of deep understanding and creative thought. We can develop strong character by confronting our fears. And, when our basic needs for food, shelter and security are met, we can act in ways that reflect a humble, generous spirit.

(2) The first of each pair is a capacity and the second is an ability to act. As Comte-Sponville (2001) wrote, virtues are “what we should do, what we should be, and how we should live” (p. 35 in TSVOTEP)

(3) These are the six virtues of our educated human nature. The opposite six vices (ignorance, intellectual incompetence, weakness, fear, pride and selfishness) characterize our uneducated human nature. We are all born into the world as uneducated human beings, with the potential to become educated.

(4) This scheme is totally integrated. None of the virtues or vices are separate aspects of real-life situations. That is why TSVOTEP calls for an aesthetic paradigm for improving education. Aesthetic situations, like real life, can be broken down for purposes of discussion and study, but they are valued and experienced in their “wholeness.”

(5) These three pairs include the most basic virtues of the intellect, character and spirit. Understanding is the most basic intellectual capacity; imagination is the most basic intellectual ability. Strong character is the most basic character capacity; courage is the most basic character ability. Humility is the most basic spiritual capacity; generosity is the most basic spiritual ability. If there were such a thing as a brick wall of virtues, these six “bricks” would form the bottom row.

Or, if we use the analogy of baking a cake, the six virtues are the ingredients that make the cake. The ingredients exist separate from the cake, but a cake cannot exist without the ingredients.

An example of how this works is that, persistence is a virtue, only when its ingredients include both understanding and strong character. It is not virtuous to persist in something that is impossible (the person lacks an understanding of the impossibility), but it is virtuous to persist in something that is characterized by being possible and requiring strong character. Understanding and strong character combine to form virtuous persistence.

This is explained more in the four-part blog that discusses other six virtue schemes, and in Chapter 3 of TSVOTEP.

Readers are invited to offer their definitions of the educated person. Simply click on “Leave a Comment” to reply.

Several said chapters 1 and 2 were too academic. They suggested that these be curtailed or eliminated. Another disagreed, saying, “You can’t take out the first two chapters. They are the foundation for the whole book.”

Others said there were too many citations. According to them lay readers are not interested in references to other education writers. Another disagreed, saying, “I like the citations. They showed how these ideas are tied with others. They give the book credibility.”

Who is the audience for an educational treatise that is both technical and philosophical? The last paragraph of the Introduction says the book’s ideas are important considerations for parents and grandparents, and for those associated with independent, parochial, or charter schools. This is a broad audience, but not the main audience. TSVOTEP describes the status and direction of public education because public educators are its main audience. A recent experience helped me see, however, that the audience is not all public educators.