|
Parents, Schools, and Values
William J. Bennett is one of our nation’s
most tenacious advocates of bold education reform. He
served as secretary of education and chairman of the
National Endowment for the Humanities under President
Ronald Reagan and director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy under President George H.W. Bush.
Since leaving government in 1990, he has continued
his efforts to improve America’s public and
private education system, thematically driven by what
he calls the “Three
C’s”—choice, content, and
character.
In this issue of News for a Change,
we’re continuing the examination of American
organizations’ efforts to instill appropriate
ethics and values to guide their operations. As we
look at how to build common ethics and values, we
thought Bennett’s testimony to the Committee on
Economic and Educational Opportunities of the U.S.
House of Representatives might stimulate your
thinking…and possibly some feedback for our
next issue of News for a Change.
 It is a pleasure to address
this committee on a subject of enormous
importance—the transmission of values to
children and the role that parents and schools must
play.
Teaching character begins where it must—in
the home, with parents. But while inculcating values
should begin at home, schools must help. As President
Eliot of Harvard once reminded us, “in the
campaign for character no auxiliaries are to be
refused.” And the school can be a mighty
auxiliary.
The Historical Role of Schools in Moral
Education
The belief that moral values should be taught to
young Americans in the schools is at least as old as
the nation itself. Thomas Jefferson’s Bill
for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge
argued for an educational system that would fortify
citizens with moral probity to resist the schemes of
the enemies of liberty. In his Proposals Relating
to the Education of the Young, Benjamin Franklin
prescribed the study of ethics in an instructional
program that would seek to instill “benignity
of mind.” Perhaps the most explicit embodiment
of this drive to inculcate the young with moral
lessons is to be found in the McGuffey’s
Readers. On another level, John Dewey’s
forceful and highly influential writings concerning
the interdependence of democracy, education, and
moral character are a modern reformulation of the old
belief that “virtue” can and should be
taught in the schools.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, a diverse,
widespread group of crusaders began to work for
public support of what was then called the
“common school,” the forerunner of the
public school. The common schools were to be free,
funded by local and state governments, and controlled
by local lay boards. And—this is
important—they were to be charged with the
mission of moral and civic training, training that
found its roots in shared values. The advocates of
the common school felt that the nation could fulfill
its destiny only if every new generation was taught
these values in a common institution.
Even with the coming of progressive education at
the turn of the century, the understanding of the
role of public schools in forming character and
fostering citizenship was not lost. But over the
years it began to take a new form, and so did
educational leadership. Like so many other groups in
America, education leaders began to view themselves
as a confederation of experts, sanctioned by
training, tied together by professional associations,
and aided by elaborate research techniques.
Value Neutrality in Public
Education
In the past quarter-century, some of the so-called
experts became proponents of “value
neutrality,” and moral education seemed
increasingly to have been left in their hands. The
commonsense view of parents and the public, that
schools should reinforce rather than undermine the
values of home, family, and country, was increasingly
rejected. Irving Kristol wrote in the fall 1995 issue
of The Public Interest that, “One day,
so to speak, millions of American Christians...came
to the realization that they were institutionally
isolated and impotent. They quite naturally wanted
their children to be raised as well-behaved
Christians but discovered that their authority over
their own children had been subverted and usurped by
an aggressive, secular liberalism that now dominated
our public education system and our popular culture.
They looked at our high schools and saw that gay and
lesbian organizations were free to distribute their
literature to the students but that religious
organizations were not. They saw condoms being
distributed to adolescent teenagers while the Supreme
Court forbade the posting of the Ten Commandments on
the classroom wall.”
Parents are not the only ones who disagree with
the sea of change that has taken place in our public
schools. Students—teenagers—also believe
that moral education has a rightful place alongside
intellectual instruction. George Gallup, in his book
Scared: Growing Up in America, writes that
according to a recent Gallup youth survey,
“Ninety-six percent of teens believe lessons in
honesty should be part of their regular curriculum.
Another 92% feel that the curriculum should include
lessons in caring for family members and friends.
Some 88% support instruction in moral courage; 85%
support instruction in patriotism; 84% support
instruction in the meaning of democracy, and 77%
support instruction in the golden rule (“Do
unto others as you would have them do unto
you”).
What Needs to be Done
If we want our children to possess the traits of
character that we most admire, we need to teach them
what those traits are. They must learn to identify
the forms and contents of those traits. They must
achieve at least a minimal level of moral literacy
that will enable them to make sense of what they see
in life and, we may hope, will help them live it
well.
We should teach values the same way we teach other
things: one step at a time. You have to walk before
you can run, and you ought to be able to run straight
before you are asked to run an obstacle course. So
the moral basics should be taught in school, in the
early years.
Our public schools once placed the building of
character and moral discernment on a par with
developing the intellect. And they can once again. We
can get the values Americans share back into our
classrooms. And we will work to do this. Those who
claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we
consist of too many competing convictions and
interests to instill common values, are wrong. Yes,
we are a diverse people. We have always been a
diverse people. And as James Madison wrote in The
Federalist, the competing balancing interests of
a diverse people can help ensure the survival of
liberty. But there are values that all American
citizens share and that we should want all American
students to know and embody: honesty, fairness,
self-discipline, fidelity, love of country, and
belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and
the freedom to practice one’s faith. The
explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of
the common school, and it is a legacy to which we
must return.
|
