 
Week 2 - Healthy School Communities
|  | Teaching Social Responsibility |
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Listing of Papers | |
Dr Timothy F. Hawkes
New South Wales, Australia
EVEN THE GREATEST educational institutions cast shadows, in which may be found malevolent activity designed to subvert the reputation of the school, the sanity of the principal, and the morals of everyone known to Jason, Shane, or Chantelle.
While we 'tut tut' and mutter about 135,000 American children carrying guns to school every day, our own playgrounds can see children wounded by a fusillade of chatter, and self-esteem blown away, egos shattered, and confidence destroyed. Our table tops might be littered with 'Come fly with me' brochures, showing happy responsible children, but in the locked drawers beneath is contraband - two bongs, a packet of ribbed condoms (one missing), assorted cigarettes, and Internet instructions on how to make a bomb.
Teaching academic subjects is relatively easy compared to teaching social responsibility. That's one reason why it is so easy for schools to be consumed with the former, and yet our survival as a planet is probably going to be determined more by the latter.
Dereliction in teaching pro-social skills imperils our society, for our students may then have nothing to neutralise the learning of anti-social skills. There is a Kulturkampf - a 'cultural war' on, a war choreographed by society, for any society determines its own support by its effectiveness in meeting the needs of its members.
What are the forces determining our needs and behaviours? There are several, including spiritual forces in battle for our souls, political forces in battle for our votes, social forces in battle for our compliance, and economic forces in battle for our dollar. All four are powerful influences on school mission statements throughout our land.
Customised Cocktail of Values
It is probably accurate to say that the survival of any independent school depends on the financial support of parents, guardians, and benefactors, and so it is they who will ultimately determine those behaviours which are to be advocated in a school. Herein lies one of the great strengths of the independent school movement, in that we can individually mix our own cocktail of values in which to immerse our students.
Independent schools, in reflecting a market, should not then be afraid to determine those social responsibilities it wishes to encourage in students. There are two good reasons for this. The first is rather pragmatic: good values are selling well, which is one factor promoting the healthy growth in Christian community and Christian parent-controlled schools. Fray (1995) also writes:
'Research by the Catholic Education Office shows that one in five parents move their children into the Catholic system in search of what can be broadly called "better values".'
The second reason is far more worthy of us and that is the fulfilment of an obligation to pass on to our children those lessons in history which are helpful to their survival and well-being. For example, we can teach that fire can both cremate and create. The trick is to know when to light the match and when to blow it out. In this and other things, the past can be our tutor.
'People who grow up without a sense of how yesterday has affected today are unlikely to have a strong sense of how today affects tomorrow.' (Kilpatrick, 1992: 196)
Forging social responsibility in schools can elicit some very powerful and emotive reactions. Some will talk of Orwellian values and warn darkly of 'black-shirted' policies and social engineering. Others would argue that in an age of logical positivism, personalism, and pluralism, it is not possible to actually determine what character should be taught at all. While we wallow in this moral ambiguity, our children are being hurt and thus I make no apology for suggesting that we are in the business of social engineering and should be quite unrepentant about teaching social responsibility.
Unrepentant Character Training
Teaching social responsibility involves character training. Lickona (1993. 9) writes:
Character must be broadly conceived to encompass the cognitive, affective, and behavioural aspects of morality. Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good.
It is suggested by Lickona that the cognitive side of character development involves knowing and understanding. Thus, students need to be aware of the moral dimensions of a situation, know moral values, see things from differing perspectives, be able to engage in moral reasoning and thoughtful decision-making, and have moral self-knowledge.
The second stage is to encourage students to desire socially responsible behaviour and to consider the affective aspect of morality. Students need to commit to certain values and this generally requires the use of students' emotions and the cultivation of their consciences.
The final stage is the translation of this motivation into moral action, which involves students acquiring certain competencies, such as the ability to listen, communication skills, and willingness to co-operate. Students need to be given opportunities to mobilise their judgement and energy and to develop an inner disposition which will encourage them to respond to situations in a morally good way.
These three stages in teaching character and social responsibility will form the framework of this paper:
- knowing the good;
- desiring the good; and,
doing the good.
Finally, I do not seek to explore the esoteric distinctions between values education, socialisation, behaviour, character training, and the myriad other terms associated with improving the human condition. I am content to move freely between all terms that might describe the training of students in their obligations, liabilities, and duties as a member of society.
Knowing the Good
There are moments of pure joy in this job of ours when we can park all staff cars, be in time for a custard cream at recess, and bathe in the reflected glory of a great win by the First XI. Unfortunately, the plug is pulled when villainy floats to the surface. This is when it can be politically expedient to acknowledge that the school is but one of three major influences on a child's behaviour, with the other two major forces being the family and the media.
The School
I wonder if we are getting it wrong in schools. When dealing with the matter of morality, the experts are saying that we should adopt a decision-making, moral reasoning, dilemma, values clarification approach. The more traditional style of character education, of telling students what is expected of them, is no longer acceptable because it is judged as being too indoctrinative. Classrooms have been transformed into 'bull sessions', where opinions are shared and teachers transformed into Phil Donahues and Oprah Winfreys, where issues are discussed and non-judgemental therapy practised. Much of this is commendable, but I do wonder whether we need to augment the exchanging of opinions and the exploring of feelings with the actual provision of moral guidance and help with the forming of character.
The modern style is to give information, lots of it, with quite adult data being shared with students at ever younger ages. However, it seems to me that there is not so much a problem with our society being uninformed, but rather with our society being moral.
A writer from the New York Times tells of an interesting experience:
'I was sitting at a table with half a dozen sixteen-year-old girls, listening with some amazement as they showed off their knowledge of human sexuality. They knew how long a sperm lived inside the body, how many women out of 100 who used a diaphragm were statistically likely to get pregnant. There was just one problem with this performance: every one of the girls was pregnant'. (Quoted in Kilpatrick, 1992, 61)
There is also a danger of desensitisation when discussing matters in a values neutral manner. I believe it is important that we should not ever lose our capacity for moral outrage. Even more worrying are clear indications that the very raising of issues with students can lead to an upsurge in the activity we are trying to prevent. This has certainly been shown to be true with some courses in sex education, drug abuse and suicide.
Concerned With 'Shopping Trolley' Approach
I am concerned by the 'shopping trolley' approach to values acquisition by children in some schools, which sees them picking up chocolates and 'Minties' and walking smartly by the vegetables stands. There is a real danger that students can be encouraged to make judgements with inadequate knowledge of what is appropriate to fostering healthy growth. A valueless syllabus is displayed with sales labels boasting tolerance and children's rights. What we are really saying is that we ourselves are, 'wallowing in a no-man's land of moral ambiguity' (Clarnette, 1989) and are unable to affirm that some beliefs are wrong and some are right. Our students need clear guidance and direction in their initial forays into the supermarket of life, at least until they are able to understand the nature of the merchandise on display.
It is not always easy for a school to set standards, particularly as we try to tread our way through the minefield of rampant litigation and political correctness. Recently my own school sought to review its values on a wide range of particularly sensitive issues, such as sexuality, abortion, and religion. We found the exercise stimulating and affirming, as well as useful in giving staff security and direction when dealing with these matters. With each topic, the. school's value was clarified and an indication given for the age of appropriateness of discussion at different levels of investigation.
As a warning, any such document is likely to induce a number of pursed lips. This, of course, is the attraction of not establishing any values, for if there is no target, there is no focus for the pursed lips. However, I question the educational wisdom and moral fortitude of not enunciating one's values.
Of course, being realists, we all know that the most effective social learning is not done in a classroom. A few seconds in the playground with peers will undo hours of instruction with teachers. The pressure to conform to the group is enormous, so one learns the language of the group, one watches the appropriate TV programs, listens to the relevant music and wears the group's uniform. Individualism and personal standards are sacrificed at the altar of social acceptance.
This is not always the case, neither is it always damaging providing that the peer group chooses standards which continue to respect both people and property. However, to teach social responsibility in schools will require the support of students. This therefore indicates the need for child-centred and peer-based programs that encourage collaborative learning and cross-age tutoring. The school that attract the allegiance of its students to its values by socialisation methods acceptable to them will win for itself the enviable accolade of 'community'.
The Family
The teaching of social responsibility is best done in conjunction with the home, for if there is no accord between the values at home and the values at school, confusion will result. For schools, this means that they must remove the demilitarised zone at the front gate and invite parents and friends into the school. For parents it means they should choose a school that is congenial to the values they are prepared to support in the home. As much communication as possible should occur between the home and the school, for the task of education should be one done in partnership with the home and the school. For this reason joint learning adventures should be designed including shared student-parent research tasks. Parents can not only be trained to help support the school's maths and English program, they can be trained to support the school's social values.
Given the crucial role of the family, I am concerned by reports of benign neglect of children by parents recorded in Karl Zinsmeister's recent book, The Childproof Society. I am alarmed at Hallmark Cards boosting their $2,5 billion sales by producing cards that parents can slip under their children's pillow if they are too busy to talk to them. And I am alarmed that the Wall Street Journal (6/4/90) suggested that American parents spend less than 15 minutes a week in serious discussion with the children, and for fathers, the amount of close association with their children is 17 seconds a day.
Research has indicated that boys, in particular, have suffered from a lack of parental input. (Biddulph, 1994) argues that the Industrial Revolution meant that, for the first time in history, fathers worked away from their sons, and this has led to generations of boys growing up without being fathered. Before the Industrial Revolution, fathers and sons lived and worked in close proximity and, by so doing, they were taught the craft of being a man.
'... they drank in deeply the tone, style and manner of being a man, from a dozen available role models.' (Biddulph, 1994; 98)
Biddulph goes on to write (1994: 99, 101):
'What children get from a career father is not his happiness, nor his teaching, nor his substance, but only his mood. And at seven o'clock at night that mood is mostly irritation and fatigue. Men show their love by working hard and long. They do not get appreciated for it - since it is their presence nor their bounty that is hungered for by their children.
It is not just sons that are adversely affected, for Biddulph acknowledges that daughters also need their fathers, for daughters need to be admired without exploitation. They need a man on which to practice conversation and social communication in a safe, loving environment.
According to Baumrind (1970), the following kinds of adults foster the development of socially responsible children.
Adults who:
- are socially responsible;
- are concerned for their children's welfare;
- provide security;
- are powerful and assertive;
- set firm standards;
- explain their views;
- encourage rational thinking;
- create a challenging and stimulating environment; and,
- encourage independent judgement.
(see Burns, 1989: 127)
The Media
Increasingly, it is the media, and particularly the television, which is defining the social mores of today. Thus, the world's morality is being hitched to the alarming ethics of Time Warner and Hollywood. It is hardly surprising, for example, that as 90% of lovemaking shown on TV is depicted outside the context of marriage, children have difficulty with concepts such as fidelity, chastity and abstinence. The media can propel children into adult life in a way that deprives them of their childhood. As senses become numbed. so the strength of the 'fix' of violence, sex and horror must be increased by the traffickers of shock.
Music also needs to be monitored. Although I enjoy a great deal of contemporary music, I am concerned at the increasing emergence of music that is destructive and violent; music which advocates the immediate gratification of one's desires without responsibilities; music that takes adolescent frustration and heats it to boiling point. I am alarmed when heavy metal describes its sound as, 'music to kill your parents by', with CD covers depicting sexual mutilation and lyrics that are destructive and demeaning.
We need to gain control and not become passive receptors turned on by black wires dribbling from our cars and photo-electric and thermionic valves glowing through 24 inch screens in the corner of our living rooms. Perhaps one of our challenges as educators is to help train our students to be selective and critical, to analyse the media and be active rather than passive viewers, otherwise the media will enslave our minds and, as Aristotle warns, 'the worst thing about slavery is that the slaves eventually get to like it.'
Desiring the Good
The apple core in the Garden of Eden reminds us that knowing the good is not enough. We must also desire the good. In this micro-chip generation when we can 'surf the net' and get visual display units to tell us the mean summer temperature in Wulumuchi, Western Mongolia, knowing things is not a problem. St. Paul acknowledged this even before the advent of the World Wide Web: 'The good that 1 want to do, 1 don't . . . the evil that 1 don't want to do, that is what 1 do'.
One powerful tool available for use by teachers in helping motivate students to engage in socially responsible behaviours is the use of their emotions. It is strange, therefore, that teachers become so abstract when looking at ethics. Kilpatrick (1992. 142) writes:
'The more abstract our ethic the less power it has to move us. Yet the progression of recent decades has been in the direction of increasing verbalisation and abstraction towards a reason disassociated from ordinary feelings and cut off from images that convey humanness to us.'
For example, Kilpatrick argues that rather than engaging in a non-judgemental debate over the 'lifeboat exercise', whereby students have to decide which passenger needs to be thrown out of an overcrowded lifeboat, they would be far more challenged if they saw the film, A Night to Remember, which details the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. This profoundly moving film recounts acts of heroism, cowardice, stupidity and bravery in the lifeboats. Kilpatrick argues that the film doesn't leave the viewer much room for ethical manoeuvring: it is a definitive rather than an open-ended experience and it has something to teach, something to inspire.
Lemin et al (1994: 41) offer a number of suggestions on how empathy, a product of emotion, can be elicited in students including:
'visiting a geriatric centre, spending a day in a wheelchair, on crutches, being blindfolded, going for a whole day without food, participating in the 40 Hour Famine, students becoming the teacher for a lesson, spending a day with a young mother, factory worker, or unemployed person, and mirroring what they do, students telling their own life story to other students.'
If it is not possible to act out physically the role of another in the real world, students could assume the roles of others in:
- simulation games;
- role plays (including role swapping within the play);
- completing unfinished scenarios as a story, script or cartoon; and,
- telling stories, or writing poetry to express feelings from another's heart.
Other useful exercises are writing conversations that involve the characters expressing their feelings, writing newspaper headlines to express the dominant feelings of an individual in a certain situation, debates where students argue a case other than their own view, writing responses to letters that ask for advice and answering questions relating to an individual's situation. For example, you are a person who has Spina Bifida: in what three ways could other people make you feel most accepted?
Desiring the good can also be influenced by story-telling and heroic role modelling. This might mean that students should have an opportunity to focus their attention on people other than Madonna, O.J. Simpson, and Michael Jackson, and look instead at Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Helen Keller, and Mother Theresa. It is very difficult to study much of Dickens' work without being challenged by the social issues depicted. Thus, a school's choice of literature becomes important. It is worrying therefore that Bitz (1991:1) reports, 'Traditional family values have been systematically excluded from children's text books', and that some children's books, such as those written by Judy Blume, tend to feature children who are:
Self-obsessed, sexually absorbed, shallow, sullen, emotionally numb, contemptuous of adults and relentlessly materialistic[and] endorse narcissistic self-centredness.' (Kilpatrick 1992: 108)
Values Smuggling
Like Scheherazade we need to keep ourselves alive by telling good stories. Use of good film can also help. Teachers themselves must be heroes and heroines, as indeed must parents, for students generally prefer to see a sermon than to hear a sermon. Schools must therefore not only consider what they teach, but how they teach. Effective pedagogy can smuggle values into the lives of our students. This crucial role should be reflected in our appraisal and evaluation of staff.
The Use of Religion
The spiritual imperative to be socially responsible has weakened somewhat over the years. Fray (1995) writes that in schools there were: 'always religious education lessons - and, for many, a quick swipe of the ruler if they found the risk of damnation not enough motivation to pay attention. Then, in the 1970s, the world turned, values shifted, mass migration occurred, and before school assembly could sing 'Onward Christian Soldiers', God, the Christian God at least, became a little harder to find.
However, God is proving remarkably difficult to shift from our independent schools, with many of our own schools bearing testimony to a rich spiritual tradition. This affords many of us the opportunity to reinforce our students' desire to act in socially responsible ways by references to some of the great religious teaching of our day. An example of the link between beliefs and actions is given by Lemin et al (1994: 4).
Doing the Good
Knowing what is socially responsible and wanting to be socially responsible is but the prelude to the performance. So it is that schools need to choreograph opportunities for students to demonstrate their pro-social skills. As many students as possible should be invited to audition for the heroic role. It may be that not all can be accommodated in every act, but there is also reward in being able to watch.
Students identify with heroes and heroines and students identify with students. If you combine the two, and you cast students as heroes and heroines, then you can have a compelling influence on a youthful audience.
Extravagant productions of social responsibility should be a feature of our schools. It might be just theatre, but it is curious how many Batman capes and Wonder Women outfits are still sold. Students, both consciously and unconsciously, mimic and model themselves on spotlight figures.
It is also curious that the players themselves can find themselves taking on the qualities of their character. A schizoid-state appears, whereby the character is still played when the greasepaint is removed. The Ancient Greeks knew this, which is why their ideals of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude were frequently celebrated through acting. The internalising and mimicking of virtues occurred 'front-of-house' and 'backstage'. It is therefore not surprising that Aristotle should claim:
'People become virtuous by performing virtuous acts, they become kind by doing kind acts, they become brave by doing brave acts.'
When one particularly precocious starlet complained that she did not feel like acting a love scene, she was told rather tartly by the producer to 'fake it'. When our students don't feel like they want to be socially responsible, they, too, can be told to 'fake it' and be compelled to, 'Act well your part: there all honour lies' (Alexander Pope).
That great educator, Kurt Hahn, supported this view for his motto of, 'compelling Into experience', is very much in evidence in the United World Colleges throughout the world. On a recent visit to the United World College of the Atlantic, which is accessed by several wrong turns in the laneways near Llantwit Major, in Wales, I witnessed a tightly scripted production of pro-social activity. Some 2,000 disadvantaged children took part in a ten-week residential program of academic lessons, volleyball, archery, library studies, life drawing classes, swimming, and many other activities. Also making an appearance was the school's lifeboat crew, whose slipway interrupts the ramparts of St. Donat's Castle, in which the school is situated. Effecting rescues in the waters of the Bristol Channel requires the. exercise of heroic social responsibility, particularly when those waters become turgid and treacherous.
The Joy of Giving
'Compelling into experience' is also to be witnessed on the International Baccalaureate (IB) stage, for a non-negotiable requirement for the award of the IB is to have engaged in a range of social service activities which must be diarised by students and verified by staff. Through involvement in these activities, students begin to realise the joy there is in giving as well as receiving.
There is nothing like the prospect of a critical review in the press to keep a director and cast well-focused; so it is with students. This is why we could profit from adding to our school reports a few more 'subjects' to be assessed, such as, the Greek virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude or perhaps the Christian virtues of faith and hope.
A more contemporary interpretation might be:
respect for people/self/others; respect for property (own and others); self discipline; empathy; kindness; fairness; honesty and courage.
The reporting on these topics demonstrates that a school is serious about wanting to promote these skills. Our current practice of making these qualities a non-assessed subject may promote the marginalisation of these qualities in our schools.
Spectacular Social Responsibility Productions
A large number of spectacular social responsibility productions have been put on by Australian schools. I am particularly encouraged by the recent attempt to collate some of these best practices by the Australian Guidance and Counselling Association Ltd. The project had its genesis in the disruptive behaviours in schools described in the report, Sticks and Stones: Report on Violence in Australian Schools (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education, Employment, and Training) Teaching Pro-Social Behaviour to Adolescents will enable the evaluation of 20 programs currently being implemented in pilot schools and will also seek to compile a directory of best practices and programs promoting pro-social behaviour in Australian schools.
An example of one particular program being piloted is the Hokus Pokus Peer Counselling program currently running at Mentone Girls' Grammar School, whereby students give social support to their peers after having being trained in basic counselling, mediation, and communication skills. The program has three strains: a junior school Hokus Pokus, which is a lunch time activity for children from separated families, e.g., boarding students. The program is conducted by senior students who also come from separated families. The second strain is the Hokus Pokus 'Drop in Centre'. This is aimed at students from Year levels 6-10 and is run at lunch time by Year 11 Hokus Pokus helpers. It includes a variety of activities occur including games, discussion groups, and fundraising. The third strain is the Hokus Pokus Peer Counselling Training Program, which has been specifically designed to help meet the counselling needs of students by providing some 35 trained Year 11 counsellors.
In their book, Reclaiming our Schools, Edward Wynne and Kevin Ryan, argue for 'habituation', whereby planned activities are put into the school curriculum which require students to practice good habits. Sanctions are seen as necessary to back-up social behaviour rules, and thus freedom is limited. Of course, shouts of 'freedom' and 'It's my right' have become the mantras of our age, and the limiting of freedom is not popular. However, it is significant that a recent headline in the Age (30/5/95, p.8), 'Report Links Freer Lives to Rising Youth Unrest', indicated that many of the psycho-social disorders of young people were not due so much to the problems of unemployment or poor living conditions, but due to the stresses associated with increased freedom and independence. Without wanting to mandate a repressive right wing reaction, it may be that schools have to look rather more closely at the thesis that liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.
Our Sense of Social Obligation
It is significant that increased personal freedom has often led to a weakening of societal responsibility. In our celebration of individual rights, we may have lost our sense of social obligation. If a student wishes to have the freedom to move about a school in safety, the freedom of the more anti-social elements in our school may need to be limited. So, it can be in the limiting of some freedom that we find greater security and enjoyment.
Ritualisation is closely linked to habituation, and pro-social behaviours can benefit from becoming ritualised in schools. Some rituals identified in schools include Peer Support Program, cross-age tutoring, the appointment of class/form captains, the appointing of monitors, prefects and senators, the establishment of year level committees and Student Representative Councils, effective induction programs for new students, together with 'buddy' systems, assemblies, chapels, community days, school songs, banners and mottoes, student maintenance duties, such as sweeping the classrooms, emptying the bins, tending a patch of garden, cross-age coaching in sport, the running of clubs and societies, involvement in social service activities, the publication of a student magazine, and so on.
The Bangladesh Project
Habituation and ritual can even spread to other schools. For example, in 1993 students at my own school decided to build a primary school for 350 students in one of the poorest countries of the world, Bangladesh. In alliance with the organisation 'Co-operation in Development', St Leonard's College built a primary school on the island of Bola, in the Bay of Bengal. This project was a prelude to a number of other schools undertaking identical projects in Bangladesh, and thus the ritual of Bangladesh fundraising dinners can be seen in a variety of schools in and around Melbourne.
There is habituation also, for students have not only committed themselves to building the school, but to meeting all the schools recurrent costs, requiring the raising of a further $6,000 a year. Thus, there is a long-term commitment, requiring the habit of supporting the project year after year.
Of course, there is a danger in 'Gee whiz' projects such as these, whereby being socially responsible is equated with grand philanthropic projects. Certainly we do not want students participating in Clean Up Australia Day when the other 364 days see their bedrooms a microcosm of the. municipal garbage tip, and their lunch wrappers decorating the school playground. Thus, heroic social responsibility performance need to be generalised into school and student character. A culture of social responsibility needs to be nurtured. This can be assisted in what Wynne and Ryan (1992) describe as 'profound learning'. This is learning which occurs through there being congruency between the school's human and material resources, a congruency between the school's curriculum and pedagogy, and a congruency between the home and school values, all of which should aim at establishing a school culture which celebrates socially responsible behaviour. Profound learning requires constant reinforcement in rituals, symbols, songs, and mottoes. It requires codes of behaviour and an application to learning. Profound learning is the saturation of a student in values which are constantly reinforced.
Coming to the rescue of the overworked and overwhelmed is the testimony of programs that have helped in the area of teaching social responsibility. America has witnessed the development of many programs, including the interesting emergence of abstinence-based projects, e.g., 'Sex Respect Responsibility Sexual Values Program (RSVP)', 'Me, My World, My Future, Sexuality Commitment and Family'. Initial feedback is encouraging. For example, in 1984 the San Marcos School district of San Diego was faced with one of the highest pregnancy rates in California. Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls were pregnant. They selected the "'Sexuality, Commitment and Family' curriculum developed by Teen Aid and this led to a drop in the teen pregnancy rate from 20% to 2.5% in 1986 (Kilpatrick 1993: 90). The American Institute for Character Education also found there was a 77% decline in discipline problems, a 64% decrease in vandalism, and a 68% increase in school attendance after schools in America had used their programs.
The North Clackamas School District in Oregon devised a four-year cycle whereby they specifically concentrated on certain pro-social themes in certain year levels. This approach may be effective in Australian schools, for it might avoid the trap of non-specific focus leading to key responsibilities not being encouraged. The North Clackamas social responsibility program included:
Year 1: Patriotism, integrity, honesty and courtesy;
Year 2: Authority, respect for others and property, environment and self-esteem;
Year 3: Compassion and self-discipline, responsibility, work ethic, appreciation for education; and,
Year 4: Patience, courage, co-operation (Kilpatrick 1992: 238).
Conclusion
Teaching social responsibility is a high calling and one which will involve us in helping our students to know the good, desire the good, and do the good.
It is easy for both students and teachers to become discouraged by this charter. For this reason, it is important that students need to know that they can make a positive contribution to society, other than saving it from digital monsters on visual display units. Staff also need to know that they can make a positive contribution to society by replicating their values in children. This is a huge responsibility, but if it represents one of our greatest imperatives, it also represents one of our greatest privileges.
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