Tag Archives: character

Our Greatest Deficit: Early Education

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In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, the former chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble, John E. Pepper Jr. and James Zimmerman, the former chairman and CEO of Macy’s threw their weight squarely behind early childhood education, and President Obama’s push for universal pre-kindergarten.

National Deficit
They write, “Our greatest deficit in this country — the one that most threatens our future as a nation — is our education deficit, not our fiscal one.” They’re right, but in more ways than they articulate in the Op-Ed.

  1. Parenting. Parents are children’s first, and most powerful teachers. The education deficit doesn’t start in pre-school. It starts at home. Excellent pre-school is a very, very good thing. But if it is not paired with wise early parenting before age 3, it is remediation, not preparation.
  2. Formation. Education is not just the acquisition of skills that make one useful in the workforce. Education is the cultivation of desire, and the directing of love. Education in the home and in preschools and schools that fails to recognize this may point children at futile ends, like test scores, rather than worthy ends like the love of truth, goodness and beauty.

I’ll cast a vote for universal pre-kindergarten. And I say that it is worthy of tax funding above many other programs. However, I’ll also cast my vote for initiatives like the Baby College in Harlem, or the Baby Scholars in Grand Rapids, or Parents as Teachers in virtually every state. Together, early parent support and preschool can shift us from a national deficit to a national surplus of eager, talented, courageous, wise children.

 

Family as the cornerstone of society

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Today I saw a quotation attributed to Lyndon B. Johnson posted on Facebook. It caught my attention, so I traced down the source: his commencement address to Howard University on June 4, 1965. It is well worth reading in its entirety – especially in our age of sound bytes.

In order to entice you, let me give you an aperitif of that speech, and a commentary on its implications for public policy and civic engagement.

Perhaps most important [as an obstacle to the well being of poor black Americans]–its influence radiating to every part of life–is the breakdown of the Negro family structure. For this, most of all, white America must accept responsibility. It flows from centuries of oppression and persecution of the Negro man. It flows from the long years of degradation and discrimination, which have attacked his dignity and assaulted his ability to produce for his family.

This, too, is not pleasant to look upon. But it must be faced by those whose serious intent is to improve the life of all Americans.

Only a minority–less than half–of all Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents. At this moment, tonight, little less than two-thirds are at home with both of their parents. Probably a majority of all Negro children receive federally-aided public assistance sometime during their childhood.

The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled.

So, unless we work to strengthen the family, to create conditions under which most parents will stay together–all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough to cut completely the circle of despair and deprivation.

President Johnson cites other powerful forces, including the terrifying force of slums in cultural formation.

Men are shaped by their world. When it is a world of decay, ringed by an invisible wall, when escape is arduous and uncertain, and the saving pressures of a more hopeful society are unknown, it can cripple the youth and it can desolate the men.

Yet among these and other forces, he puts his finger on the family. Here is what I think needs to be noticed at this point in history.

  1. White responsibility. President Johnson recognized the culpable cultural force of centuries of oppression. He did not look within the family exclusively when assigning responsibility, but addressed both personal and social responsibility.
  2. Family culture. The president who was known for his “Great Society” programs recognized that family was the cornerstone of society.
  3. Crippled community. LBJ saw that individuals aren’t islands, and nor are families. Communities where the families have collapsed are relational shanty-towns – and children born into this bear the relational scars.
  4. Work to strengthen the family. This was the sine qua non of renewal and restoration without which “all the rest: schools, and playgrounds, and public assistance, and private concern, will never be enough.”

There is, I think, one fatal flaw in the president’s reasoning. It is the notion that we can “create conditions under which most parents will stay together.” He was entirely right about the power of the family for cultural formation. He was spot on concerning the importance of unity and durability of marriage. He nailed the social collapse caused by entire communities in which the family fails. But, I would submit that it is impossible to “create conditions” for marital success without an animating Story that answers the question, “Why should I persevere when it is hard and I don’t want to?”

The family situation in 2012 is worse than it was in 1965. In addition to higher rates of divorce, lower rates of marriage, and higher rates of children born outside marriage, we have prison populations that could hardly have been imagined in 1965. In the intervening years, multiple generations have been initiated into patterns of social life in which marriage is foreign and almost incomprehensible.

The question now stands: Who will have the courage to offer a Story that can answer the Why question with beauty and power? Without that, we will only see an increase of what Kay Hymowitz has already chronicled as Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age.

Politics and Parenting

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On Saturday, Nicholas Kristof became the next op-ed thought leader (following David Brooks’ example) to engage Paul Tough’s new book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character in his article Cuddle Your Kid.

He does it well by calling on our political leaders and candidates to recognize that nation-building hinges on family-building.

Yet the cycle [of poverty] can be broken, and the implication is that the most cost-effective way to address poverty isn’t necessarily housing vouchers or welfare initiatives or prison-building. Rather, it may be early childhood education and parenting programs.

It is not only the most cost effective way to address poverty; it is also the most pivotal way. If all other social institutions are restored, and the family remains in ruins, a community cannot thrive, because the family is the lynchpin of character formation, skill development, and cultural transmission.

But this isn’t just about poverty. It is about virtue. It matters no less what goes on in the homes of affluent children in early childhood. Indeed, it matters more because these children will grow to have even more cultural power to do good or harm to their neighbors. Indeed, they can be the ones who pioneer creative, merciful ways to strengthen and support shattered families.

I don’t hear anyone talking about that: neither of the presidential candidates; nor Paul Tough; nor Messrs Brooks and Kristof. Now is the time for that meaningful conversation to begin.

Zero percent: Home Life and Thriving Schools

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In Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed, he recounts a conversation with Elizabeth Dozier, the principal of Christian Fenger High School in Chicago.

When we spoke . . . Dozier said her thinking about schools had been changed by her time at Fenger. “I used to always think that if a school wasn’t performing, that it was strictly because there was a bad principal, or there were bad teachers,” she explained. “But the reality is that at Fenger, we’re a neighborhood school, so we’re just a reflection of the community. And you can’t expect to solve the problems of a school without taking into account what’s happening in the community.” (p5)

That is a wise insight. If you listen to the public dialogue about the education crisis and the achievement gap, the tacit assumption underneath much of it is that the school is the exclusive locus of education (and therefore the problem to be solved).

It is not. The school is vitally important, but it is primarily a reflection of the community. And therefore any attempt to address the needs of the school must address the needs of the community.

Tough and Dozier continued their discussion of the adversities that children in the community face.

A quarter of the female students were either pregnant or already teenage mothers, [Dozier] said. And when I asked her to estimate how many of her students lived with both biological parents, a quizzical look came over her face. “I can’t think of one,” she replied. (ibid)

Zero percent. Statistically that might be inaccurate. Despite the fact that Dozier couldn’t think of a single student, surely there was at least one in her school. How many children live not only with both biological parents, but with both biological parents who are married and were married at the time he or she was born? That might just be a statistical zero at Fenger.

What’s Going On in the Community
This is the elephant in the room that no one seems to have the courage to address publicly (unless it is finger wagging). What is going on in this community, and in virtually every community of endemic poverty in the United States is the devastation of the family. Since the family is the primary locus of cultural transmission and character formation, the devastation of the family is the demolition of the community, and the culture.

Any serious, courageous attempt to combat cyclical poverty must not only acknowledge this, but ardently seek to undo it. That means having the courage to say emphatically, “This is not the way things ought to be,” and “Because this is not the way things ought to be, we are willing to walk with those dying in it and call their children to lifelong, chaste marital faithfulness.”

The Other Zero Percent
I know almost no one who has the courage and integrity to boldly make both of those statements and live them out. It is that hard. It is like committing to live with the maimed in a mine field while slowly and painstakingly marking, disarming, and removing the land mines. That is the measure of the virtue required to serve and renew a shattered community.

Improving the Odds for Children by Asking Better Questions

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In the introduction to How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity and the Hidden Power of Character, Paul Tough frames the problem of improving the lot of poor children:

“We haven’t managed to solve these problems [how early experiences connect to adult outcomes] because we’ve been looking for solutions in the wrong places. If we want to improve the odds for children in general, and for poor children in particular, we need to approach childhood anew, to start over with some fundamental questions about how parents affect their children; how human skills develop; how character is formed.” (xxiv)

The answer those questions is that childhood – and early childhood in particular – is the apprenticeship of being human. Character is formed and skills are developed in the context of relationships – which is why the impact of parents in those early years is so profound.

There is another line of questions that needs to be pushed farther than Paul Tough ventured.

  1. Is it possible that qualities and skills that enable “success” in contemporary society may be acquired, and yet the person be bereft of real virtue?
  2. How can we cultivate in children the kind of virtue that enables them to persevere in pursuit of the good even, and especially, when pursuing the good means losing rather than winning? (Think of Martin Luther King Jr. receiving death threats and persevering until he was assassinated.)

These are the kinds of questions we must ask if we are serious not just about getting kids through high school, but about the pursuit of real virtue and flourishing communities.

What Children Really Need is Character

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The New York Times Motherlode recently carried a post titled What Children Really Need for ‘Back to School.’ It a sentence, what children really need is character, because their character shapes how they will manage all of the challenges they face: at home, in the classroom, and in their vocations. Character is the primary factor that determines the joy or pain that they will bring to parents, teachers, colleagues and neighbors.

Children (and adults) build character by forming habits. Bad habits form bad character. Good habits form good character. Arthur Levine and Diane Dean highlight the bad habits of parents bailing out their children, overpraising them, and failing to teach them responsibility. Bad habits bear bad fruit in parents and children alike.

The beginning of a school year is a great time to ask hard questions:

  1. What are my bad habits that are forming bad character in myself and my children?
  2. What are the habits that we need to focus on and form in the next week, month, and year?
  3. What are the virtues that I most want to form in my children? What family routines and habit can help them to form those virtues?

The Rediscovery of Character and The Heretical Imperative

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In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, David Brooks highlighted the legacy of James Q. Wilson. Brooks argues that Wilson should be remembered not just for his “broken windows” theory on how to reduce crime, but for his emphasis on the importance of character for social well-being.

“At root,” Wilson wrote in 1985 in The Public Interest, “in almost every area of important concern, we are seeking to induce persons to act virtuously, whether as schoolchildren, applicants for public assistance, would-be lawbreakers or voters and public officials.

Character is formed, necessarily, in community; and therefore the beliefs, values, and habits of the community are of utmost importance. That truth makes our current situation all the more disturbing. Peter Berger, a sociologist, has described our time as being constrained by “the heretical imperative.” We are commanded to choose our own values, beliefs, and religion. The normative structures that were passed down from generation to generation through tradition (meaning ‘to hand down’ or ‘to hand over’) are now challenged. The new norm is to choose your own.

The rediscovery of character as important is important. However, it is only the first step. Wilson was raised in a nation and generation that had a rich an stable tradition handed down to it. Our children desperately need a rich, robust tradition that tells them virtue is a norm to which they must conform – not one which they may define as they so please. Our children will be bear the fruit of our character, as they are apprenticed to us in discerning and cultivating virtue.

Is Failure the Key to Success?

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Paul Tough’s recent cover story in the New York Times Magazine titled What if the Key to Success is Failure? makes a strong case for the importance of character in education. With masterful style, he tells how two educational leaders  of very different schools have collaborated to help their students develop character.

The article has rightly garnered attention and reaction from major news outlets and influential thinkers. Tough has touched a nerve. He has put into words what others feel.

Paul Tough is the author of Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America. The brilliance of that book is the second chapter: Unequal Childhoods (although the whole book is fantastic). In Unequal Childhoods he chronicles the importance of what happens in the home long before children enter school. And he wisely recognizes that perhaps the cornerstone and linchpin of the Harlem Children’s Zone’s success is its Baby College with engages and empowers parents from before birth.

Here is the pressing question: If the earliest years are so critical for brain building that the achievement gap exist long before children enter school, is it possible that the same is true of character? Could it be that a child’s character is significantly formed in this period? Could it be that the formation of character in the earliest years is at the very heart of the education crisis?

Character, Competence, Creativity & Collaboration

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Parents exert singular influence on their children’s development during the earliest years of life in four key areas:

  1. Character. The most significant role of early nurture is to form the character of children. How people treat one another is the very foundation of a just society – the kind of place in which the following three traits flourish. Without the baseline of a just society – which begins in a just family – the other aims of nurture (competence, creativity, and collaboration) can be used in ways that destroy communities rather than building them.
  2. Competence. After virtue, competence is paramount to the flourishing individuals and relationships. In fact, character and competence cannot be separated. A person cannot be virtuous without demonstrating hard work, integrity, and persistence – qualities that begin to form around age 1 when a child can learn to put his toys away.
  3. Creativity. Competence and creativity, too, are intertwined. To be competent in anything implies a measure of creativity and problem solving. In a home where creativity and innovation are intentionally cherished, children solve problems in new ways and develop life-long patterns of innovation. 
  4. Collaboration. A team is more than the sum of its parts; and children learn to work in teams (with parents and siblings!) from their earliest years. Together families that are marked by character, competence and creativity create the kind of environment where everyone wants to be.