- From the Marshall Memo, Five Virtues That Schools Should Model and Teach:
In
this Chronicle of Higher Education
article, Swarthmore College professors Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe say
colleges and K-12 schools need to go beyond teaching knowledge, academic
skills, and critical and analytical thinking and instill certain intellectual virtues. Here is their
list, which they say is exemplified in KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools
and Harvard Medical School’s third-year program in a Cambridge, Massachusetts
hospital:
•
The love of truth – “When a
significant minority of Americans reject evolution and global warming out of
hand, the desire to find the truth rather than ‘truthiness’ cannot be taken for
granted,” say Schwartz and Sharpe.
•
Honesty – “Students need to be honest
because it enables them to face the limits of what they themselves know,
encourages them to confront their mistakes, and helps them acknowledge
uncongenial truths about the world,” say the authors. This goes beyond
refraining from plagiarism and cheating; it means facing up to ignorance and
error and accepting reality.
•
Courage – This is standing up for
what one believes is true even when other people disagree – including those in
authority.
•
Fairness – Students need to evaluate
the arguments of others fair-mindedly. “They need humility to face up to their
own limitations and mistakes,” say Schwartz and Sharpe. “They need
perseverance, since little that is worth knowing comes easily. They need to be
good listeners because students can’t learn from others, or from us, without
it.”
•
Wisdom – This, say Schwartz and
Sharpe, “is what enables us to find the balance between timidity and
recklessness, between carelessness and obsessiveness, between flightiness and
stubbornness, between speaking up and listening up, between trust and
skepticism, between empathy and detachment. And wisdom is also what enables us
to make difficult decisions among intellectual virtues that may conflict. Being
fair and open-minded often rubs up against fidelity to the truth.”
How
do we teach these virtues? Primarily by example, say Schwartz and Sharpe – in
how teachers ask questions, how we pursue a dialogue, when and how we
interrupt, how carefully we listen, and how often we admit that we don’t know
something. “We are always modeling,” say the authors, “and the students are
always watching.”