Patricia Farnsworth (1938-2001)
Core Virtues has had many champions and supporters, but chief among them was our first publisher, Patricia Farnsworth, founder and president of The Link Institute. Patty was a tireless warrior in the education reform debate. She founded Link Institute in 1996 as a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting content and character in the classroom. Patty enthusiastically endorsed the Core Knowledge Sequence as a stellar, content-rich academic program, but she was passionate about Core Virtues as the best approach to character education. Link Institute became the publisher of Core Virtues in 2000. Link trademarked the name “Core Virtues,” and oversaw grant-writing to get the program into numerous schools.
At Patty’s impetus and urging, Link Institute also sponsored a summit of distinguished educators and academics to explore “the link” between content and character. This group met in Portsmouth, Rhode Island for three days in January of 2001, and issued a document known as “The Portsmouth Declaration.” It described the relationship between intellectual and moral virtue, and the catalytic quality of the former to reinforce the latter. It was a clarion call to new standards in education.
Patty was at the Atlas/Heritage Foundation conference in April 2001, presenting the Portsmouth Declaration, when back pain and subsequently diagnosed cancer claimed her energies. Nine months later the disease took her life, but not her spirit or her life’s work.
Link Institute continued its work for four more years, phasing out its activity in 2005, but transferring the copyright and materials produced to Mary Beth Klee, who assigned them to the Core Virtues Foundation. Patty Farnsworth used to say that people needed to be reminded what a good school looked like. Patty herself reminded us what a good person looked like. She was Core Virtues incarnate.
At Patty’s impetus and urging, Link Institute also sponsored a summit of distinguished educators and academics to explore “the link” between content and character. This group met in Portsmouth, Rhode Island for three days in January of 2001, and issued a document known as “The Portsmouth Declaration.” It described the relationship between intellectual and moral virtue, and the catalytic quality of the former to reinforce the latter. It was a clarion call to new standards in education.
Patty was at the Atlas/Heritage Foundation conference in April 2001, presenting the Portsmouth Declaration, when back pain and subsequently diagnosed cancer claimed her energies. Nine months later the disease took her life, but not her spirit or her life’s work.
Link Institute continued its work for four more years, phasing out its activity in 2005, but transferring the copyright and materials produced to Mary Beth Klee, who assigned them to the Core Virtues Foundation. Patty Farnsworth used to say that people needed to be reminded what a good school looked like. Patty herself reminded us what a good person looked like. She was Core Virtues incarnate.