Hello, friends of Core Virtues! 
 
What precious virtues we get to focus on this month! Honesty & justice, loyalty, and love of country all have an invaluable place in our nation’s heritage and our modern society. Thank you for committing yourselves to the work of instilling a love of these virtues in your students, not only in February but throughout the entire school year. 
 
As a reminder, we will highlight “the best of” from books, heroes, and blog stories from years past while I am on maternity leave (which could begin any day!). Abraham Lincoln is one of the most prominent figures in American history, and for good reason. I hope you and your students can pull rich conversations about him and honesty from the recommended books and the blog we are reintroducing from 2020. 
 
Sincerely,
Gabrielle Lewis
Core Virtues Director
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Let’s Hear it for Honest Abe” by John T. E. Cribb
 
People who know I’m a big Abraham Lincoln fan often ask me, “Was he really an honest guy?” The answer, I’m happy to say, is absolutely yes. That’s one reason I admire him so much. We certainly can’t say Lincoln never told a lie, but we should do as past generations of American parents and teachers have done: Point to him as a hero of integrity for students.

Some of these examples may be familiar, but look at them in aggregate. When he was a youngster growing up on the Indiana frontier, he borrowed a biography about George Washington from Josiah Crawford, a neighboring farmer. The book was ruined when rainwater came in through the roof of the Lincolns’ cabin. Abe went straight to Crawford, owned up to what had happened, and spent three days pulling fodder in his neighbor’s corn field to pay for the book.

When he was a young man living in the village of New Salem, Illinois, he worked as a clerk in a log cabin general store. One day he accidentally overcharged a customer by six cents. He walked several miles to her house to make sure she got her money back.

Later he and a partner had their own store, which went bankrupt. Lincoln ended up owing creditors a few thousand dollars, an enormous sum in those days for a young man of little means. He could have done what many on the frontier did—simply skip town in the middle of the night to start over further west.
 
He resolved to stay and pay what he owed. Lincoln joked that he had his own “National Debt.” It took him several years, but he paid it all back, every penny. “His straightforward conduct in this and other dealings earned him the nickname ‘Honest Abe,’” wrote Lincoln historian Benjamin Thomas.

As a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, he always tried to treat people fairly. Once a client sent him $25 for drawing up some papers. “You must think I am a high-priced man,” Lincoln wrote him. “You are too liberal with your money. Fifteen dollars is enough for the job.” He sent $10 back.

Another time, he discovered that one of his law partners had charged $250 for a case representing a young woman who was mentally disabled. “Lamon, that is all wrong,” he said. “The service was not worth that sum.” He made his partner to give half the money back. “That money comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in this manner,” he insisted.

Integrity mattered. “The Lincoln of reality seems to match the Lincoln of myth in this regard: that he tried to be scrupulously honest and honorable in his personal dealings, and cared a great deal about his reputation for being so,” wrote Lincoln scholar William Lee Miller.

Lincoln, of course, was a politician, and he could be crafty. No doubt about that. But as a legislator and as president, he tried hard to stick to his word. “I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it,” he told the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Douglass met with Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War to discuss policies regarding, among other matters, black soldiers. After his visit, Douglass told an audience: “Now, you will want to know how I was impressed by him…. He impressed me as being just what every one of you have been in the habit of calling him—an honest man.”

Some people thought Lincoln would never go through with his pledge to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a politically risky act. “I trust to prove true to a principle which I feel to be right,” he said, and sign it he did. “I never, in my life, felt more certain that I was doing right, than I do in signing this paper,” he said before he wrote his name.

When the war went badly, his critics called him a confused, incompetent rube. But his allies, including millions of Americans, sensed that he was a good, decent man. And that helped them know that the cause they were fighting for was good and decent.

Lincoln’s log-cabin-to-White-House story is still one of the most compelling in all of American history. So let’s hear it for Honest Abe this February 12, his birthday, and all this month. He’s a great example for young people. Let’s make sure they know Honest Abe really was just that.

A new year is upon us, and with it, a renewed sense of hope, determination, and optimism. What better time is there to focus on building good habits that will lay the foundation for not only our health and well-being but also our character?  

In college, I learned the etymology and history of the word character for the first time, and it impressed upon my heart and mind in a powerful way. The word “character” has a few different origins, but the one that affected me was the Greek origin, kharaktēr, which originally referred to a mark, stamp, or seal pressed onto a letter. It also referred to the tool used to make the mark. This seal made it obvious to the recipient from whom the letter came. In a similar way, our character is our mark, stamp, or seal on our lives—the distinguishing features, qualities, or traits that make us unique and through which we make our “mark” on the world around us. If we are of poor character, then the mark we will make will likely be negative (or not as positive as we hope). If, though, we have worked hard to build our character toward that which is good and beautiful and true, then the impact we have will be one of good fruit and joy for those in our sphere of influence. Our character defines us and people will know us by the fruit it produces. 

Also, during college, I learned about the power that habit plays in shaping our character (thanks, Hillsdale College!). The great, ancient philosopher Aristotle emphasized the importance of habituating ourselves toward excellence in order to cultivate virtue. To put it another way, we must repeatedly practice choosing what is right and good every time we face a moral quandary in order for our character to become good. He posited that the more we choose to do the right thing, the easier it becomes to do and be good.  

It may come as no surprise to you, but being courageous is hard. We are wired to protect ourselves at all costs, and often, the result is choosing to be a coward in the face of fear or to be brash and foolhardy. Courage, though, is one of the four cardinal virtues (alongside justice, temperance, and prudence), and for good reason. Without finding the “mean” between cowardice and foolhardiness, which is courage, we cannot build moral excellence. It takes courage to try new things, to learn and grow, to build relationships with others, and to face difficult, scary, or uncomfortable situations. Life is hard, and without courage, we can easily crumble in the face of all it throws at us. Thus, with Aristotle as our guide, we must practice choosing courage each time something new, hard, or frightening is thrown our way. And what better time to practice this than as a child, while adults who care for her are there to provide wisdom, guidance, and protection? Our students’ characters and habituation toward courage can be formed under our tutelage, and what a privilege this is!   

So, how can we encourage the cultivation of courage in our students and begin this formation of character through building good habits? There are numerous and seemingly unending ways! See the list below for a few ideas:   

• Encourage your students to try new things – play a new game at recess, play challenging math games during math time, recite poetry in front of the class, talk to a new friend at lunch, etc. 

• Provide your students options, and allow them to choose which they’d prefer, followed by allowing them to live out the natural consequences of their choice. Follow this up with a loving conversation on why their choices produced a particular outcome. 

• Praise them (privately and publicly) when they overcome hard things 

• Tell stories of courageous historical figures (like George Washington) and characters (like Johnny Tremain) that present attractive pictures of overcoming fear to choose a nobler end  

• Discuss acts of courage and compare them to how they would look if one chose cowardice and/or foolhardiness instead 

• Partner with parents to have discussions about courage at home, during dinner time, or in the car 

• Model courage yourself – tell your students (age and professionally appropriate) stories of past and present acts of courage in your own life and be honest about the struggles you overcame to choose courage 
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The more we can present inspiring and attractive pictures of courage through the books we read and the stories we tell (whether of ourselves or of figures and characters), the more our students will desire to be courageous. And the more practice they get in choosing courage, the more courageous they will be. What an honor to have a small, yet significant impact on the character of our students as they practice the virtue of courage while in our care! We have the power to help them create a positive “stamp” on the world, so let’s begin this new year afresh with vigor to support our students in this important endeavor that will shape their lives.

Now onto a different matter of business: I am pregnant and due with our third child in mid-February. Because of this and the subsequent maternity leave, you will not see all new content over the next few months. Instead, you will likely see past blog posts and books that we will pull to guide you in your story reading and class discussions on the virtues of these upcoming months. There is so much rich content to pull from Mary Beth, and it is never a bad thing to repeat goodness for our students! Thank you for your understanding and patience until I return.  

Sincerely, 
Gabrielle Lewis 
Core Virtues Director 

Here we are!  October is the first official month of my “Directorship” of Core Virtues and the beginning of a beautiful partnership with this foundation and all those who currently use the Core Virtues program. It is an honor and a joy to carry on this work in pursuit of a mission I’ve held dear to my heart as an educator in the classical world for the last decade.  ​

I discovered Core Virtues as a Grammar School Dean of Academics at a classical charter school north of Tampa, FL. We held a daily assembly there for our first through fifth-grade students, and our aim was always to cultivate a love of the good through story. Hungrily, I scoured the internet in preparation for these assemblies, searching for books that would fit into 15 to 20 minutes to inspire my students to desire virtue. I don’t remember how I came across Core Virtues initially, but when I did, I quickly devoured the content within the published book and began purchasing many of the book recommendations. Over the next five years, those books became valued traditions to our students and familiar friends to my teachers and me.  

When Dr. Kathleen O’Toole, my fearless leader and the Assistant Provost for K-12 Education at Hillsdale College, asked our team what we knew and thought of a program called Core Virtues, I immediately perked up and shared what I had found to be the value of the program. Little did I know then that the Hillsdale K-12 Education Office was considering an acquisition of and partnership with Mary Beth and the Core Virtues Foundation. When the opportunity came to apply for the “Core Virtues Director” position, I jumped at the chance, and I’m honored to have been granted this role.  

As a member of the Teacher Support Team for the Hillsdale K-12 Education Office for the last two years and as an alumna of the College, I know the mission of the College and, by extension, our office well. We are a teaching institution; thus, teaching is infused into everything we do. Through establishing classical charter and private schools and teaching their boards, leaders, and teachers about the best practices of running an excellent school, we aim to educate students for a life of liberty and civic virtue, which involves both knowledge of the human good and the strength necessary to attain it. This means that we must provide an education in both knowledge and virtue, and based upon tried and true principles of moral instruction, we know that one of the most effective means of inclining the heart towards the love of virtue is by presenting moral goodness through beautifully told stories. 

Under Mary Beth’s leadership and vision, the purpose of Core Virtues has always been much the same. She endeavored to teach educators about the value of good books in children's lives and for their character formation—books that inspire through beautiful writing and illustrations and, most importantly, through powerful and winsome lessons in virtue. As the Core Virtues mission statement explains, “Drawing on the American Founders’ insight that knowledge and virtue are essential to a properly functioning republic, the Core Virtues program seeks to promote...intellectual, moral, and civic virtue...” via good books. The missions of the Hillsdale College K-12 Education Office and Core Virtues align almost seamlessly, which is why this partnership makes good sense, and the College is grateful to take the reins and honor the work that has already been accomplished in many schools and in many individuals’ lives.  
Over the next school year, users of this program can expect to see a few changes to the website as Core Virtues becomes more closely integrated with the rest of the K-12 Office’s operations; however, rest assured that our main focus will always be to continue Mary Beth’s work with the same spirit of building character through story. You may notice that we frequently tend to highlight books and stories that are considered “old classics.” This is because these are the stories that have withstood the test of time, that show us eloquently what it means to be human, that can shape our affections and habituate our passions, and that develop cultural literacy through reading the best our tradition has to offer. We have a passion for bringing these stories to American students because they are their heritage, and what a rich heritage it is!

Now, a few remarks about the virtues for the month of October: diligence, self-control/patience, and perseverance—What an apt month for us as our first to curate and update! It will take much diligence to continue Mary Beth’s work faithfully, but we are dedicated to doing so. Because we love to teach, we are eager to educate about these and the many classic virtues we will champion in the months ahead. Diligence, self-control/patience, and perseverance may not always seem like the most heroic virtues, given that they are about "holding fast" and are a way of resisting change—they are typically "quiet" virtues that don't tend to cause a stir.  But precisely because perseverance, self-control/patience, and diligence are about staying the course and not giving in to the exhaustion that comes from prolonged exertion and repeated challenges, they can reveal a purity of virtue that is not so evident in other circumstances. Passions and emotions are quick to arise and quick to flag, but an upright will does not tire in its adherence to noble goods. In this way, perseverance, self-control/patience, and diligence reveal the true strength of one's will, and thus prove the truth of one's virtue. It is fitting to contemplate these virtues now as we approach the midpoint of the first semester when opportunities for leisure and rest appear distant. It is also fitting to contemplate these virtues early on in the school year—without them, we will not make much progress in any of the virtues since all habits are only acquired through a sustained effort that far exceeds the impulses of good intentions and desires. The virtues of October are worthy of study and contemplation, and we hope that the books, hero, and poem chosen for this month will inspire students to practice them earnestly.  
Sincerely,  
Gabrielle Lewis

- ​​Mary Beth Klee

American aphorist Mason Cooley put it well: “Reading gives us someplace to go, when we have to stay where we are.” Huzzah for magical transport. Read me away. Books open windows to worlds we know nothing about, but could visit and learn from.

Have you been to Nebraska in the late nineteenth century and met its German, Czech and Yankee settlers? Willa Cather’s My Antonia paints the exquisite beauty and loneliness of the landscape, the power of its changing seasons, and the captivating resilience of Great Plains settlers who forged a life there. Have you wondered if you’d be tough enough to leave your warring homeland and begin somewhere else? Read Isabel Allende’s triumph A Long Petal of the Sea, which chronicles a family fleeing Spain’s Civil War (1939) and making new lives in Chile. Are you curious about the Belgian Congo in the 1950s? (Aren’t we all?) Read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, and when you finish, you may weep that this fine book had to end. Are you seeking a first-hand account of justice gone wrong and forgiveness extended? Read Anthony Hinton’s spellbinding The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row -- an eye-popping account of an innocent black man sentenced to death in Alabama, who endured thirty years in prison before lady-justice removed her blindfold.

If you just want some place new to go, and a fresh, funny take on it, try any of Bill Bryson’s travel books: I’m a Stranger Here Myself (Hanover NH), In a Sunburned Country (Australia) or A Walk in the Woods (Appalachian Trail). And, last of all, if you long for Christmas in July, don’t miss Gretchen Anthony’s hysterically funny and touching Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners, in which Violet Baumgartner, type-A matriarch from a distinguished family, channels her family’s (mis)adventures through the annual holiday letter. You’ll end up loving her.

This summer, when so much of the news is dark and heavy and worrisome, take time to recharge and restore. Get above it. Read novels. Read poetry and more. And let Langston Hughes be your guide:

So since I’m still here livin’
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love --
But for livin’ I was born.

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry –
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine!    Fine as wine!    Life is fine!

P.S. If you’re looking for great reading for your kids, just peruse any of our month-related tabs and/or our chapter book section. And for our adult readers, we have a great new candidate for summer reading in 2024: Telling Our Stories, a "coffee break book" that is a print compilation of our best blog posts through the years. Get your copy here!

See you in September….

Mary Beth Klee

​​To read more from Telling Our Stories, visit our Blog Archives page.

Our polarized times have a way of seeping into some of our most important and vulnerable institutions: public and private elementary schools.  When topics such as critical race theory, gender identity, abortion, and climate change policy infiltrate K-6 classrooms, we have a recipe not for quality education, but for partisan indoctrination. Elementary school education is intended to be “elementary”—concerned with the basics, or in the definition of the Oxford dictionary, “straightforward and uncomplicated.” 

​We should keep that in mind as we navigate these unsettled questions and their implications for K-6 schools.  We do well to ask:  what virtue should be uppermost in the minds of elementary school administrators and teachers who confront these issues on a curricular or programmatic level?

The key is “stewardship.”  We in K-6 education are first and foremost stewards for the education (and care) of the children in our schools.  The Core Virtues program defines “stewardship” as “caring well for the gifts given us: our lives, our world, our talents, and those entrusted to our care.”  

Entrusted to the care of elementary schools are children. Minors. They are not miniature adults.  They are full of curiosity, spirit, and often good will, but a child does not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex—the part of the brain which controls our highest cognitive abilities.  Their emotions are more intense, volatile, and frequently expressed than adults.  Children inhabit worlds that hover between fact and fantasy, rational and non-rational.  Both of those worlds—the world of the empirical and the world of the imagination—are of supreme importance. The next generation of scientists and novelists, accountants and artists, mathematicians and ministers are in our classrooms. 

It is our responsibility to steward children with respect for their current state of development and also with respect for the diverse families who entrusted them to our care.​

Strong academic programs like the Core Knowledge Sequence or the Hillsdale K-12 Program are ambitious, research-based programs that are respectful of a child’s state of development. They build sequentially and focus on the knowledge and critical thinking skills that need to be passed to the next generation for a bright future.  What is an atom? How do we know they exist? What mathematical operations allowed the development of Google? Which poems have lifted hearts and minds? What are the major ancient civilizations? How is a republic different from an oligarchy?  What are the major world religions and how are they alike and different? There is so much rich material to explore.                           
​And it’s not just factual.  We are cultivating moral sensibilities – a love of the good and disposition to act for the good. What can we learn from Washington at Valley Forge? What do Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan teach us?  Why did Gandhi march to the sea?  

The Core Virtues program seeks to inspire children to act justly, live generously, and pursue their life path with courage, prudence, and hope. In that moral journey good stories are the spur, and activities for habit-formation should be age-appropriate. Between Kindergarten and grade 6 children can be encouraged to exercise respect by treating their classmates and teachers well, show diligence by doing their homework carefully and on time, stewardship by caring for their desks, rooms and school, generosity by serving the elderly or the needy, courage by being willing to act in a play, love of country by learning the nation’s poetry or songs, compassion by helping a child on the playground in need, humility by willingness to be last in line, and hope by not assuming the worst outcome of events. These are appropriate elementary school goals.

​But no elementary school time should be spent on tendentious culture war conflicts and activities.  If a topic is currently being disputed in the political and social arena, leave it there. Good stewardship of the young requires that elementary school teachers and leaders respectfully consign those topics to adults with fully developed pre-frontal cortices and some mechanisms of emotional self-control to debate and ultimately settle.  

In other words:  when a teacher presents a unit on antebellum America and concludes that America’s history of race-based slavery has made it “systemically racist” today, he oversteps his bounds.  He is in the realm of opinion and theory. When legislators mandate that public school third graders see a charming animated movie on fetal development, they too overreach because they risk antagonizing half their parent community. When a teacher encourages students to choose their pronouns, she goes too far: the “non-binary” nature of sex has not been empirically established, nor have the medical consequences of school social affirmation.  When Social Studies teachers urge students to march for gun ownership rights or for the elimination of them or for the closing of fossil fuel plants, they move from the realm of shared understanding to partisan policy advocacy.

Those who urge these activities and conclusions at the K-6 level are disrespectful of the ongoing debate and are acting irresponsibly as stewards of minors.  Contemporary defenders of the above initiatives may see themselves as “virtuous:” defending justice, extending compassion, advancing liberty, or protecting the environment. But they are advancing an agenda.  Agendas belong in the adult political arena:  they do not belong in K-6.  Elementary schools need to remain respectful, responsible, and above all - elementary.

Mary Beth Klee

Did you know there is a “neuroscience of stories”?  Experts in the fields of psychology and neurology are looking at what happens to the human brain when we are told a story.   How does the brain react to this form of verbal communication, particularly when stories are told to a group?  The results affirm something Core Virtues teachers have long intuited: the telling of stories creates a bond, and puts the student audience “on the same wavelength.”  That facilitates communication and promotes harmonious interaction in the classroom.  “It gives us a common language,” one teacher told me. 

We are now learning that this sense of “being on the same wavelength” when you listen to a good story, is literally true.  Research scientists at Princeton University, led by Professor Uri Hasson, want to understand when our “cortical activity” is idiosyncratic (unique to individuals or to subgroups) and when are our responses are shared. Are there times when brain activity synchronizes, facilitating communication? Or is human brain activity largely idiosyncratic? At Professor Hasson’s lab, they’ve been investigating this for years, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and intracranial EEG (iEEG) recording to chart brain activity. ​

The beauty of the Core Virtues approach to character education is that by regularly employing a treasure trove of stories (from history and literature) to exemplify the virtues, we build the common ground so essential to communication and fruitful interaction.  We bring children’s hearts and minds together for a good goal, for human excellence.  That’s what the virtues are: human excellences. The stories of respect, responsibility, diligence, generosity, courage, compassion, humility, hope, and more, move kids' hearts, and now we know, unite them in a profound way. 
 
For fifteen minutes three times a week, “brain coupling.”  "Neural synchrony." Who knew?  How wonder-ful.  And as we think about divisions among us and our quest for a more civil future, that's also a source of hope and joy.

​Mary Beth Klee

For the study referenced above on adult-baby sync up during one-on-one play and story time, see https://www.princeton.edu/news/2020/01/09/baby-and-adult-brains-sync-during-play-finds-princeton-baby-lab.

So, what are “Morning Check-Ins”?  What’s the difference?  It’s huge.  The Morning Check-In in SEL programs generally involves taking the emotional temperature of the class -- individually.  Teachers invite students to begin the day by reflecting on how they are feeling.  Frequently used posters feature at least sixteen facial emojis that invite children to reflect on whether they are happy, content, focused, and calm, or twelve other choices such as sad/upset, tired, bored, sick, silly, worried, frustrated, excited, mad/angry, need some space, yelling, or out of control.  

Teachers employ these posters in different ways, but enthusiastically note in their reviews: “I use their choices to guide our morning meetings.” In other words, take time to reflect on what’s troubling or exciting them - and there are lots of possibilities.  “I like to use this in the morning and after recess to see how my students are feeling,” one teacher writes. In other words: ask them to focus on their feelings at least twice a day. ​

Initially developed to improve the academic performance of troubled inner-city youth, SEL programs have morphed.  They currently promote a lot of counter-productive interior analysis and rumination.  What is rumination?  It is the tendency to mentally review and constantly rehash past injuries and the ways in which things have gone or could go wrong in a given situation, to focus on possible obstacles impeding forward movement. 
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Shrier has gleaned insights from many psychiatrists and psychologists.  She points out that by constantly asking children to focus on their feelings, one is very likely to reinforce negative emotions in children afflicted by them.  And not just that -  we are likely to introduce negative emotions to children who hadn’t considered them.  Let’s see: am I a little off today?  Yes, I guess I should focus on that.  

This “emotional state” orientation instead of “action” orientation impedes growth and maturity.  By asking kids to focus on their feelings, we often cripple them. “Academic psychologists note that people who adopt an ‘action orientation’ are able to focus on a task without getting distracted by thoughts about their current emotional or physical state,” Shrier writes. “Those who adopt a ‘state orientation’ on the other hand, are thinking more about themselves in the moment: how prepared they feel, that crick blossoming in their neck, the email they haven’t answered.  Unsurprisingly, an action orientation makes it much more likely that you actually accomplish the task.”  

Michael Linden, MD, expert on mood disorders and professor of Psychiatry in Berlin, notes: “State orientation keeps you from being successful in anything.” Psychiatrists who treat patients crippled by emotional disorders often advise thinking LESS about one’s emotions. Shrier reminds us, “No winning head coach asks his players to dwell on their feelings at halftime. Instead of constantly asking kids to name how they feel in the moment, adults should be telling kids how imperfect and unreliable their emotions can be … that they sometimes deserve to be ignored. Healthy emotional life involves a certain amount of repression,” she writes in a recent Wall Street Journal (March 8) editorial.

Abigail Shrier is not going to make a lot of friends by suggesting the importance of repression, but we all know that she is right.  The times in our lives when we have accomplished the most meaningful goals are probably those in which we were somewhat anxious and stressed, but denied the emotion of fear’s power over us, exercising courage. Courage, the Core Virtues program defines as “moving beyond fear to venture and persevere.”  Venturing and persevering is key.

Why is Morning Gathering the heart of the day in Core Virtues programs?  Because it provides imaginative fuel for noble action.  It inspires hope. On a regular basis children are encouraged to look not in and down, but up and out.  Treated to stories of boys and girls, men and women, sometimes dogs, cats, bunnies, mice, and hedgehogs, encountering difficult situations, kids identify with attractive characters who move beyond fear or crippling love of self to act heroically. They encounter great models.
 
Plato reminded us that the purpose of stories is to help students fall in love with virtue,  the excellences required of mature and fruitful adults. So, let’s help the kids grow up.  Leave rumination behind; make sure these literature-based Morning Gatherings provide all-important moments of hope and inspiration.  

​Mary Beth Klee