It's Elementary: Core Virtues and the Culture Wars

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

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