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  • Our Approach
    • Program Overview
    • Why Stories?
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    • Mary Beth Klee
    • Board and Staff
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      • The Portsmouth Declaration
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  • Virtue of the Month
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Telling Our Stories

Not-So-Secondary Virtues: Graciousness and Courtesy

4/1/2020

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This April 2020, when most of us are confined to our homes surrounded
only by family members, is a particularly good time to celebrate the old- fashioned excellences of graciousness and courtesy. There is so much in our lives at this time that we cannot control: we cannot go to a restaurant, go to the movies, send the kids to school, visit a friend, go to church, go to the office, go to a library, hold a family reunion, see the grandchildren, or throw a party. Our lives are full of restrictions. A million things we cannot do.

Here’s what we can do: enhance the quality of life in our homes with
courtesy and graciousness. Ensure that our interpersonal relationships flourish. Are we treating each other (spouses, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, parents) with kindness and respect? Do I make those I live with feel special? Do I treat those I’m closest to with politeness? Have I put consideration for their needs upper most on my list?
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If you answered "yes" to those questions, you’re probably doing very well
enduring the shut-down. Yet when we are all cooped up – even with (especially with?) family members, it’s easy to snap, isn’t it? “Lizzy, you’ve had that marker for half an hour! Give it to me!” (Followed by lunge for marker.) “You kids are driving me crazy! Stop behaving like brats or you’ll all go to your rooms!” (Followed by door slamming.) Our house isn’t that bad, you say to yourself. If so, congratulations!

Graciousness and courtesy are not cardinal virtues. Some writers have gone so far as to downgrade them to “secondary virtues,” implying they are nice-to-have-add-ons, while one works for some larger, more important ideal (justice or world peace, let’s say). Maybe you can even dispense with them if you’re working for that higher ideal, some might argue. (“I yelled at my sister because she was making it hard for me to finish writing this poem for my mother!”) But gentle manner and good manners are essential ways of showing respect, making them important attributes in service of justice and love.

The child who learns to say please, thank you, does not interrupt, resists name-calling, asks how he/she can help, and forebears the temptation to hit a sibling is truly working for world peace. The parent who does not routinely snap at his/her demanding kiddos, who also resists name-calling (you brats!), who is patient with the less-than-perfect efforts of their children, and who strives to create an environment of respect and good cheer in the home is doing their part for social justice.

Finally, cultivating the habits of courtesy and the attitude of graciousness involves a great deal of self-discipline and self-control. It’s not about remembering to execute on the “niceties.” It’s about visibly and vocally attending to the needs and feelings of others, when we’d rather blow them off, when we are feeling low and put-upon. Graciousness and courtesy force us to combat the great downward-sucking spiral of self-absorption. These are things we can control. If each home works on those twin goals this month, then in May, we’ll be lots closer to justice and world peace.

Mary Beth Klee

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Faithfulness

3/1/2020

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PictureArnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan Van Eyck
“For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad….” The traditional wedding vows lay bare the meaning of faithfulness: to stand by the beloved in bright and bountiful times, and in privation and peril. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens,” J.R.R. Tolkien reminds us.

Faithfulness (an attribute of both love and justice) is a hard virtue for us moderns. Contemporary culture prizes the individual and autonomy. Should we really be bound to each other or some abstract ideal in good times and in bad? For better or for worse? That’s fine for dogs, maybe, but what if such bonds seem to anchor us to a dead weight?

Maybe we can learn something from dogs (the traditional symbols of fidelity in art). This month our K-6 literary selections feature the true story of Hachiko, the Akita companion of a Japanese professor. From 1923 to 1925, Hachi waited each day at the Shibuya Train station in Tokyo for his master to return from work. The young dog was daily rewarded with the embrace of Dr. Ueno, who showered him with affection and treats. But the professor’s sudden death in 1925 could not be explained to his canine companion. For the next ten years, until the end of his own life, Hachiko went daily to the train station to stand vigil for his master. Vendors and those who frequented the station fed and sustained him, but he would not be removed and died standing vigil.

Only a dog would do that we think. And what good was it? He missed out on his whole life watching for someone who never came. Still, a bronze statue in front of the station honors his faithfulness and young couples pledge their love to each other before it. And, there is something in the human spirit that honors this sacrifice. Did he lose his life or find it?

I have two friends (one on each coast) married for more than sixty years each, who are caring in the home for their physically failing husbands (92 and 85 respectively). The men both have dementia and are increasingly non-verbal and immobile. Neither woman leaves the home overnight anymore. Neither travels. Both rely on a network of family and friends to assist occasionally, but they are on duty 24-7 and living out what many of us think of as “for worse” in their 80s and 90s. And what strikes me about both these remarkable women is that neither complains, and both have a joyful spirit. “I took the good times. I’ll take the bad,” one of them told me. “I am so grateful for his life and that we're together,” said the other. To me it seems they have each become more fully themselves through their faithfulness, which in this case involves both service and sacrifice.

Not everyone could do this, and not all spouses should, but faithfulness to the beloved, to our ideals, and our communities remains a timeless virtue. “We are born to unite with our fellow man and to join in community with the human race,” Cicero wrote. Could he have envisioned the faithfulness of women such as these? Or the example of our “heroine” this month, Annie Sullivan, who gave her whole life to make possible the full life and growth of Helen Keller? These role models "hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles," and we are all better for it.

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PS: My eighty-two-year-old friend and her eighty-five-year-old husband just adopted a puppy. 

​Her name is Grace.

Mary Beth Klee
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Let's Hear It For Honest Abe

2/1/2020

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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.

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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.


John T.E.Cribb is the author of Old Abe, a novel about Abraham Lincoln, forthcoming in Fall 2020.  He is co-author (with Bill Bennett) of  The American Patriot's Almanac and The Educated Child. 
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Courage Seventy-five Januaries Ago

1/1/2020

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​“Courage is moving beyond fear; 
​it is having the strength to venture and persevere.”
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January is a month that demands courage.  No one knew that better than George Washington, who two hundred forty-two Januaries ago, struggled to train and shelter his Revolutionary army in desperate conditions at Valley Forge.  As many as two thousand of his ten thousand soldiers would meet their deaths from bitter cold, disease, and starvation.  Washington, who dwelt among them, waged a tireless campaign for their resupply, for their survival, and for their spirits. He inspired the living to endure and fight for freedom.  

This month, as we focus on courage, my eyes are trained on another January seventy-five years ago.  In January 1945 four thousand Allied civilian prisoners of war (mostly American, largely women and children) languished in dire straits in Manila’s Santo Tomas Internment Camp.  They had been held captive by the Japanese for more than three years, and struggled to survive on a diet of less than 700 hundred calories a day. Beriberi, dengue fever, and respiratory diseases weakened immune systems, but starvation was the killer.  Twelve internees had died of starvation in November 1944, fifteen in December, and thirty-one in January 1945.  (Camp liberation would not come until February 3, 1945.)

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How did this come about?  Before World War II, as many as ten thousand American expats were living and doing business in the Philippines. Officially American territory, the islands were slated for independence in 1946.  But after the Japanese pummeled Pearl Harbor, they targeted the American military strongholds closest to Japan—Manila’s Clark Air Force Base, Nichols Field, and the U.S. naval fleet at Subic Bay.  For Allied civilians living there, three years of captivity, overcrowding, squalor, disease, cruelty, and hunger followed.  My mother, Lee Iserson, thirteen-and-a half at the time of their imprisonment, was among the children interned, along with her mother and sister.  

Internees showed courage and pluck throughout the three years:  within three weeks of internment, they'd established a K-12 school for the more than seven hundred children.  They organized a sanitation committee, a health committee, an education committee, a religious services committee. They printed an “Internews” newspaper, manned a Central Kitchen, and haggled with the Japanese for buying privileges outside of camp.  They mandated camp duties and had their own patrol system set up within the camp. Conditions and Japanese “magnanimity” worsened dramatically as time went on.  True grit was required in January 1945. 

Days before Christmas 1944, American pilots dropped leaflets on the camp, proclaiming “American forces of Liberation in the Pacific wish their gallant Allies, the People of the Philippines, all the blessings of Christmas and the realization of their fervent hopes for the New Year.”  Surely, the liberating forces were about to free them.  

But January became a crucible of suffering.  No Christmas Red Cross packages supplemented camp rations, as had been the case in December 1943.  Breakfast and dinner now consisted of one scoop of lugao, a thin rice gruel.  In January internees were dying of starvation at the rate of one per day.  School, a perennial distraction for the camp’s children, had ended partly because internees could not afford the calorie expenditure to climb stairs to their classrooms.
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Dr. Ted Stevenson, attending the dying in the Camp’s hospital, exemplified courage when he refused to falsify death certificates.  He had been indicating “malnutrition” and “starvation” as causes of death, but was told by his captors (who feared Allied accusations of war crimes) that those were no longer acceptable, and other causes should be substituted.  Dr. Stevenson dug in his heels and said “no.”  He risked being carted off to Torture Central, Fort Santiago, by refusing to do so, but found himself thrown into the camp jail instead.  

For women and children struggling to survive, courage was closely linked to imagination and hope.  The topic of food dominated every conversation, and many internees had taken to writing recipes and planning menus, as a substitute for actual food.  My mother kept a thin-lined, spiral-bound notebook with more than three hundred seventy recipes written in tiny script.  Her January entries were for Pineapple Raisin Ice Cream, Stuffed Pork Shoulder, Ham Pancakes, and Chocolate Mint Roll.  Some of the little children played restaurant.  When asked for their order by their big sister waitress, one little girl replied she’d like a sandwich.  “What kind?” big sister asked.  “I’d like a sandwich with some bread on it,” said the four year old, all earnestness. (There had been no bread for eighteen months.)

Ex-internee Curtis Brooks has written: “we shared a common moral experience, the loss of home and possessions, the loss of country in the defeat of ’42, the almost palpable sense of waiting. Waiting for the liberation which we all believed in…[we were] a community with a single purpose, to survive to the day of liberation.”
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Survival in January 1945 required every ounce of courage those internees could muster.  At a 2015 conference in Manila celebrating the 70th anniversary of Santo Tomas’s liberation, surviving internees (most of whom were children at the time of liberation) described circumstances at the end.  A high-school student in the audience asked:  “I struggle with depression, and sometimes think of suicide.  Were you ever tempted to suicide?”  Joan Bennett Chapman, the presenting internee, seemed genuinely taken aback by the question.  Then said, “No.  Never.  We were certain our boys would be back for us.  Our job was to hold on to hope.”  They did so with courage. 

Mary Beth Klee
​.  Mary Beth is the author of Leonore's Suite, a novel about the teen experience of internment at Santo Tomas.  Forthcoming February 2020.

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​Service:  The Glue

12/3/2019

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     When Alexis de Tocqueville described the unique character of democracy in America in the 1830s, he hinted at its greatest flaw.  “Aristocracy makes a chain of all the members of the community, from peasant to the king,” he observed, but ”democracy breaks that chain and frees each link.”  The unbridled individualism of democratic societies became one of Tocqueville’s most trenchant observations and salient themes.   In a society that enshrines liberty and equality as ideals for its citizens, what’s the glue?  What’s the antidote to “ME, ME, ME”? 

The answer, even from early on, was service to one’s fellows, equals on life’s path.  When de Tocqueville visited American shores, he was impressed by the many “voluntary associations” and “benevolent societies” that had been formed to assist neighbors, and aid the impoverished, the sick, the insane, and the immigrant.  When a citizen regards his or her neighbors as equals “the notion that it his duty, as well as the interest of men, to make themselves useful to their fellow-creatures” prevails, Tocqueville noted.  “[H]e sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness… by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them is at length acquired.”

Voluntary associations and non-profits – from the Red Cross to the Salvation Army – have a long history, deeply embedded in a tradition of service to our fellow travelers on the journey.  They are organizational expressions of the noble will to serve, and many do so on Giving Tuesday as well as other times of the year.   “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” Gandhi reminded us.  That service, going the extra mile for the person in need, elevates not just the needy but the giver.  It becomes the glue that keeps us together, evinces our deeper concern, regardless of our disparate ideas, circumstances, resources, or ethnicities.  

This month our book recommendations feature many individuals and organizations that have gone the extra mile for service of others.  But on the elementary school level, how is the habit of service best cultivated?  

Ask the kids:  how can they in their daily lives be of service to each other, to their families, to their school, and to the needy in their communities?  They’ll come up with great answers.  Here are some we’ve heard:  Befriending the kid who is alone on the playground.  Helping the teacher clean up before recess.  Listening to the first grader who seeks the fifth grader’s attention.  Giving some of my lunch to the child who forgot hers.  Helping a classmate understand a tricky concept or giving my friend notes for a lesson she missed.  Setting the table for Dad and Mom before they ask.  Collecting canned food for the local pantry.  Serving a community dinner.

Kids can be your best resources and experts:  ask them!  And watch the spirit of service become the Gorilla Glue for your community. 

Mary Beth Klee 

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Stewardship in the Small Things

11/1/2019

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PicturePhoto credit: Katherine Roth via AP
 “Stewardship,” our definition reminds us, “is caring well for the gifts given us: our life, our world, and all entrusted to our care.”  Gratitude for gifts given us, in other words, should translate into good stewardship.
Many of our literary recommendations this month showcase Stewardship Superstars,  those who made dramatic contributions to preserve/enhance our natural resources: John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, working to establish National Parks; Wangari Maathai establishing a “Green Belt” to combat deforestation in Kenya; Jane Goodall working to protect primates in danger of extinction and their habitat.
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 These were important initiatives, undertaken after careful thought and study. But they all sprang from former children, who loved nature, and had parents who encouraged them to tend to the duties of daily life.
​Parents and teachers who seek to promote stewardship at the elementary school level are well advised to begin by sweating the small stuff.  In elementary school, kids should be encouraged to ask:  Did I put away the classroom supplies I just used? Did I return the library book I have out?  Place my garbage in the recycling bins, and not leave it for others to clean up? Did I help stow the playground equipment? At home kids can ponder:  did I remember to bring my bike inside last night?  Make my bed before I left this morning? Feed the cat, dog, hamster or fish I begged for as my birthday gift?  Am I eating the foods that my body needs for health and growth? 

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Great age-appropriate stewardship opportunities can be found in local communities too.  When children work on local litter pick-up days, they experience first-hand what it means to be good stewards of their environment (and learn a valuable lesson about what NOT to do with trash).  When they donate or organize canned goods for the neighborhood food pantry, they learn what it means to be “my brother’s keeper.” When they thank service members or first-responders (with written notes or treats), they extend not just gratitude, but care to those who keep them safe.

Too often we’re tempted to downplay these important acts of daily stewardship.  Why not have young children march for action on climate change?  Or write letters to Congressmen about gun control? Or contact state reps about minimum wage legislation?  Because there is a difference between stewardship and political activism.  Elementary schools (with parents on both sides of any given issue) should avoid the latter. Children have much to learn--academic and moral--and at this age, the important lessons of stewardship are best learned through the things they daily see, touch, and control.  First and foremost, even as adults, quality lives are mostly about stewardship of the specific tasks entrusted to our care. 
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The classic nursery rhyme “For want of a nail” drives home that very point.  The rhyme is based on the cautionary tale of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485).  Undersupplied and in haste, the cobbler failed to shoe the king’s horse properly, trusting that three nails rather than four would do the trick. In the heat of battle, the horseshoe flew off; the steed stumbled, threw its rider, and bolted. The King’s men, already in retreat, left their sovereign to his ignominious fate, and the battle was lost. Shakespeare has the fallen Richard cry out: “My horse, my horse! A kingdom for a horse!” Mother Goose recounts it this way:
For want of nail, a shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, a horse was lost.
For want of a horse, a battle was lost,
For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The small acts of stewardship matter.  They give rise to a lifetime of habits that move beyond home and classroom, and ultimately create a better world.  
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Poster Children for Perseverance

10/1/2019

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Dig deep. Keep-a-goin. Hang in there. Parents try to teach their children those critical lessons, first as toddlers learning to walk, then as first graders learning to read, and well beyond. Perseverance is the character strength that bridges the gap from inspiration to execution. “I think I can, I think I can,” the Little Engine That Could reminds us, until he could.

This month our Heroes section features one such poster child for perseverance:  Louis Braille.  Blinded in a pre-school accident, young Louis never accepted that he would not be able to read.  If he could not see the page, he wondered, wasn’t there another way to bring its meaning to life?  This nineteenth century French boy, who thought he could, ended up developing the system of raised dots that allowed the world’s blind to read.  His perseverance through his own childhood adversity opened doors not just for himself, but for all the world’s blind.

If only we had some of that spirit today.  But wait – we do!  Look at twenty-three-year-old Marissa Koscielski.  As an eighth-grade gymnastics student in Columbus, Ohio, Marissa suffered a back injury that left her paralyzed on the left side from the waist down.  Surgery at the Mayo clinic could not restore her functioning, and she was told a wheel chair would be her fate.  That prognosis she refused to accept.  Stubborn by nature and persistent in adversity, Marissa began designing her own equipment to train herself to walk and run again.  In a long trial and error process, she succeeded, and developed a walker that she now realizes has applicability for many others who suffer mobility challenges – particularly lower limb amputees.

​Marissa has gone on to study Math and Neuroscience at the University of Notre Dame.  But eager to help others get back on their feet again, her graduate work found her starting a company called Enlighten Mobility.  Find out more about her extraordinary story and how one young woman, through perseverance and hope, has become an entrepreneurial force for good.
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​Eyes on the Prize:  Knowledge and Virtue

9/1/2019

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The American Founders were surprisingly unanimous in their understanding of educational goals for the young republic:  “common schools” were needed, they insisted, to ensure “the diffusion of knowledge and virtue” among the people. In a republic, where ordinary citizens (not kings or nobles) would write constitutions, elect leaders, formulate laws, constitute juries, and steer the tiller of state, knowledge was the indispensable intellectual base. Diffusion of knowledge, Jefferson wrote, was the means “to develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, [and] enlarge their minds.”  
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Virtue, however, would provide the moral rudder, and life in a democratic society required it.  The twin goal was to “cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue” so that a youth would come to “understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights … and, in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed,” Jefferson concluded.

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As students and teachers across the country head back to school this month, hopes run high for a year of academic flourishing (those high-stakes tests still far in the distance).  Schools employing strong content-based curricula or the gold standard Core Knowledge Sequence have a leg-up on this goal.  Their meaty language arts, history, geography, math, science, and fine arts programs feed a very real hunger for solid knowledge (not vapid fluff) in a voracious student population.

But why were the Founders insistent on “virtue” as the necessary companion to knowledge?  And what is virtue? How does it differ from values? Think of it this way: the difference between a value and a virtue is the difference between “want” and “should.” Anything can be a “value.” I can value cunning, uniformity, or ethnic purity.  Hitler did. Stalin did. In China and Myanmar, they still do – and those deeply held “values” can get the world into a lot of moral (and political) trouble.

A “virtue” on the other hand, is an “excellence.” The Greek root word for virtue (“arete”) means “excellence.”  This millennia-old philosophical tradition calls us to our highest self – not simply to tolerance, but to respect and to justice; not principally to self-assertion, but to diligence, perseverance, and temperance; not to ecological awareness, but to stewardship; not to cultural sensitivity, but to compassion and civic courage. The list goes on. 

The tradition of educating children in the virtues has very long roots – going back to Plato’s dialog with Socrates in The Meno. It is a tradition the Founders prized.  Even as we entered the twentieth century American statesmen agreed that virtues education was the task of quality schools. “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society,” Theodore Roosevelt reminded us.

Many schools today resist this lesson. They strive for strong academic results, but see “character education” (in its many possible forms) as a burdensome add-on, yet another non-academic to-do for teachers whose main task ought to be educational. Isn’t this the job of parents? Where will I fit it in? But one cannot avoid educating for character in the schools (hence the proliferation of conflict-resolution curricula); we do it whether we think about it or not. And the virtues – not a panoply of self-chosen values - are necessary for quality academic work.After all, how can we foster healthy classroom interaction and the meaningful exchange of ideas in class without respect and responsibility? How does the nine-year-old child memorize her times tables and math facts without perseverance? How does a child take to the stage and recite a poem, play a role in drama, or try a new solution to a math problem without courage?  How does that same student handle the disappointment of not doing well on a test without humility? How do kids learn to push themselves to study still harder and do better the next time without diligence and hope?
 
The virtues are habits of the heart that ensure quality scholarship. An increasing number of studies affirm that schools with an emphasis on character yield higher academic results. And most recently, the focus of Positive Psychology, the study of how/why human beings come to flourish, has trained its focus specifically on character strength and virtues—such as grit, service, gratitude, forgiveness. 

The task of virtues education is three-fold:  teaching students to know, to love, and do the good. Aristotle placed strong emphasis (rightly so) on the latter, on habit formation as the key. We become courageous by doing courageous acts repeatedly. But FIRST comes knowledge and LOVE of virtue, attraction to that which is praiseworthy.

The Core Virtues approach cultivates virtue principally by helping young children identify and fall in love with the good. Our literature-based approach showcases worthy exemplars of virtue in action and helps populate the theaters of kids’ imaginations with compelling and heroic guides.  It helps children learn not just what they should aspire to, but which individuals (real and fictional) they might be like.  And that is key. For there is not a child on the planet, who wakes up in the morning and says:  “How shall I behave today?”  His or her first thought is: “Who shall I be like?”  And they’ve got fifteen dramas in their heads before breakfast. Am I Pink Ranger? Elsa? Spiderman? Spongebob Squarepants? But why not Jane Addams, Harriet Tubman, Johnny Appleseed, Abe Lincoln, or Neil Armstrong?

Plato said:  “the core of education is a correct nurture, one which as much as possible draws the soul of the child at play toward an erotic attachment to what he must do when he becomes a man.”  He got it exactly right.  Although in the twenty-first century, let's be expansive: we should work on drawing the souls of children at play to the heroic dramas they can aspire to when they become adults.

Mary Beth Klee

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Leisure: The Basis of Culture

7/9/2019

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Philosopher Josef Pieper wrote Leisure: The Basis of Culture in 1948, and seventy years later his insights still reward us.  In a culture that enshrines work over play, we are tempted, Pieper said, to reduce all life to purposeful activity energetically pursued.  But human flourishing requires not just effort and socially useful action, but the ability to marvel, behold, and spiritually celebrate.  Leisure is a step beyond the work-a-day world and feeds a quiet wellspring from which we live. 
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Watching the sunset in a sea both violet and amber, listening to the distant caw of gulls and waves lapping the shore, drinking in a star-studded sky at the park as a symphony swells  around us, fishing in a quiet pond, meeting the dew in your garden in an early morning walk, waking in a tent on a mountain summit.  Or reading poetry beneath an old oak tree, dancing unobserved, reveling in the cool breeze through an open window as you gaze on a beloved cityscape. 
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Leisure is about allowing oneself to be awash in life’s goodness, celebrating the inherent beauty and mystery of our lives and our world. Philosophers assure us that leisure – which seems to insinuate itself to us naturally in July -- is not the same as idleness.  It is the quiet celebration of the world and life in which we find ourselves.  If work involves effort, leisure involves openness to awe.  This summer, whether your leisure involves quiet reading under a tree, days at the shore, concerts in the park, or fireworks in the night sky, we wish you the joy of an uplifted spirit open to festivity. 

And if you’d like to read more about leisure (under some shady maple tree), pick up a copy of Josef Pieper's Leisure, the Basis of Culture. or check out this article:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/leisure-the-basis-of-culture-josef-pieper/   

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​Honoring Our Heroes

6/1/2019

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In June, the Core Virtues program celebrates heroism, and defines it as “taking noble action for a good cause.” That action almost invariably involves willingness to sacrifice one’s self for a higher good.  
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We have just celebrated Memorial Day in the United States, recalling those who fell in battle and sacrificed their lives for our nation’s liberty.  Most of those heroes, buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in Normandy, or elsewhere, were ordinary men and women with extraordinary character.  On the Thursday before Memorial Day, when the 3rd United States Infantry Regiment planted more than 200,000 flags on Arlington graves, they carried on the noble tradition of honoring the nation’s war dead, ensuring that their lives and sacrifice were not forgotten.

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Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton recently reflected on America’s tradition of according respect, honor, and gratitude to those who laid down their lives for their country.  Between combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Cotton served with the “the Old Guard,” as the Army Third Infantry is known, and has written Sacred Duty. A Soldier’s Tour at Arlington National Cemetery (Harper Collins, 2019).  It is a remarkable read.

The book recounts the history of America’s oldest active-duty regiment, which became the nation’s Ceremonial Guard in 1948.  This unit (formed 1784) predates the Constitution, fought in the War of 1812, in the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and has been headquartered in Washington D.C. after 1948. 

From the nation’s capital, its thousands of physically fit, active-duty members are best known now for guarding the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, but they also oversee the daily military honor funerals at Arlington.  On an almost nightly basis, Old Guard members receive the flag-draped caskets of the war dead at Dover Air Force base (“If a soldier is coming home, the Old Guard will be there to honor him,” Cotton says.)  They provide protection in the Inaugural Parade, act as Color Guard at ceremonial events, and it was Old Guard medical corps, who were dispatched to the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 to attend the wounded and exhume the dead.  They did this while the 9 AM, 10 AM, and 11 AM funerals at Arlington continued uninterrupted.

“Funerals First” is the motto of the unit, which Cotton describes as a “no fail, zero defect mission.” The Old Guard oversees up to twenty funerals a day at Arlington, but practices ceaselessly.  Every morning, teams rehearse folding the flag, the three-volley salute, and key sequences in the funeral ceremony. Their objective: perfection for the fallen and their families – whether the fallen is aviator and former-President George H.W. Bush or an unknown Private First Class.  The Old Guard’s is a self-imposed pressure to flawlessly perform this sacred duty, honoring the nation’s heroes. 

Cotton stresses that The Old Guard, more than any other regiment in the Army, is deeply connected to the nation’s heroic and hard-fought past.  Arlington National Cemetery (once known as Mount Washington) was first owned by George Washington Custis (“Wash”), grandson to George and Martha (Washington himself had advised on the purchase).  When Robert E. Lee married Mary Custis (“Wash’s” only surviving child), the land passed to the Lee family.  After Lee resigned from the Union army to lead the Confederacy, Union forces occupied it (May 1861), and in 1864, made it a burial ground for the nation’s mounting Civil War dead.  After the war, the Lee family sued for re-possession of the land and won in court.  But in an act of magnanimity and reconciliation, George Washington Custis Lee (Robert E. Lee’s son) deeded the land back to the United States.  That deed was received by Secretary of War, Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the slain president.  The heirs of the two adversaries jointly committed to honoring the nation’s fallen.

The young men and women of the Old Guard are heirs to all this, custodians of the nation’s “most sacred shrine.” One foreign leader remarked to a member of the Guard, “You take better care of your dead, than we do of our living.” Cotton sees this as a free nation’s tribute freely given to those who embody the best in us.

​We often feature “New and Noteworthy” works on our site, and for parents, teachers, and older students, this is one such book.

​Mary Beth Klee

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