|
Ted Haynie, Ph.D. After the tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado every school system in the nation was forced to take a very close look at their schools; their climate, their safety, and their ability to respond to potential crises. One would be hard-pressed to find a single school administrator who did not attend a workshop on safe schools or participate in the development or review of a crisis response plan following that terrible event. The revolution in educational technology has now moved from computers to walkie-talkies, cell phones and metal detectors. Lockdown drills now accompany traditional fire drill procedures. For parents, their number one priority when their child leaves for school each morning, is that they are safe and free from harm while they are there. That is why these efforts to provide more security and attempts to insure that there will be no reoccurrence of these tragedies are necessary. Can these measures, however, guarantee that a young person who wants to cause harm to another will not? Will a crisis plan or safe schools workshop eliminate the threat of an unstable mind? Does a red light stop a speeding, reckless driver? What has been disturbing about all of these planning efforts is the lack of discussion of the human characteristics that led to these acts and which make these outbursts of violence so difficult to predict. The students who committed these crimes had little history of overt, sociopathic behavior. Rather, they were described as angry, as loners or outsiders, and as feeling disconnected from the mainstream of school life. Instead of merely constructing fences, installing metal detectors and hiring security guards, schools need also to look inward to issues of school climate, organization and, most importantly, to how they educate their students in basic human competencies like self-awareness, self-control, compassion and empathy. In Daniel Goleman's book, Emotional Intelligence, he states the following: "Perhaps the most disturbing single piece of data in this book comes from a massive survey of parents and teachers and shows a worldwide trend for the present generation of children to be more troubled emotionally than the last: more lonely and depressed, more angry and unruly, more nervous and prone to worry, more impulsive and aggressive. If there is a remedy, I feel it must lie in how we prepare our young for life. At present we leave the emotional education of our children to chance, with ever more disastrous results." I think we have come face to face with the results, at least in part, of ignoring the emotional education of our young people in most of our school systems. Goleman offers as one solution, "a new vision of what schools can do to educate the whole student, bringing together the mind and heart in the classroom." Many schools now believe that character education should be a cornerstone of their total school programs and built upon some basic beliefs. First, they understand that their fundamental responsibility is the academic preparation of their students. But they also believe that, ultimately, one's success in life will depend a great deal on their ability to relate to others, to understand one's self, and to exhibit character traits such as responsibility, honesty and integrity. Some schools and school administrators view character education as an add-on; something taught an hour or so each week and added to a curriculum already spread too thin. Those who successfully implement character education do so because it is woven into the fabric of their school climate and integrated across all curricular areas. A second belief they share is that character education is not something one can learn only from words but is something that must be experienced. Children must be given multiple opportunities to experience acts of character; to do good things. As James Stenson says in his book, Upbringing, "Children learn good character by what they hear, by what they see, and by what they are repeatedly led to do." Another basic belief of these programs is that good character does not come only from the efforts of those in schools. It comes from a partnership with the home and a shared vision of what it takes to create it. Finally, every staff member at these successful schools of character feels challenged to make a personal, human connection with each student; not just the children in their classes, but with each student they come in contact with. As educators, they understand that they cannot separate who they are and what they believe in from their teaching. The belief in good character must come through instruction as well as through all interactions with students. We can make a difference in the way schools prepare our youth to be productive citizens and to create a world we all want to inhabit. It takes everyone to make it happen. "Watch your thoughts; they become words.Let us all work hard to ensure that our destiny is one in which children can attend schools without the threat of violence. Ted Haynie is principal at St. Leonard Elementary School, St. Leonard, MD, and a founding member of Results Educators Network of MD (REN.) He can be contacted at tedhaynie@hotmail.com. Reprinted by permission from Fall 1999 Results Educators Network. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Information:
info@uua.org