Thomas Jefferson wrote that “talent and virtue, needed in a free society, should be educated regardless of wealth, birth or other accidental condition”.

Over the years, public schooling in America has been remarkable in its ability to develop talent.  Anyone viewing the history and growth of the United States through the 20th and 21st centuries has to come away with the strong impression that talent has been nurtured and developed exceptionally well.  At its core, intellectually bright people earn A’s in school and find the rewards of the free market economy waiting for them when they graduate from college.

Educating for virtue, however, was never a strength of the public school system.  The strong constitutional separation between Church and State assured that the political sins of the Church would not be replicated in this new nation, but the moral integrity of the Church was also lost in the shuffle.  While this moral authority of the Church remained a presence through recent decades, fractured Church realities have allowed increasingly greater room for individual formulations of virtue and character.

So virtue and character were never considered prerequisite curricula of American education, but they have always been an underlying assumption.   Yet somewhere in the past two decades, there is an unmistakable reality that virtue and character have been compromised

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Next Tuesday: The Two Fundamental Elements of American Education Every School Should be Teaching (Part Two)

From our first posting: As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children – not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor.  We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.

     John Zurn began his educational career teaching fourth graders and other aged children in K through 8th grade independent school settings.   He went on to serve as Head of School for three independent schools over a 28 year period.   John has written a book on a comprehensive school-wide character education program which will be released in the spring of 2024.  He is currently working on a book directed towards teaching Traits for Success to students in grades 4 through 8.

#charactereducation #independentschools #parentingtips #successtraits #teachingtips