Cultivation Requirements: Teaching Virtue Ethics for Whole-Child Education

I train ethics and management within the Department of Leadership Education at Culver Academies, a boarding faculty in northern Indiana. I acquired my PhD in Historical Philosophy from Northwestern College in 2019. On this publish, I’d wish to share extra about my experiences educating ethics with younger individuals and my skilled journey to educating in a highschool setting. I’ll additionally share extra about this system I assist lead at Culver which requires ethics schooling of all college students—within the type of a required junior-level course in advantage ethics and transformational, ethical leadership, “Ethics and the Cultivation of Character”—as a part of its mission rooted in whole-person schooling. 

My hope, in the end, is that by sharing my experiences different philosophers will proceed to see the probabilities and joys of doing philosophy (and particularly ethics) with younger individuals and take into account whether or not they want to apply their abilities to the Okay-12 educating occupation. In so doing, in fact, I comply with the decades-long work of PLATO, P4C, AAPT, and different skilled organizations and initiatives from whom I’ve discovered a lot.

Early in my PhD research, I noticed that educating was not peripheral to my educational identification and pursuits, however, somewhat, that the observe and continuous enchancment of my educating had been central to what I needed from a philosophy profession path. I discovered that my educating motivated each my educational pursuits and my very own skilled improvement. Briefly, I noticed that educating was the a part of my graduate pupil obligations that gave me essentially the most power, objective, and course. Educating additionally targeted and clarified my analysis pursuits as effectively.

I used to be fortunate to have this power and enthusiasm for educating fostered by studying in a certificate program for graduate college students at Northwestern’s Searle Heart for Advancing Educating and Studying. Continued reference to Searle offered me my first alternative to have interaction in philosophy with younger individuals by a chance to teach high schoolers at Evanston Township Excessive Faculty in Evanston, Illinois. Within the spring of 2018, I taught an introductory class centered on philosophy as a way of life themes entitled “An Introduction to Philosophy By way of Socrates.”

Having loved educating at ETHS, I sought out further alternatives for highschool philosophy, classics, and humanities schooling. I then discovered extra about impartial faculties by an informational session run at Northwestern by Carney, Sandoe & Associates. I used to be excited to study that philosophy was in reality taught in a number of excessive faculties by interdisciplinary humanities programs. My analysis pursuits and experience in Roman philosophy additionally left me well-positioned to show Latin at the highschool degree.

I arrived at Culver in 2018, first as Teacher in Latin. I started educating ethics in 2019 in our Division of Management Training by our ethics course—a commencement requirement for all college students—“Ethics and the Cultivation of Character.”

This course (which I extra absolutely outlined here and here) highlights, I feel, a few of the wealthy prospects for ethics schooling at the highschool degree. These prospects, in my case, construct out from sturdy institutional assist: the mission of the establishment features a dedication to whole-person education by cultivation of character. (I embody this to counsel to these philosophers eager about highschool schooling that institutional mission and values is usually a pal to philosophical and moral inquiry and observe—particularly with essential shifts happening in desired abilities that emphasize the competencies of worldwide citizenship.)

I feel educating this ethics course has deepened my engagement with philosophy and ethics whereas concurrently rising the affect of my educating in just a few distinct methods.

First, with major and secondary schooling’s explicit emphasis on application, transfer, and habituation of studying, I feel I’ve inspired deeper learning in my ethics school rooms, enhancing the potential for college kids’ engagement with ethics to have a lifelong affect.

The result’s that our college students engage in ethics not as a merely theoretical train indifferent from any expectation of software. Fairly, from the outset, college students apply what they study to their lived expertise by a weekly “Character Lab“ reflective train and different iterative, application-focused duties that ask college students to immerse themselves within the practices of a lived advantage ethic. Drawing on assets in each philosophy and psychology, college students replicate on their character utilizing a each day process journal, have interaction in a technique of values clarification utilizing Shalom Schwartz’s influential theory of basic values, set and critically replicate on objectives aligned to these values utilizing a goal hierarchy train derived from Aristotelian ends-based reasoning, and take part in each day practices of emotional self-awareness and self-regulation (that later inform college students’ reasoning and dialogue of ethical case studies) utilizing the Mood Meter and Meta Second anchor instruments of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence RULER framework. Accordingly, our programs share a lot in widespread with the immersive elements of Philosophy as a Way of Life pedagogy. (See an upcoming piece, “‘To kind greater than inform’: The transformative pedagogy of Philosophy as a Means of Life,” which I co-authored with Paul Blaschko, Haley Dutmer, and Blake Ziegler, quickly to look in AAPT Studies.) 

To take one instance, college students in our Ethics programs carry out for a midterm evaluation, not with a standard paper or examination, however somewhat put together for and conduct a mock interview with me, the trainer, as they goal for a specific (fictitious) pupil life management place—that of a “Character Integrator” (we borrow the time period from West Level’s Character Integration Advisory Group), a kind of peer character “coach.” As a part of this interview college students put together for answering a number of questions that assess their information and understanding of the fundamentals of an utilized advantage idea—specifically, what kind of factor virtues and character strengths are, how they tie collectively in a imaginative and prescient for the great life, and the way they could be utilized to lived experiences and real-life conditions—however, extra importantly, they put together for questions that additionally assess how absolutely college students are ready to make this information and understanding come alive by values-aligned, evidence-based leadership practices within the position that inspire and uplift their fellow college students. Proof of pupil success on this evaluation shifts from proof of mere “educational” understanding to one thing resembling extra of a transferable “life talent” or, extra generally now, proof of a competency or what college students can do.

In essence, our course supplies college students with the instruments to purpose effectively about ethics (particularly through the use of thinking routines to habituate sure intellectual virtues as effectively) but in addition with the instruments for making use of ethics to their very own lives within the spirit of Aristotle’s injunction at Nicomachean Ethics 1095a5-6: “The top of [ethics] is motion, not information” (see here for useful dialogue). On this, we additionally share in a dedication to a development and action-focused spiral curriculum model, the place pupil improvement is the overarching goal of the course somewhat than information acquisition (as helpfully outlined here by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at College of Birmingham).

Additional, this give attention to software has been transformative for me as an teacher. In my prior experiences educating philosophy, switch and software (particularly within the “first-person”) had been solely distantly thought-about—if not outright averted or regarded down upon. I’ve turn into keenly aware of the space I positioned between myself and ethics I each studied and taught.

Once I now have college students trying to chart their very own actions on the Golden or Central Mean (additionally availing themselves of up to date tools in optimistic psychology) or see college students contemplating how they could goal to include justice as a virtue extra absolutely of their lives by structured reflection, I discover in myself a profound change in my position as trainer. Removed from a dispassionate arbiter of pupil understanding—the so-called “sage on the stage”—I discover myself rooting for college students of their moral development as a fellow proficiens “one making progress” (for extra on the Stoic idea I’m using, see here and my very own reflections here and here from my Latin educating observe).

This coaching aspect to the act of educating and studying—typically at a take away in giant lecture undergraduate schooling—enlivens highschool ethics in methods I proceed to study to understand. My college students are significantly well-suited to contemplating the relevance and software of ethics to each their very own particular person futures and our collective futures, gripped as they are by the probabilities (and fears) of tomorrow’s world. I’ve seen this by my co-coaching of our Ethics Bowl staff, which this yr won first place within the state competition. For my college students these case research are not simply an mental train—however observe and software of real options to real-world societal challenges.

On this publish, I’ve introduced elements of my skilled story that I hope will assist different philosophers see the potential and promise of ethics and philosophy schooling on the Okay-12 degree, particularly in interdisciplinary contexts. In my case, I’ve been very lucky to obtain sturdy institutional assist for a required reflective ethics expertise—the “Ethics and Cultivation of Character” course. However I’ve recommended above that many establishments have related commitments, and philosophers may assist to guide curricular innovation that locations these commitments for educating crucial thinkers, whole-persons, and international residents on the middle of a faculty’s curriculum somewhat than its margins.