Keynote to the National Conference of the Character Education Partnership

Atlanta GA

As character educators, we have our work cut out for us, especially if we look at character development, as I do, as the core of active, caring, citizenship.

For one thing, the high stakes testing process now imposed across this nation presses you to raise performance in the 3Rs, not in character or good citizenship. At best, The No Child Left Behind Act thinks that anything not tied to raising 3R test scores is a frill. At worst, that it might detract from the national effort to mass-produce worker bees who will contribute to our GNP.

But there’s got to be more to education, to your profession, than teaching kids to read and write and do math. The goal of education can’t be just to produce a competent workforce. Thomas Jefferson knew this. John Dewey knew this. You and I, in our minds and hearts, know this. Public education, supported by public money, should have as its first aim to produce a public good, not just a corporate good. And that public good is an enlightened and effective citizenry—people who pay attention to public affairs, understand the issues, vote wisely, consider the greater good beyond personal gain, and are willing to take action in solving the public problems that test us.

Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey had the problems of their day. Open the newspaper and you see the problems of our day and, clearly, the shape of the problems to come. Many of these are problems are ones our generation was supposed to solve but hasn’t, so we pass them to our kids.

 What will they do with the conflicts that erupt when the price of crude oil hits $100 a barrel? How will they keep our communities from flying apart as the rising gap in income between rich and poor radicalizes the poor, as such gaps have always done? How will they deal with Social Security and with the crisis in health care if, as it looks now, those problems are dumped in their laps as well? How will they cope with worsening environmental problems, when the effects of global warming will be a lot worse than more and bigger hurricanes. And they will inherit a war on terrorism with unknown and unthinkable dangers.

hese are the stakes. Are we producing people with the motivation, creativity, caring, guts, self-discipline, and sense of responsibility for the greater good who can succeed with challenges like these? Both the people who will lead and those who will work with them?

Parents, of course, have a role in instilling these kinds of traits and values. So do religious institutions. Clearly, neither is doing enough.

Increasingly, it’s coming down to schools. To you. Like it or not, you’re on the front lines. What a job! Teaching character. Building citizens. And it’s tacked on top of everything else the district, state and federal government demand that you do.

Worse, the challenge of helping kids develop good character and become good citizens gets harder and harder because so much in today’s culture is pulling kids in the opposite direction. So much is leading them to be selfish, dull and cautious.

For starters, our whole culture has become risk-averse. Decade by decade, the Declaration of Independence looks more like an impossibly radical document. Yes, getting involved in public problem-solving can invite conflict and conflict is unpleasant. The meek may indeed inherit the earth, but they may need to raise a little hell along the way.

We’ve become risk-averse in part because we’ve become a nation of consumers more than we are citizens. We define ourselves more by what we can buy than who we are—free citizens of a republic that needs our involvement or it will die. Advertising urges us each to grab our piece of the pie, rather than spending our minds and hearts advancing the good for all of us.

Thanks in part to the Internet, we come together face to face in community and civic organizations far less than our parents did. Isolation breeds stereotypes, stereotypes breed contempt, and our political discourse has become angry, shallow and small-minded. From the Congress to the smallest county commission, we are an increasingly polarized people, led to see people with different views as the enemy.

The political center in this country is collapsing like the 17th Street levee in New Orleans. Without a center, we give up too much power to angry and ignorant extremes on both sides. We let politicians and special interests wage political fights with sound bites and bumper stickers, and the more money they’ve got, the more of both they can buy.

Many people aren’t involved at all. They just sit on the sidelines and complain that things aren’t they way they should be, so let’s ignore it all and go shopping.

Our kids, of course, are in the middle of all this, watching. They draw their lessons from the models they see. So character education is not a job for the faint-hearted. There are ways to make it easier and more effective. I want to share some of those ways, taken from the Giraffe Heroes Project’s fifteen years experience developing the Giraffe Heroes Program and our newest initiatives, Voices of Hope and Stick Your Neck Out.

My first suggestion is that the simplest and most powerful tool in character education is telling kids the stories of heroes. Preaching at them to be good doesn’t work very well—any parent knows that. What does work is giving them stories about people leading exemplary lives, people the kids can emulate. Stories stick in the mind, providing a positive framework kids can say “Yes” to. Every culture in every age has told stories of heroes to teach qualities of character to its young. These heroes embody and model that culture’s core values. T

he classic mythic heroes story in the Christian European tradition is Parsifal and the Quest for the Holy Grail— the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. You probably know the story. Parsifal was this gawky kid. He didn’t look like a hero at all. He lived with his mother in a land blighted by a terrible curse. Because of this curse, the crops would not grow. There was disease and hunger and the people were overwhelmed with despair. The curse could only be lifted if the king drank from the Holy Grail.

But nobody could find the Grail. Every great knight in the land had tried and failed. Parsifal wept with grief at the suffering he saw. Driven by his compassion, he resolved to find the Grail by himself, and to save the kingdom. His mother told him to stay home. Be quiet. “How can you, an ignorant boy,” his mother said to him, “hope to succeed where great knights have failed?” 

Luckily for the kingdom, Parsifal ignored his mother and set out on his quest, going through great dangers and obstacles until he found the Grail and the curse on the land was lifted. Parsifal is an archetypal hero. So is Harry Potter, a gawky kid facing down great dangers to stop evil forces. And there’s Frodo, of Lord of the Rings, a little Hobbit who does this dangerous deed that saves the world.

There are many other heroes’ stories, over thousands of years. In each, the hero ignores the odds and takes risks for the common good. The heroic values are the same—courage and compassion and service. And in each the hero is a model of those values on which others can pattern their lives.

But Parsifal is part of an ancient myth. Frodo and Harry are fiction. Aren’t there any real people whose stories can inspire our young?

Real heroes are everywhere. The Giraffe Heroes Project has been finding and honoring them for almost 20 years. We’ve got a databank of heroes stories that spans the globe, stories of men, women and kids, of truckers and nurses, artists and teachers—and they’re working on every public problem you can imagine. We call them “Giraffes” because they stick their necks out for the common good. They’re people like:

• Casey Ruud, a safety inspector who put his job on the line when he refused to ignore dangerous safety violations at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State;

• Craig Kielburger, a Toronto student who heard reports of child slave labor in Pakistan, went there to do his own investigation, then started an international campaign to free the children.

• Andy and Vashti Hurst, who walked away from a comfortable life to fight poverty, disease and injustice on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The Giraffe Project tells the stories of Giraffes like these in our publications, on our website, in schools, and at public events. It works. People see or hear about Giraffes and are inspired to take on the challenges they see, from cleaning up a wetland to helping end hunger and homelessness.

The stats for our schools materials show that kids exposed to the stories of Giraffes show significant changes in their own attitudes about caring and service. They see the models and they know it must also be possible for them.

So—bring your kids stories of heroes. Get them from books. From current events. From the Giraffe web site, www.giraffe.org. T

hen reflect with your kids on what they take from these heroes’ stories. Reflection is a key factor in making character education real and lasting. Kids need to put the positive qualities of character they learn into the context of a value system that makes sense to them—one that has enough perceived merit for them to take it seriously as guidance for their lives. They need to wrestle with these elements, not just recite them. This helps bring the teaching all the way home.

As part of reflection, challenge kids to know the difference between heroes and celebrities—people who may be famous for their talents in music or sports or movies. I’ve got nothing against celebrities, but few, if any, of them have anything to do with courage, compassion or service. The hero ignores the odds and takes risks for the common good. As myth expert Joseph Campbell put it: “The hero goes into the dark forest alone, at a place where there is no path.” 

When the kids have a sense of what a real hero is, and what heroic values are, help them spot heroes in their own city or neighborhood. Perhaps it’s Uncle Harry who braved pressures from neighbors to start a home for runaway kids. Perhaps it’s someone who stuck his or her neck out to get rid of a local crack house. Perhaps it’s some kids who are cleaning up a polluted stream or helping remodel a soup kitchen.

Get the kids to tell the stories of the heroes they find in class. Invite these local heroes to tell their stories directly to the kids.

And don’t be modest about your own brave and caring actions. Talk about them as another way of giving kids personal, up-front, credible models.

Telling kids the stories of heroes is a profoundly effective approach to character education, one that can sidestep the resistance kids put up to being given rules and admonitions, and one that avoids the train wrecks that can result from debating current events and hot button issues. Tell kids the stories of real heroes and the kids will soak up the principles of living bravely, ethically, and compassionately, without anyone hitting them over the head with those concepts. As kids become more aware of heroes, it helps them combat cynicism, gives them hope, and expands their sense of the possibilities for their own lives.

Give youth the opportunity to live their values, by weaving together character education and service-learning. Help your kids create and carry out service-learning projects in their communities that meet needs they care about. Good character is very hard to teach as a theory. As we all know, character lessons are more likely to stick in us, and our kids, if we go beyond concepts and actually put those lessons to work in our own lives. That’s how we, and kids, learn that values actually work in the world. For example, learning to care about something beyond self is important. But what drives that lesson home is putting that caring into action by actually carrying out a project that helps other people.

Reflection is important in talking about heroes. It’s just as important to the success of any service project. Kids can resist or get cynical about doing projects, especially if they see them as mandated work, or just as a means of satisfying a graduation requirement. They need to reflect on the values inherent in their service. The need to talk about how they feel about getting involved, and about what they might be learning about their community and about themselves.

Offer reflections on service you may have done. The kids will love to hear from you. It will help them to reflect themselves and give them something to bounce off of. And it will give you added credibility with them.

Give kids more responsibility than you may be comfortable with. In organizing a service project, for example, don’t dictate what that project should be. Challenge the kids to find out what they care about, and to decide amongst themselves what problems they feel are most important to solve in their community. Acting as a coach and not a decision-maker—ask them to choose one problem, and then to create a service project that helps solve that problem, using their talents, their experience, and their resources. Then support them as they plan and carry out that project.

Giving kids the major responsibility for choosing, creating, planning and carrying out their project makes them stakeholders in solving the problem. It makes their experience that much more impactful on their spirits, their self-esteem and their likelihood of continuing in a life of active service.

The Discovery School in Coupeville, Washington is a public school for kids who've had problems with schoolwork and discipline. When one class at the school took on the Giraffe Heroes Program, things really changed. Intrigued by the stories of Giraffes, the kids asked themselves what problem they cared about. The choice was easy. A student had almost been hit by a car speeding past the school grounds, ignoring the speed limit to get to the nearby ferry landing. The kids knew that this wasn't the only near-miss, and if something wasn't done, somebody was going to get seriously hurt. Their problem was speeding cars. Their project was to make the streets around their school safe.

The students started off their project by videotaping cars, clocking them, and graphing the results. Then they interviewed workers in the area about near-misses these people had seen. With that data in hand, they got a State trooper to confirm their findings with his radar gun. They got one of the county commissioners to visit their school, to see the problem for himself, then made a formal presentation to all the commissioners. The result was a $12,000 traffic light, a crosswalk, a feature on a Seattle television station and the admiration of everyone who witnessed what they'd accomplished.

The students themselves experienced the power of teamwork and of their own value as people who could get an important job done. For kids who’d always been on the receiving end of other people’s efforts, it was a revelation. They counted. They mattered. You could see their lives change.

As part of training kids to be good citizens, let them rock a few boats. If, in the course of an environmental lesson, for example, they discover that a local company is polluting the river, or that the town’s laws on pollution are lax, they may logically demand to go after what they see—quite rightly—as the first cause. Support them in doing that. This type of civic engagement is at the core of training them to be responsible citizens. Yes, they will make some mistakes—they’re young and inexperienced. Yes, you will want to check their letter to the CEO or the mayor and make sure the language is respectful and the grammar is OK, but don’t try to shut the kids down or they will get exactly the wrong lesson—that they should never raise a voice to power.

Raise core questions of meaning with your kids, as part of their character education. By “meaning” I mean a personal sense of purpose that satisfies you at the core of your being. Philosophers and sages from the beginning of time have been telling us that there’s no more powerful yearning in us than that our lives be meaningful. We all want to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and know that who we are and what we’re doing reflects our deepest priorities and values, that we're not just marking time.

Look to your own experience. Isn’t it true that the more meaning there is in the things you do—work, relationships, community activities—the more alive you feel? You may work very hard and there may be trials, but there's also an energy, a sense of excitement, a deep satisfaction of being in the right place at the right time. You’re inspiring to others, and they're attracted to join you, to follow your lead.

And we all know people who seem to operate without meaning in their lives, and for them, life seems to be like slogging through wet concrete.

Finding meaning is important for more than just living a satisfying life. It’s a strong and stable basis for active citizenship. Look around you. People who see their lives and work as meaningful are far more likely to succeed at what they’re doing than those who don’t. Moved to political involvement, they’re far more likely to make a positive difference, to solve the problems that test our world.

So find ways to help your kids explore what’s meaningful in their lives. Help them answer the poet Mary Oliver’s question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It’s the most important question any of us—students or teachers—will ever ask.

Meaning is a particularly pressing question for youth, as they look out at a confusing world and wonder about their place in it. It’s a tougher question for them than it was for us. They’re living in a culture that would like them to believe that their true worth is in what they buy. All around them, every day, there are constant messages that their lives will be perfect if they have this cool car, that knock-em-dead shirt, the right music—always something they have to buy. Kids see some older people chasing stuff, status and power, always struggling to get to the next rung of some ladder, and ignoring the limitless opportunities to help others. Kids watch all that striving and see the lack of satisfaction it brings.

But if stuff, status and power aren’t a stable source of meaning for our lives, then what is? We ask Giraffes—the people we honor for sticking their necks out for others—why they take on the risks and work as hard as they do. Many of them respond by telling us, in so many words, that this is a damn-fool question. The problem was right in front of them, they’ll say, and nobody else was acting—so what else were they supposed to do? A few of them use explicitly spiritual language, as in “I was led to do what I did”—but most don’t.

Either way, it’s clear that most Giraffes are motivated to act, and to keep at it, by the meaning their actions have for them and that the core of that meaning springs from a deep sense of compassion and a need to serve. Giraffes have found meaning in their lives, and it is in service. That discovery both enriches their lives and helps make them powerful agents for change and persuasive role models.

So getting kids to explore questions of meaning is very important, both in helping them to build fulfilling lives, and to develop their own power and sense of responsibility as active, caring citizens.

Help them in this quest. Ask your kids what matters to them, and why it matters. Don’t be afraid to volunteer your own observations about what puts meaning in your own life. How have you answered Mary Oliver’s question? The kids will love to hear your stories. They’ll learn from them. It will push them to reflect. It will encourage them to speak about their own experiences.

I often tell kids this story from my own life: In the late 70’s, as a young diplomat, I worked at the US Mission to the United Nations in New York. Part of my job was representing the US on the Security Council committee charged with overseeing the arms embargo on South Africa. The UN had imposed the embargo because guns sold to the South African Government in those years could be used to enforce apartheid, a brutal system of institutionalized racism. But the embargo leaked like a sieve. There were huge amounts of money to be made in the arms trade, and the arms dealers had their friends in legislatures in Europe and in our own Congress. So guns and other military equipment slipped through to the South African police and army, and were used against blacks. The situation reeked of greed and hypocrisy, and our country, despite our lofty rhetoric on human rights, was right in the middle of it.

I thought that was wrong. So I ignored my instructions to go easy with those flaunting the embargo. Instead, I worked secretly for months to tighten it. I did that by helping the Third World countries on the Security Council increase their pressure against my own government. I gave these Third World countries documents that showed who was profiting from the arms trade. I told them which strategies I thought would work to force the U.S. and others to tighten the embargo. I even helped some Third World countries write their attacks on my own government—once I saw an emphatic message from an African Foreign Minister to the US Secretary of State that I myself had helped draft two weeks before. When all this was humming, I went to my own bosses and told them that the pressure (which I’d helped create) was now so intense that the US had no choice but to agree to a tougher embargo.

It worked. With the US on board, the Europeans were forced to go along. A tougher embargo was passed in the spring of 1980.

At any time in this process I could and should have been fired—and almost was. Why did I do this? I did it because of one afternoon in South Africa that started in the squalor and oppression of the black township of Soweto. I walked down dusty, garbage-strewn streets and felt dozens of angry black eyes boring into the back of my white head. As a US diplomat, I was invited that evening to a fancy cocktail party in Johannesburg’s richest white suburb, in a mansion protected by iron fences and guard dogs. Apartheid stank. From that day on, helping end apartheid meant something to me at a deep place in my soul. I risked my career to serve a cause I believed in. In the end, the motivation was so strong I couldn’t not do what I did.

The experience was like learning to swim. I couldn’t forget what it felt like or how to do it. I couldn’t forget the sense of joy and fulfillment I had in making a difference like that. I’d found the meaning for my life and I’d found it in service, in bettering the lives of others, in helping solve a significant public problem.

tudents instantly get the message from a personal story like this and—sometimes with a bit of help—they can relate it to difficult and ambiguous challenges in their own lives. For example, if being kind to an outcast at school risks inviting criticism from other kids—would they take that risk, and why? What matters most to them?

My experience is that, given a safe space, kids are eager to explore these deeper issues in their lives. And for a lot of kids, talking about meaning with you may be the only opportunity they get to explore these thoughts with a caring adult. Your understanding and time and ear and honesty could be hugely important to them. Reflecting on questions of meaning is a profoundly effective way of helping young people build the character, resiliency and concern for the common good that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

So my suggestions again: Give your kids the stories of heroes. Give kids the opportunity to live heroic values through service. Give them more responsibility than you may be comfortable with. Let them rock a few boats when necessary. Raise questions of meaning.

Doing character education, and especially doing it this way, is a lot to ask of you. You may have to sail into unfamiliar waters. You may have to handle conflicts with people who don’t see the value in what you’re doing. It will take a lot of time you don’t have. There’s no getting around this.

So why should you do this? Don’t just do it for the kids Do it for you. Do it for meaning in your own life. Do it because it’s part of your personal answer to Mary Oliver’s question: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Helping young people develop good character, and to live meaningful lives, is immensely satisfying. As a teacher, you see you’re providing not just academic learning and job skills but a lifelong context for using both. You’re preparing kids to take on the challenges of the 21st century as active citizens and, in doing that, you are helping ensure the welfare of your community, this nation and the world. What’s more meaningful than helping shape young lives in this very powerful way?

So keep affirming to yourself that helping young people wrestle with these eternal questions of character is meaningful to you. Never let it become “just part of my job.” Instead, see it for what it is—a vital part of your one wild and precious life and a way of shaping the wild and precious lives of the kids you touch. You owe that to the kids. Just as important, you owe it to yourself.