Across all the schools involved in our study, one message is consistent: anyone in the school community is expected to participate in ethical discourse and practice. The topic is not theoretical, nor is it reserved for philosophy class; it’s a way of doing human existence. “I would say very few of our teachers see a distinction between ethics and education in their own subject or sport or area of activity,” one teacher comments. “It’s interwoven. It just comes through in everything you do.”

Connection: This study reveals an overall picture of high trust levels within schools resulting from a clear appreciation for the role of ethics and values in building strong, positive learning communities. Adults in this study frequently describe expectations related to their students’, their colleagues’, and their own ethical behavior.

Description: “Take sports, for instance,” a coach in one suburban school explains. “There are many opportunities for coaches and athletes to be unethical or to bend the rules in our favor, right? But I think as coaches modeling ethical behavior, it’s rare that any of our athletes can say that we knowingly bent the rules or broke the rules. So as far as our athletes go, they get that modeling in spades.”

Another coach at the same school asks, “What’s our job as coaches? To love you [the athletes]. What’s your job as athletes? To love each other.”

In each of the schools we studied, the emphasis on ethics wasn’t superficial or intermittent, but part and parcel of a collaborative, community-minded approach to getting an education. “It’s not cutthroat—we feed off each other’s success, and we push each other,” one teacher remarks, referring not just to the students but to faculty and other adults at the school. “The underlying culture is that everybody is mentoring somebody else.”

While maintaining academic standards and targets, the approach in these schools typically focuses on helping and supporting student success. An emphasis on togetherness and community, a spirit of teamwork and triumph for each student and each student’s group, the “all for one and one for all” loyalty that goes such a long way in the adolescent experience— these ingredients are constantly at play among students and adults. Adults and students notice the positive difference. When kids feel successful, they don’t have to stand out for being “bad,” explains one urban day-school teacher. “People don’t need to cheat because teachers are always really helpful,” a student remarks in comparing his current school experience to a previous one. Another student comments that in his other school, “I didn’t talk. Here, I speak my mind.” A teacher, lauding his present school’s collegiality and lamenting the prevailing norm he’d previously experienced, notes that ultimately “we’re all one,” but that in many school settings “—we’ve just forgotten that we are [all one].”

Replication: These schools demonstrate that an emphasis on ethics can be stimulating, not daunting or boring. The opportunities to examine what’s right and good can span the emotions from grim to amusing, and pursuit of the intellectual need not require separation from living and activity. “Seeking truth, seeking ideas is pervasive,” says one faculty member. “Also, we emphasize play and being curious about life.” At his rural boarding school, one student explains, “None of the teachers wants you up in your room holed up in your work.”

In many of these environments, learning is increasingly individualized. One student observes, “Everybody understands that everybody has different balances. They focus on each of us creating our own individual education…They talk about why a lot.”

“We get kids to investigate their own values—self reflection is explicitly taught,” says a teacher at one school. At another, “There’s a commitment to exposing kids to the contemplative life. We feel the need to cultivate reverence—[being] quiet before the great mysteries of life.”

In each case, highly personal and personalized experiences are taking the place of one-size-fits-all approaches. Reflection is only a small part of this broad movement away from “standardized” approaches to learning. “[It’s] not so much exams—it’s more assignments,” one student says in attempting to contrast her new school experience to her previous one. Here, assignments designed to bring out the creativity and distinct critical thinking of each student have mostly replaced traditional exams.

Faculty in these schools underscore the importance of particular, accurate planning for each individual learner, out of respect for each student and based on the increasingly discerning expertise of the teaching staff. In a previous school, one teacher notes, “The emphasis was on hiring masters and PhDs. The idea of ‘excellence’ translated into university degrees instead of teaching effectiveness.” In the learning environments we studied, by contrast, “teaching effectiveness” is shifting toward individualization as a specific teacher expertise. “Have each kid set goals that are attainable—use that to prove success,” one teacher recommends. Another remarks that “part of the way you avoid cheating is to set up assessments that are individualized. Standardized content is an invitation to cheat.”

Copyright 2007 The Institute for Global Ethics

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