Developing an Ethic of Care: An Educational Response
Since the turn of the 20th Century, policy makers within the American educational system have adopted or advocated a business type model as a way to determine how schools are managed and have assessed success or failure based upon corporate standards. Such an approach has tended to emphasize efficiency over care, standardized test scores over the best educational practices, and the use of quantitative data as a methodology for measuring student growth and academic performances. However, current research points to a new trend: the use of qualitative holistic assessment measures that incorporate the students’ contextual environment as a more effective way to assess program success and student learning.
In recent years, many mitigating factors including increasing diversity, competition, the scarcity of resources, state and federal policies and guidelines that mandate academic success have contributed to institutions emphasizing an ethic of care in educational practice. Educational leaders and administrators are on the frontline of educating children not as an end but also as a means of creating more caring and wholesome communities where people can coexist in harmony.
Education at its best, results in individuals making significant contributions to society’s overall welfare–not for personal gain–but to benefit our common humanity. Education that emphasizes self care, as well as the care of others, results in the transformation of unjust societies, the liberation of the oppressed, and the redistribution of resources so that groups historically marginalized have an equal place at the table. An ethic of care takes on renewed meaning in cultures that are deeply ingrained in prejudice, hate, and the perpetuation of the status quo. It demands that its leaders lead by moral example, especially in era, where institutional leadership is viewed with distrust. John McKnight (1995, The Careless Society: Community and its Counterfeits, New York: BasicBooks, X) suggests:
Care is the manifestation of a community. The community is a site for the relationships of citizens. And it is at this site that the primary work of a caring society must occur. If that site is invaded, co-opted, overwhelmed, and dominated by service-producing institutions, then the work of the community will fail. And that failure is manifest in families collapsing, schools failing, violence spreading, medical systems spinning out of control, justice systems becoming overwhelmed, prison burgeoning, and human services degenerating.
Sadly, many academic institutions fail to utilize or implement this foundational concept as an educational goal. Educational research now suggests successful academic outcome is based on a holistic approach to learning that incorporates children as human beings and the social context in which they live. Educators and administrators who ignore this holistic approach to education contribute indirectly to the overall failure of the educational system and the successful cognitive and social development of children.
Recent scholarship has also shown that when the schools embody an atmosphere of care in every facet of the institution, students tend to do better. Currently, many of our public school buildings have metal detectors that students must pass through before they can enter their classes. In some schools there are armed security guards, while other schools are patrolled by or have frequent visits by police officers. Children are herded from one section of the building to the next. In my own encounter as a parent of children who attended public schools, I have seen the lack of concern and care by some educators who are responsible for the children for more than half the day. A climate of care, trust, and stability along with exceptional teaching have been shown to be key factors in contributing to the cognitive and behavioral development of children and often result in the best educational outcomes.
Current trends ignore this critical aspect of educational preparation; and in the pursuit of standardized test scores as markers for educational outcomes, schools still strive for efficiency, and teaching to the tests as markers for success. In an effort to justify educational spending policymakers, investors, and educational administrators have developed the mindset that schools must operate like a business, and if they fail to produce they should no longer operate.
Raymond Callahan in his work on Education and the Cult of Efficiency (1964, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1-3.) suggests that industrialization and the massive acquisition of wealth that dominated that early era would eventually be used as an educational model. It is as Callahan puts it “quite natural for Americans when they thought of reform in the schools to apply business models to achieve their ends,”(5) Yet, with the implementation of current management practices associated with successful corporations, America’s students still lag significantly behind their peers in many developing countries especially in the areas of math and science.
The problem of lagging behind developing countries is further exacerbated by the performance gap among inner city children and their suburban and private schools counterparts that has significantly widened, with minority children living in predominantly urban communities that are well documented as having limited success on standardized tests. Factors contributing to the continuing differences in achievement testing include a myriad of social and economic problems, such as poor teacher performance, lack of parental involvement, and inadequate resources to address failing schools. Many of these social factors are documented in the findings of researchers such as psychologist Ronald Taylor (1981, Psychological Modes of Adaptation, Sage Publications, 146). Taylor found that “Conditions such as poverty, joblessness, and broken families are among the major factors contributing to the high levels of stress correlated with a range of emotional and behavioral problems among children.” Additional factors that contribute are the shorter life expectancy for young Black males in particular and teenage pregnancy for young females. These can be directly related to a breakdown in the educational system. Educators who recognize these differences among students are scrambling to find and create policies, programs, and resources to address perennial social pathologies.
Over the years leaders from nearly every sector of society have tried to address such problem, by applying different methods of intervention with few long-term successes. Federal, state, and local governments have either poured significant amounts of resources in failing schools or have taken over the daily management of those schools all without much success. In many urban cities, mayoral control of school boards is becoming more an accepted norm, as heads of local governments see education as their top priority since the success or failure of their educational policies will often determine if they remain in office.
Each year, millions of dollars from the federal government are channeled through the states to local governments to implement policies and reforms geared to improving accountability and student achievement. However, that increase in funding does not always correlate with an increase in test scores and does very little to prevent low income and minority students from dropping out. Several other alternatives for educating our children such as charter schools have become a common feature in many cities. These schools present parents with the ability to choose where to send their children if schools within their own neighborhood are failing. While these alternatives do help, they are only available to a small percentage of students, while the majority languish in failing schools.
Researchers from most major graduate educational institutions continue to identify various causes for the continuing demise of our educational system and the importance of finding immediate, long-term solutions for those problems. The consequences of failing to educate our children is evident in many urban communities that are now defined by high unemployment among minorities; significant increases in gang activities in neighborhoods once considered immune to such activities; and the disproportionate incarceration rate among Black and Hispanic males.
Voices that seem absent from the discourse on education is the church and its religious educators. Churches have historically been instruments of social change by challenging the status quo and creating alternative visions and structures to address systemic social problems. Modern religious educators in particular, have assumed a myopic focus that reflects a worldview or a specific denominational value that fails to see the interconnectedness of education whether from private, public, or religious institutions. In 1979, Urie Bronfenbrenner, (The Ecology of Human Development, Cambridge: Harvard University Press) observed that several interconnected layers within a system influence a child’s behavior and ultimate educational outcome. Those layers that directly influence the child are part of a microsystem, made up of the child’s immediate family, and the school or the religious institution that the child attends. The outer layers are the culture, political climate, government agencies, and other organizations that indirectly influence the child. Instability in any part of the system will affect the child’s social development in a negative way. Bronfenbrenner suggests that “The capacity of a setting such as the home, school, or workplace to function effectively as a context for development is seen to depend on the existence and the nature of social interconnections between settings, including joint participation, communication and the existence of information in each setting about the other”(5).
If one should examine the original intent of education, historic evidence underscores that educating people has always had a religious or moral component. The aim and purpose of education was to prepare people to pursue a path that would lead them to become contributing citizens within the broader society. Moral principles would be taught so that society could be a wholesome place to live and for children to be raised. Religious schools were formed as a result of public educators deviating from character education that reflected certain theological standards. Educators in both public and private institutions soon adopted different standards of educational outcomes for students. Both streams of educators have the academic, moral, and ethical framework in which they can learn from each other. Both groups can utilize the best educational practices in religious or public settings to achieve academic success, while at the same time strategically using moral values to bolster character education in each institution.
A closer look at the word “education” will show that it means to “lead out.” This leading out, I believe, involves the transformation of both the individual and the society. Religious educators in particular are encouraged to review the original intent and purpose of educating children. To lead out is to guide people along a path of growth in all areas of their development that will ultimately lead to the transformation of society into a more caring and less hostile environment for people. Education that results in the growth of individuals also leads to the humanization of people living in oppressive situations. Alternatively, progressive educators agree that education, which diminishes growth, has a harmful effect on the recipients. Elliot Eisner, (2002, The Educational Imagination: On the Design and evaluation of School Programs,3ed.,Columbus: Prentice Hall),summarizes these findings by suggesting “Miseducation are experiences that thwart or hamper one’s ability to have further experiences or to cope intelligently with problems in a particular area of activity.” It is therefore important to constantly assess whether or not children are properly socialized to become contributing members of society as a result of their education. Dewey’s Pedagogical Creed highlights that “the social life of the child is the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life gives the unconscious unity and the background of all his efforts and all his attainments” (John Dewey “My Pedagogic Creed” in David Flinders and Stephen Thornton., eds., The Curriculum Studies Reader 3rd ed., New York: Routledge, 2009: 37), Progressive educators like John Dewey and others did not view education as an end but as a process by which people would constantly grow within and beyond the confines of their own unique context. The starting point for this growth would be the student’s immediate context and not those imposed on the student by educational experts. Therefore, the child would help to construct educational values that are relevant for the community in which that child resides. Progressive educators believe that the classroom would be one of the places where a child would receive and construct their own educational values.
Thomas Groome in his 1980 book, (Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Vision San Francisco: Jossey-Bass), expands on this definition by stating there are “Three dimensions or points of emphasis that can be desired in “leading out”: 1) a point from which, 2) a present process, and 3) a future towards which the leading out is done.” Groome is correct in his assessment on the process of educating individuals. This definition however remains incomplete for it fails to address the contextual framework from which many inner-city people have as a starting point. Most people living in a context of economic despair, where they have to deal with brokenness, rejection, and sometimes alienation from the possibilities of communal redemption, bring with them knowledge that is rooted in being oppressed by societal forces beyond their ability to find liberation. Developing a successful strategy for educating people from that sector of society must include the transformation of both the individual and the context which gives rise to dehumanization.
Individuals preparing themselves as religious educators have the unique advantage of engaging cultures of oppression and dehumanization using their prophetic voice for more than academic encounters or simply to fulfill the goals of a standard curriculum. First, as educators, they have been trained in the best educational practices, that is, they understand human development, strategies for teaching, and they know how humans learn. Beyond that, if they are Christian educators they have the additional mandate to be God’s representatives on earth, committed to liberating people for and towards the kingdom of God.
One question that will be asked of religious educators is, how to implement this additional aspect of care and concern for the liberation of people? Scholars such as Nel Noddings, Carol Gilligan, and others have developed several methods where the ethic of care can be implemented, especially when other traditional methodologies are failing or producing insignificant results. Nel Noddings (1984), asserts that “moral education from the perspective of an ethic of caring has four major components: modeling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation (Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education). Modeling involves educators and administrators showing students by example how to care by creating caring relationships with them. Dialogue is open ended where both educator and student search for understanding, empathy, and appreciation. Practice involves helping to shape certain attitudes within the student and ways of looking at the world. Confirmation involves knowing, affirming and encouraging the other to become the best person they were created to be. The basis of care as defined by Noddings and others is deeply rooted in the teachings of Jesus. People at all levels of their development were encouraged and taught to be their best selves by creating a just society so that all people could realize their God given potential.
The Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the writings of the Gospel of Matthew (5:1-12) illustrates this truth. Several groups were identified in this text such as the poor, those who mourn, those who are hungry and thirsty, the peacemakers, those who exercise mercy, and those who are persecuted because of defending justice truth and righteousness. All these individuals will not only experience a just society but one that cares for its most vulnerable and those who are marginalized because of their stance for truth
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist who lived a brief but inspiring life, has influenced educational theory in a profound way by developing a concept for care and growth called zone of proximal development. This theory posits that a child who functions at a certain cognitive and behavioral level has the potential to develop when paired with another child or teacher at a more advanced level. Vygotsky describes the zone of proximal development as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Lev S. Vygotsky, Interaction Between Learning and Development, quoted in Barbara M. Newman and Philip R. Newman, Theories of Human Development (New York: Psychology Press, 2007), 250.” Vygotsky’s theory, has all the elements of a caring society where the strong are actively engaged in empowering the weak in order to promote a just society. His methodology is used today by educators because of the immediate transformation that results in students who were not considered to have the capacity to rise to their fullest potential.
Education that transforms culture, society, and people has the ethic of care deeply embedded in its program and ultimately is enacted in its operational curriculum on a daily basis. Educational planning, implementation, and constant evaluation that truly results in learning will be reflected in individuals, and groups that actively engage in an ethic of care for each other and the society in which people are called to serve.
