Greetings from Columbia University in New York City! It has been wonderful being a student again. This past week and into next, I am studying at the Klingenstein Center of Columbia University’s Teachers College. The program includes twenty fellow heads of school from around the country and the world. We are taking a variety of courses and sharing our work in running independent schools. 

 

I feel like I’ve gone back to graduate school. I’ve mastered the subway system, taking a train from my hotel to Columbia every day. I am typically in courses or listening to lectures from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. I come back to the hotel and take a run in Central Park, and then I am back at it with several hours of homework every night. Next week, I have three papers due and a presentation!
  

I am appreciative of the Board of Trustees' support for me to take part in this professional development opportunity. Also, I am thankful for the leadership of my administrative team and faculty to keep things moving at CA while I am away (I am in contact daily about operational issues–I wish I could have seen Wendy Mogel’s talk, as I heard it was fantastic!)
  

This fellowship has been a rejuvenating experience. A high point thus far has been taking part in Professor David Hansen’s Philosophy of Education class. We meet for two hours and discuss great thinkers like Michel de Montaigne and John Dewey. As you know, I talk a lot about what it means to be a 21st century school. At CA, we’ve focused on being more intentional about teaching key skills. Many of you have heard me acknowledge that the language around “21st century” education is heavy in its jargon. I truly believe that reformers who talk about this movement are really pulling from classic thinkers like Dewey (who lived from 1859-1952). Much of this isn’t new.
 

To give you a sense of the historical perspective on education, I want to refresh your memory about Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne was a French thinker who lived during the 1500s. In the 1580s, he wrote a letter to a woman asking about what qualities one should look for in hiring a tutor. His essay, entitled “On Educating Children” is a timeliness gem and still relevant 500 years later. Consider these quotes that support teachers who aim to develop the critical thinking (i.e., judgment) of their students:

 

“Teachers are forever bawling into our ears as though pouring knowledge down through a funnel: our task is merely to repeat what we have been told. I would want our tutor to put that right: as soon as the mind in charge allows it, he should make it show its fettle by appreciating and selecting things – and by distinguishing between them: the tutor should sometimes prepare the way for the boy, sometimes let him do it all on his own.”

 

“Let the tutor not merely require a verbal account of what the boy has been taught, but the meaning and substance of it…Let him take what the boy has just learned and make him show dozens of different aspects of it and then apply it to just as many different subjects, in order to find out whether he has really grasped it and made it part of himself…. Spewing up food exactly as you have swallowed it is evidence of a failure to digest….”
 

Today in class, we talked about the role that schools play in cultivating the morality of our students. John Dewey wrote more than 40 books and had a deep understanding of the work schools needed to do. He wrote extensively about ethics, values, and morality. Our professor, in a way that only a philosophy professor could, broke down the different meanings of these three words. We tend to use them incorrectly in our society. “Ethics” refers to a code of conduct that a group may adhere to, but it has a more personal connotation: the ethical cultivation of one’s self. “Morality,” in our class context, has more to do with our treatment of one another and the quality of human relationships. “Values” are those things or constituencies of our life that we esteem or form our identity. So, we might share morality, but we actually may not share values.
 

Dewey connects our conduct to our character. In Dewey’s view, these are connected so closely you can’t separate them. In fact, you cannot separate them and thus every act we do has a moral or an immoral aspect and thus is some reflection of our character. It seems harsh. He writes, “…. potentially conduct is one hundred percent of our conscious life. For all acts are so tied together that any one of them may have to be judged as an expression of character.” But, he opens up some hope (as we know we all make mistakes): “There is no better evidence of moral character than the knowledge of when to raise the moral issue and when not.”
 

As we sat around analyzing this passage, there was strong consensus among the heads of schools in the program that a fundamental role of independent schools is to talk openly about morality and help students develop their ethical perspectives.

 

It’s fun to be back in school thinking deeply and abstractly. One head of school noted that he felt this process of going back to school made him identify with his students: he came to class today with no understanding of the text we read, but emerged with a deep understanding because of the shared discussion of what Dewey was writing about. That is the power of education and a community of learners.
  

Look forward to writing more about this fantastic experience.