|
After Action Report (continued)
Barbara holds the strong opinion that the course should be aimed at an audience that is very highly intelligent - those that might actually become leaders in society. She has taught school for 23 years, and at all levels. She has taught bi-lingual children from wealthy European families as well as those coming from civil war-torn Central American countries. She has worked with the most motivated as well as those in survival mode. Her observation is that the most motivated children are the ones who will "do what it takes" to get a grade, and in today's society, that often means employing less than ethical means. Her concern is that these are the students that will be the national leaders of tomorrow. So, if we are going to positively affect tomorrow's society, then we must affect the ethics of these particular students today.
Content
The primary consideration was to maintain student interest for 1 ½ hours each session for 23 sessions. Despite their importance, ethics can be a very dry subject, and these were active middle-school students, ages 11 to 13. If not done well, a course on ethics could even be counterproductive. In this particular school, the course was to be an elective. That had the disadvantage of not knowing until shortly before the start of the course whether or not there would be sufficient students. However, the obvious advantage was that students who signed up for the course would want to be there.
As noted above, our son was newly admitted to West Point, and I had graduated from West Point in 1977. When Barbara encountered the cheating scandal in her classroom the previous spring, she used West Point's Honor Captain's letter as a basis for essays that her students wrote. As a result, an awareness of West Point had already developed among students. Barbara decided to capitalize on that by developing the course to be about the History, Traditions, and Honor Code of West Point. Her rationale is that no such course would be complete without a thorough discussion, understanding, and significance in history of the Honor Code. Per request by the school administration, the focus changed to include all of the Service Academies. That was a good suggestion that we supported wholeheartedly, and still encompassed a thorough discussion of ethics.
In order to make each and every session interesting and relevant, Barbara decided to invite graduates from the academies to speak. We asked them to speak on specific areas, to weave in ethics as a part of each session, and draw from personal experiences for relevant examples. We also asked them to include very lightly in their discussions one or two Values identified by Johnson _________ as critical to good character (e.g. responsibility, honesty, respect). We demonstrated many of these characteristics in the way that a particular session was handled. For example, when a 90-year old Class of '37 West Point graduate came to speak, we asked several other graduates to be there to show the honor and respect we bestow on more senior members of the Long Gray Line. We did the same thing when a retired Major General came to speak. His major topic was the crucial need for high ethics for successful inter-service cooperation, and he was able to address the topic in a way that kept the interest of these young students. (Continued next page.)
|
|
