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Of course, I have to assume that in practice any given school's definition of "high self esteem" may have been "self esteem on our terms," which in turn probably meant low self esteem, not high. But I still prefer self-esteem to character as a school's guiding principle.
Character education, in my experience, has been quite punitive. It almost has to be given its premise, which is that the character students have developed at home needs improvement -- and that the character of school personnel doesn't.
This is where the Bible has it right.
I'm not crazy about the notion of children as inherently more flawed than grownups to tell the truth. Very young children possesss all kinds of sweet, altruistic impulses along with the usual obnoxious impulses. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to see kids as innately good in a fundamental sense.
I'd like my kids to attend a school in which administrators, teachers, and support staff feel the same.
middle school and depression
Which brings me to middle school.
The difference between a middle school and a junior high, we have repeatedly been told, is that middle school "educates the whole child."
What does that mean?
It means, first of all, that academics often take a back seat to "character" education activities. Middle school kids here are required to attend a character ed assembly each and every month; to my knowledge the school has never, not once in 2 1/2 years, staged an assembly devoted to an academic or intellectual topic. Ed, reading Martin J. Wiener's English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980 last summer, wondered whether character education is always be opposed to academics. I think it may be.
Beyond this, I am coming to feel that character education, as implemented by so many of our public schools, is incompatible with the creation of a positive school environment. You don't hear Karen Pryor talking about "bad" horses and "bad" dogs -- quite the opposite. Pryor's view of dog aggression is: "It's just a behavior!"
Middle school kids would be far better off if middle school behaviors like not knowing how to keep track of 6 or 7 different courses at the same time were not viewed not as a sign of poor character.
Disorganization is just a behavior is a far more humane way to understand a spacy 11-year old. Giving a 6th grader an "F" on his notebook for disorganization strikes me as bad for the 6th grader.
Little did I know that middle schools crop up in research on the development of depression in adolescence as a contributing factor:
…evidence has accumulated to suggest that, in addition to the family influences just described, schools and neighborhoods contribute to patterns of academic and psychological adjustment, especially during the transition from elementary to middle schools (National Research Council, 1993). Therefore, the school environment is likely to be implicated in the development of depression. This view is corroborated, at least partially, by the fact that certain forms of psychological distress, including depressive symptoms, increase during the middleschool years. Perceptions of being academically competent and receiving good grades have been linked with a reduced risk for emotional and behavioral difficulties, whereas low perceived academic competence is related to depressive symptoms in children (Blechman, McEnroe, Carella, & Audette, 1986; Cole, 1991). Moreover, adolescents who do not feel a connection with school may be more likely to engage in antisocial activities and substance abuse in efforts to boost their self-esteem and sense of belonging (Rosenberg, Schooler, & Schoenbach, 1989). In general, it has become increasingly clear that problems of academic alienation, poor school performance, and minor delinquency that become more prominent in early adolescence are linked to negative mental health problems such as depression that are manifested later in adolescence (Eccles, Lord, & Roeser, 1996). Such negative outcomes have been related to diminished support for the development of competence, for feelings of belongingness, and for autonomy promotion characteristic of elementary school, but not of middle-school, environments (Higgins & Parsons, 1983). Evidence such as this suggests that the failure of the school environment to facilitate development as children progress into middle schools may contribute to motivational and mental health problems. Inappropriate school environments during early adolescence can place many young people at risk for the negative trajectories that some lives take, including alienation from prosocial activities and peers, depression, and involvement in antisocial pursuits. Importantly, positive adjustment to school, including academic engagement and achievement, is likely to serve as a protective factor against negative mental health outcomes (Eccles et al., 1996).I have more than once seen the "transition" to middle school cited as a source of profound stress in the lives of young adolescents. Typically researchers and authors seem simply to assume that "transition" from one school to another per se is the source of difficulty.
source:
The Development of Depression in Children and Adolescents
Dante Cicchetti and Sheree L. Toth
February 1998
American Psychologist
Vol. 53, No. 2, 221-241
Blechman, E.A., McEnroe, M.J., Carella, E.T., & Audette, D.P. (1986). Childhood competence and depression. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95, 223-227.
Eccles, J. S., Lord, S., & Roeser, R.W. (1996). Round holes, square pegs, rocky roads, and sore feet: A discussion of stage-environment fit theory applied to families and school. In D. Cicchetti & S. L. Toth (Eds.), Rochester Symposium on Developmental Psychopathology: Volume 7. Adolescence: Opportunities and challenges (pp. 47-92). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Higgins, E. T., & Parsons, J. E. (1983). Social cognition and the social life of the child: Stages as subculture. In E. T. Higgins, D. W. Ruble, & W, W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social behavior: Developmental issues (pp. 15-62). New York: Cambridge University Press.
National Research Council. (1993). Losing generations: Adolescents in high-risk settings. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Rosenberg, M., Schooler, C., & Schoenbach, C. (1989). Self-esteem and adolescent problems: Modeling reciprocal effects. American Sociological Review, 54, 1004-1018.
I am coming to think that the middle school model in and of itself, its core assumptions, is bad for children -- bad, or at least not good. When you assume that other people's children universally require substantial character education, how reinforcing can you be?
15 comments:
That's one big paragraph, and it didn't start at the beginning.
" ...autonomy promotion characteristic ..."
"... negative trajectories ..."
I can't read something like this without concluding that they are covering up for very little content.
Academic puffery.
It just seems weird to me that at the point when kids need to mature, when they most need mature role models to look to for examples of how to behave and conduct themselves, we shove them into a warehouse where the vast majority of people have little more then a decade's worth of life experience.
It's a setup.
I regularly participate in a website devoted to the discussion of Jane Austen books, and it is surprising how often someone posts saying they don't understand why one of her characters made some decision that was not rational. A surprising number of people apparently expect everyone to act like the economists' sterotype of a rational utility maximiser and are confused when they don't.
And of course, if you think everyone is a perfectly rational utility maximiser, when you encounter someone doing something bad, the likely explanation is that they fully intended it, and therefore are bad people.
It's a hard process to raise some awareness in a person that they themselves are probably flawed as well.
"Disorganization is just a behavior is a far more humane way to understand a spacy 11-year old. Giving a 6th grader an "F" on his notebook for disorganization strikes me as bad for the 6th grader."
Yeah, but as you allude to with the point of your post, the "F" isn't for disorganization, it's for the character flaw of laziness. The kid isn't being punished for being innately disorganized; the kid is being punished for being lazy and not bothering to do what the teacher thinks s/he should be perfectly capable of doing but just refuses to.
In my experience, which admittedly is limited to urban and mostly low-SES school environments, the kids who "refuse" to do what they are asked usually cannot do what they are asked to do. It is often true that the teacher does not realize this.
It's no stretch to say that most of the so-called "behavior problems" have academic problems, often unrecognized (one eighth-grade girl who supposedly "refused" to do any written work turned out to be totally illiterate -- did not know the sounds of any letters of the alphabet, and knew only some Dolch words by heart -- not enough to carry out any middle school assignments).
"I'd like my kids to attend a school in which administrators, teachers, and support staff feel the same."
Me, too. What does it say about adults who look at children, children that are entrusted to them, as constantly deficient in some way?
Where do you find schools that dispense with labeling and namecalling? Do they exist?
palisadesk, I agree with you wholeheartedly. Hopefully, the tone of my original comment came through appropriately: I wasn't myself saying that children refuse to be organized or are lazy; I was saying that this is the school's perspective. In my experience, schools tend to assume the worst about kids (at least some of the kids - and we all know who they are, don't we?!).
I find the idea that middle school induces depression (in at least susceptible students) fairly compelling. However, I found junior high when I was that age to also be depression inducing, and that was pre character education. For me it was just the kids, mamy of whom were pretty mean at that age. I have yet to see anything that improves significantly on the problem (except growing up a bit and going on to high school--that seems to help somewhat). I expect character ed is a failed attempt to fix student interaction problems. If anyone knows of a non-failed attempt to fix middle school/junior high, I'd love to hear it.
Lori - true
Character ed actually comes out of the first Bush administration - Bill Bennett and all those folks.
Character ed proves my hypothesis that any time you see left and right agreeing you're in trouble.
At middle school levels character ed is heavily about obedience to authority.
I would get rid of middle schools completely - I'd do elemiddles or switch to some kind of junior high arrangement.
Sixth graders have no business being in a middle school (I can prove that! sort of)
I've grown a bit skeptical of schools in general, to tell the truth.
I'm not so sure it makes sense to have kids grouped together in large kid-hoards six hours a day, away from their parents and siblings....
Back when I was contemplating homeschooling C. for 7th grade people kept bugging me about his "socialization."
School was supposed to be critical to proper socialization.
From what I can see, middle school is a lousy social environment under most circumstances.
This is where I have sympathy for people who work in middle schools.
It IS a very, very difficult age, and I think it may be an age that is uniquely unsuited to the organizational and institutional structure of school.
Education Next has a good history of character ed....
It's all about fixing the moral squalor of our youth and their single moms etc.
yuck
"Back when I was contemplating homeschooling C. for 7th grade people kept bugging me about his 'socialization.'
School was supposed to be critical to proper socialization.
From what I can see, middle school is a lousy social environment under most circumstances."
You will find that the concern about socialization is *very* common when people run into homeschooling.
You will find that your observation on the goodness (or lack thereof) of traditional schools as a socializing environment is a very commonly held home-schooler belief.
-Mark Roulo
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