MINDING THE SPIRIT:

Ethics and Leadership in our Schools and Society

ANNUAL MEETING OF THE COUNTRY DAY SCHOOL HEADMASTERS ASSOC.

James W. Fowler

June 18, 2002

I am going to speak to you today on “Minding the Spirit.” My subtitle embraces the original title I gave the planners of this event: “Ethics and Leadership in our Schools and Society. Minding the Spirit: Think about the possibilities of this title:

Minding: From the Anglo Saxon, Mynd, Gemyned. It carries at least the following meanings:

Paying attention to

Taking special care with

Listening to

Nurturing

Honoring

Attending with holy intent

Remembering

Understanding or attending with submission, to obey

Then I invite you to a similar exercise with the word Spirit: Consider the following:

From the Latin: Spiritus meaning breath, courage, the soul, life (Derived from spirare, to breathe; from the Hebrew Ruach, Shekinah.

Spirit: The immaterial, and immortal part of humans

The soul as distinguished from the body

Human vivacity, animation, ardor, enthusiasm, courage, life. (Death)

Spirit: The intelligent, immanental, and immortal part of humans

Spirit: The vital or essential part of anything; inspiring or activating principle

and essence

Spirit: The real meaning or intent, as opposed to the literal or formal statement

Spirit: Holy Spirit, The Spirit, The Spirit of God; the third person of the Trinity;

Spirit: Animated, full of life, lively, energizing, inspiring

And in conjunction with our topic for this week: Minding the Spirit, think about:

the spirit of the child, or youth, or the person,

the spirit of the teachers and counselors,

the spirit of the principal,, headmaster/headmistress, and those who run their offices,

the spirit of the trustees or education board members,

the spirit of the custodians,

the spirit of those who prepare and serve food,

the spirit of those who coach and counsel,

the spirit of those who operate busses,

the spirit of parents and families --the spirit of the school.

So “minding the spirit” in relation to our schools has many, many dimensions. Of all of those we might speak about today, I want to reflect with you about the following areas:

1. Minding the Spirit in relation to academic standards and the curriculum

2. Minding the Spirit in relation to the formation of ethical grounding and identity

3. Minding the Spirit in relation to service and the awakening of vocation

4. Minding the Spirit in relation to the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of God

1. MINDING THE SPIRIT IN RELATION TO ACADEMIC STANDARDS & THE CURRICULUM

Among the best and brightest of our students, and the most successful of your schools, we have a persistent problem of keeping educational means and ends clear. In a country that is future oriented, and in social classes where students are expected to equal or supersede the success of their parents, it is very hard to keep means and ends straight. Is the acquisition of a good education just a means to get into the finest college or university to which a young person can aspire? And is the acceptance to that college or university primarily valued because it is the ticket to the most outstanding graduate or graduate-professional school he or she can aspire to? And is the proposed graduate-professional path also understood as a “means to the end” of an unspecified path toward success?

At the risk of caricature, I point to an approach to primary and secondary education that places heavy burdens on the schools you lead. Parents and families hope that your curriculum and faculty will provide an education for their young that will prepare them to learn to learn. They want their children to adapt successfully in the rapidly changing environments in which they will invest their adulthoods. They place their considerable faith in your faculty and your facilities to provide an environment of stimulation and accomplishment. They hope that your schools will both motivate and guide their children’s passage into college or university, and then into successful and significant roles in the larger society.

Parents recognize that you are educating for the unforeseen. They recognize that the patterns and forces of globalization are evolving economic and cultural complexities that will place high demands on leaders in business, in governance, and in the professions. They may not have a sense of a paideia for our time. But they hope and trust that you and your faculty do. You offer the best “show in town.” And the parents invest for their children’s sake, with hope and trust—and with expectation.

Paideia, of course, is the Greek term for a comprehensive approach to education that instills the virtues and knowledge thought to be central to the health and vitality of a culture. Paideia includes both the transmission, in vivifying ways, of the history and literature of a culture, as well as teaching the values and ethical traditions that constitute its character. Paideia includes learning the skills and courage of participation in public life, as well as the learning that undergirds success in earning a livelihood, leading a household, cultivating friendships and learning the restorative use of leisure.

In a society where film and television exploit the prurient, seed the imagination and emotions with violence, and celebrate greed and glamour, a Paiedia that grounds students in the higher values and visions of our culture requires both courage and craft.

We are called to blend the teaching of skills in negotiating the white waters of rapid technical and economic change with caring for a grounding in the values and practices necessary to sustain human and humane societies.

2. MINDING THE SPIRIT IN THE FORMATION OF ETHICAL GROUNDING AND IDENTITY

What Do We Mean by Ethics?

• Determining what is Right and Good, in terms of Attitudes, Actions and Outcomes

• Ethics derives from Morality (Mores)--a community's working agreements and traditional values about right and wrong, good and bad. Personal moral attitudes and habits are most readily learned from experience and from teaching in families, schools, religious traditions, and other places where socialization takes place.

• Ethics differs from Morality, in that it involves learning to make judgments that either confirm shared moral values and practices, or provide principles and guidelines by which shared moral values and practices can be revised and made more fair or just, or can be made applicable to new and more complex circumstances.

• Ethics is the study and practice of keeping our moralities accountable

Common Ethical Approaches:

• Utilitarianism: The ethical choice, action, or policy is right if it maximizes the good or the benefits of all involved, and if it minimizes harm. Usually Utilitarian ethics also includes a mechanism to protect minorities who might be run over for the sake of the greater good of everyone else in a society and group.

• Ethics of Principle: The right or most just action derives from employing principles that test the fairness of a decision or policy. Employs Principles that can be stated and evaluated. Reflective stress on justice, fairness, equality of treatment, respect for weaker or minority persons and groups. "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." Moral "musical chairs"

• Ethics of Care: Carol Gilligan, preceded by theological ethicist, H. Richard Niebuhr’s Ethics of Responsibility. Caring involves responding to situations of need by asking first, “What’s going on?” Then it asks “What is it that is awry or missing here? Who or what is being injured? Who or what needs to be supported, healed or protected? How does a system or social setting need to be changed in order to remove harm and create flourishing for all?

• Ethics of Character: Depends upon the integration of Virtues that make up moral strength: Greek Tradition: Prudence: Good judgment, Seeing things whole

Justice: Fairness, Equality, Inclusive network of care

Courage: Resoluteness, Resourcefulness, Loyalty

Temperance: Self-Management, Discipline, Balance

• Ethics in the “Religions of the Book”: Faith, Hope, Justice, and Steadfast Love

How We Teach and Develop Ethics:

· Nurturing the “moral sense” in children, by example, instruction and correction

· By teaching values through stories that illustrate character and its lack

· By encouraging the development of virtues through example, narratives and practice

· By inviting reflection on situations of moral conflict or immoral behavior and seeking the right

· By practicing justice and fairness, and articulating the principles that guide us

· By acknowledging wrong-doing or moral failure and seeking to make restitution

· By examining the reasons, rationales, and self-deceptions in individual and group behaviors

· Creating and maintaining a moral atmosphere in the school

3. MINDING THE SPIRIT IN RELATION TO SERVICE AND THE AWAKENING OF VOCATION

· Andrew Fleming’s Three Circles: Affinity/Giftedness/Need

· Vocation: The Call to Find a Purpose for One’s Life that is Part of the Purposes of God

· Paradoxes of Vocation:

--That the Infinite Reaches Toward the Finite in Calling

--A Captivation that Leads to Freedom

--Becoming Individuals (Persons) through Community

--“What God wants for us has something central to do with we most deeply and truly want for ourselves”

· Calling, Identity and Bliss: “Where Your Deep Gladness and the World’s Deep Hunger Meet.” Quote Frederick Buechner, FDPC, p. 31.

· Threats to the Spirit and Hope of Vocation

· Enriching Vocational Imagination and Experience through Study, Relation and through Service

4. MINDING THE SPIRIT IN RELATION TO THE SPIRIT OF GOD

Toward a Theology of Vocation: Spirit and the Praxis of God

· God the Creator of the Universe. God is universal Spirit:

· Spirit of creation who calls us into being, calls us into partnership. St. Augustine: “Thou has created us for Thyself, and we are restless until we find our rest in Thee.”

· A God who Calls us to Partnership

· God Creating and the Call to Co-Creation, and the Care of Creation

· God Governing and the Call to Community and Justice

· God Liberating and Redeeming and the Call to Love, Courage and Self-Giving in the Face of Evil

· Partnership with God and Others in the Power of the Spirit

· The Spirit Who Calls: Long Lines of Convergent Faithfulness Help Redeem the World, and Move the World Toward God’s Dream