Educating for Virtue: Recent Episodes
Jeff Robertson
Education is Virtue Formation. It isn't about college readiness or being prepared to work at a cubicle for 40 hours per week until you're able to draw Social Security. It's about living as a man or woman made in God's image, stewarding God's gifts, doing God's work, living in God's world, and worshipping him all along the way.
The impact of small habits over time
school policies and habits
grading policy and the cultivation of habit
history of grades
William Farrish and the beginning of grades in the late 18thC
Grades as proxies for trust
profile of a leader
leadership as responsibility and authority
public school education cultivates closed-mindedness, short-term thinking, an extreme form of agreeableness or niceness, and neuroticism
Origins of public education and the industrial revolution
industrialists' ideals' impact on education
Humans are made for dominion
Personality as kinds of people
Rulers, leaders, dominion-takers as a particular "kind" of person
Big Five Personality
Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
General tendencies of these traits in good leaders
humans as image bearers
multiply, fill, and subdue
humans as lords and leaders
profile of leaders
Habit training is inevitable. The question is not whether we will practice habits, but which habits we will practice.
There is a danger in assuming that habits are not being practiced as long as we are not intentionally working on them. Habits are strengthening regardless of whether our focus is on them.
When building habits, our actions are not easy. We expect our actions, which are painful, to produce results. But, those results do not follow the same curve as our expectations. The key is to have habits that are simple enough to limit your expectations for results until you actually begin to see results.
principles for training in education
James Clear's Atomic habits
https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299
desire - Do we want what God wants? What Christ wants?
Desire the kingdom first and foremost
emotion - Do we respond the way Christ responds?
Responding with joy, peace, patience, anger, disgust, etc --both positive and negative emotions-- like Christ does
intellect - Do our thought-patterns reflect Christ's?
intellectual humility, analysis, contemplation
Strength - What do our bodies have to do with being the right kind of person?
strength, speed, posture
social/friendship/leadership - Do we treat others the ways Christ treats others?
speaking with volume, eye contact, deference, goodwill
Education is for fathers and families, not the state
training and instructing; teaching what to know and how to do; science and art
"in the Lord" - love the Lord with all your Heart, Soul, Mind, Strength, and love your neighbor as yourself
heart - cardia - desire
soul - psyche - emotion
mind - intellect - thoughts
strength - body - physicality
neighbor - social - interpersonal, communication, business, etc.
Psychology, personalities, and virtue
Growth vs fixed mindset
19th century attempts at godless materialism across various fields
Using personality to excuse character flaws
Virtue - Habits toward the good; habits toward the Ideal
Habits are inclinations, biases, and tendencies that are hard to acquire and hard to lose
The Ideal man (the virtuous man or "manly" man) seems to do good and right things by second nature
Virtue is the mean between two vices
Vices of excess and lack
Courage is a virtue; cowardice is to lack virtue; rashness is to have courage in excess
Virtue and virtuous action and context
Virtue Ethics - defining goodness by the ideal
Christ as the Ideal
The use of the Law as a tutor
Virtues are characteristics of the Ideal Man, or "manliness"
Education is the Cultivation of the Right Kind of Person
Defining the Right Kind of Person
Ethics: Goodness defined by laws (deontology), results (consequentialism), and the Ideal (virtue ethics)