Helping Children Think About Goodness and Caring

By Luigina Mortari

In a previous blog post in February, Luigina Mortari, Scientific Director of the Center of Educational and Didactic Research at the University of Verona, Italy, described the “Melarete” curriculum that she and her colleagues developed to expose elementary school students to concepts of ethics, virtue, and care. In this second post, we hear more about this program’s activities, theoretical basis, and student outcomes.

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“MelArete” is an educative program and research project aiming at enhancing and exploring children’s ethical thinking. Over the past eight years, we have worked with classes of Italian primary school students on two central topics: care and virtue. This program is rooted in two main theses:

• acting “good” means to take care of others and understand the impact of our actions (Noddings, 1984; Mayeroff, 1990; Tronto, 1993; Held, 2006; Mortari, 2015);

• taking care of others means to act virtuously (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics).

During the past year, the project involved six 4th grade classes of primary schoolers (106 nine and ten y.o. children) and eight kindergarten classes (57 five and six y.o. children).

For each of these classes, twelve sessions took place, during which different activities were promoted with the aim of encouraging children to reflect on age-appropriate ethical concepts and experiences. For example, the first meeting focused on the meaning of the words “good” and “care.” The researcher introduced the story of “Puc and Pec,” two jaguars, one of whom takes care of the other through acts of kindness. The narrative models practices of good friendship and care for others, stimulating the children to think about how to act with care as a fundamental building block of goodness.

In the primary school classrooms, the story was presented through pictures, while with the kindergarten students, it was animated with puppets. After the story was presented by the researcher, children were involved in a basic Socratic conversation, during which they were asked to answer to the following questions:

• The word “good” is a beautiful word. What comes to your mind when you hear this word?

• The word “care” is another beautiful word. What comes to your mind when you hear this word?

These types of Socratic conversations have a long history and follow the “maieutic method” to bring children’s ideas of ethical concepts into full view and are therefore useful as an educational and research tool. As in “Socratic Circles” (Copeland, 2005), open conversations are used to promote the exchange of ideas in order to develop critical abilities like listening, thinking, and discussing. Socratic conversations start from an eidetic question, that is, a question about the essence of a phenomenon. After having formulated the question, the researcher guides the discussion by listening to the participants’ ideas and encouraging them to further examine their thoughts, in order to individuate their points of clarity and shadow.

We can find this method in the Platonic dialogues (for example, in the Charmides, when Socrates tells his interlocutor, “Say what, in your opinion, temperance is” (159a); or in the Gorgias, we find Socrates asking his interlocutor to precisely indicate the object of the rhetoric: “Consider yourself questioned by both these men and myself, and give us your answer. What is this thing that you claim is the greatest good for humankind, a thing you claim to be a producer of?” (452d)). Analogously, in an elementary or kindergarten class, we encourage children to examine their ideas about concepts such as virtue, justice, respect, etc. The researcher acts as a facilitator, guiding the conversation in order to stimulate children to reflect deeply with their own experience as a starting point. Children’s contributions to the conversation were not evaluated as right or wrong; instead, the researcher expressed gratefulness for the children’s willingness to share their thoughts.

The discussions of good and care were audio-recorded and transcribed. In kindergarten, after the conversation, children were required to draw the moment of the story that most impacted them and then to explain to the researcher what they drew and what the word “good” meant to them (these definitions were transcribed by the researcher under each drawing). Collected data demonstrates the richness of children’s thinking. In the table below, we present a selection of children’s thoughts collected in primary school and kindergarten.

We hope that these responses show the various ways that students of a young age are already beginning to conceptualize their ideas of goodness and caring. These ideas should be explored further and nurtured in positive directions.

References

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (2nd ed.). Translated by T. Irwin. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999.

Copeland, M. (2005). Socratic Circles. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Held, V. (2006). The Ethics of Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mayeroff, M. (1990). On Caring. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Mortari, L. (2015). Filosofia della cura. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring. A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Plato. Complete works. Edited by J. M. Cooper. Associate editor D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Tronto, J. (1993). Moral Boundaries. London: Routledge.

The Wisdom of John Bogle

Nowadays, when one thinks of professions, the role of “investor” does not leap to mind. Nor, for that matter, does banker or financial analyst or other roles that entail the accumulation, deployment, or investment of funds or other forms of capital.

The situation used to be different. Indeed, in the middle of the 20th century, the local banker or investment counselor was seen as an individual—indeed, usually the representative of a small bank in the community or an individual practitioner. And it was generally assumed that this investor’s primary obligations were to the individual over whose funds he or she had stewardship.

One of my heroes—and the hero of millions of investors worldwide—is John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group and creator of the first index mutual fund that was available to the general public. In his essay “Balancing Professional Values and Business Values,” Bogle cites the examples of Adam Smith, the 18th century polymath, and Benjamin Graham, the 20th century scholar of economics and investment, to remind us of the ethical precepts that should guide the thought and action of investors today. And he draws on an article about the professions, published a dozen years ago by Lee Shulman and me.

Writers rarely know whether their writings are noticed, and, if so, by whom and with what effect. I was deeply honored when John Bogle, vigorous at 89, sent me his fine essay, along with a personal note.

The Yin and Yang of the Medical Profession

One morning in mid-December 2016, while we were in New York City, Howard had the misfortune of suffering a sudden attack of “acute necrotizing pancreatitis.” A terrifying diagnosis. We’d never heard of this, and we don’t recommend it! Howard became very ill and remained so for five months.

Fortunately, the attack occurred just a few blocks from a major hospital, NYU’s Langgone Medical Center, where we went by ambulance. After one week of rest and expert care, Howard was past the acute stage, and we were able to return home to Cambridge. Howard then again received expert care at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center over the next five months, largely at home but with frequent trips to the hospital’s advanced endoscopy suite. At the time of this writing Howard is back to health—or, as he likes to quip, “back to his old complaints.” And, as part of this recovery, he and his wife Ellen have drawn some broader lessons about medicine and about the professions in general.

Living in the Northeast of the United States, having excellent medical coverage, and access to a network of specialists, we could reasonably expect that Howard would receive first-rate care. And fortunately he did. But what impressed both of us was that the care transcended appropriate tests, procedures, and drugs. We had three physicians: Tyler Berzin, the gastroenterologist who healed Howard’s pancreas via five endoscopies; Dana Fugelso, the surgeon who removed his offending gallbladder; and Samuel Osher, our long time internist. All three not only remained in constant and close contact with one another, but they also maintained an ever deepening relationship to both of us over the period of illness and recovery. To unpack the metaphor of the title, they complemented the “yin” of medical expertise with the “yang” of personal attention and caring.

We can reasonably expect that, in the 21st century, in a major medical center, physicians will keep up with the latest findings and prescribe the appropriate treatments. But given the pressures of paperwork, the increasing regulation of almost every aspect of treatment, the demands of time and scheduling in a major metropolitan area with highly competitive specialty care, and seemingly unending national debates about health policy, it’s easy to see why the personal, caring, human dimension can be lost or largely attenuated. It’s tempting to assume that this personal dimension from the expert physicians can be supplied either by other personnel—residents, nurses, paraprofessionals, or clergy—or, less happily, by artificial means, such as robots programmed to be empathetic. Yin from the physician, yang from others, be they living or artificial.

What we experienced firsthand was something very different and quite wonderful. Nearly every day, we reported in person or via email to the three doctors, describing the symptoms that had emerged, the actions, if any, we had taken, and the questions that had arisen. We received immediate feedback, sometimes in the form of an email 30 minutes later, other times in the form of a phone call three minutes later. And not infrequently more than one of our three physicians responded. Several times when we had not emailed for a few days, Dr. Berzin called us just to check on how things were going. Unheard of! We were often scared and worried and anxious—because unexpected symptoms or technical snafus occurred—and the fact that we were in such close touch with our physicians was, if we may say so, psychologically life-saving.

The medical issues took center stage and appropriately so; but over the course of the several months, we came to know our three physicians as human beings with their own families and their own concerns— and they, in turn, learned about our own lives, struggles, and more positive developments as well. The yin of knowledgeable care was complemented, appropriately and quite lovingly, with the yang of personal contact, communication, and caring.

While the treatment was serious, there were also lighter moments. Asked how much “work” I could do, one doctor said, “Do what you feel comfortable doing.” A second doctor said, “Howard, Your health is first and foremost. Drop everything and rest!” When we pondered these contrasting bits of advice, and asked the third doctor, we received the response, “Perhaps you should split the difference.” And so we did.

One can appropriately ask, “What difference did the yang really make?”, or “Did it make enough of a difference to justify the possible neglect of other patients, or the invasion of the doctors’ personal time as they responded to emails even at the oddest of hours?” We posed this latter question to one of the physicians who replied, “My patients come first, and I am always here for them. This is not just a profession for me, it is a calling.” We wish that phrase were on the lips of every physician—indeed, of every professional; that’s the kind of world in which we—and presumably the readers of these words—would like to live. None of our physicians were “concierge” physicians, offering extra care to an elite for extra compensation. And while we may have benefited from having lived for a long time within a university community, we believe that these physicians offer five star treatment to all in their care.

As readers of this blog know, all of our professions are undergoing enormous disruptions, and many may not survive in a form that we would recognize. Indeed, in the future, much of the “expertise” of professions will be handled either by more easily-trained paraprofessionals or by computer programs that are at least as accurate, and perhaps more accurate, than the human beings that they are designed to replace.

But rather than replacing the professional, we are hopeful that we can maintain and bolster the more humane aspects of the professions—the personal knowledge, contact, understanding, and interpretive skills that one human being—or, in our fortunate case, three human beings—can provide to those who are in need of professional services, be they legal, medical, spiritual, educational, or work-related… and to concerned members of their families. The sense of a calling—that precious descriptor—is vital for the professional, those whom he or she serves, and the health (if we may) of the community. For those of us who care about the professions, we need to understand how such exemplary professionals came to the stance that they have voluntarily assumed, how they maintain those roles, and how best to inspire others not only to fill out those important check lists but also to regard their work as a calling.

Ellen Winner and Howard Gardner will happily celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary this year.

When Colleges Act Like Businesses: Is It Ethical?

by Barbara Hou

I recently came across an article that highlighted a troubling practice: In order to meet their enrollment and net revenue targets, some colleges are reaching out and offering more money to students who did not respond to their acceptance offers, after those students have already made decisions to enroll at other colleges and after the official decision deadline. Here I review what makes the practice unethical, and also present counterarguments that deserve to be considered.

1) Violates Published Deadlines. Colleges present themselves as nurturing good citizens, and good citizens play by generally agreed upon rules. Colleges that make representations about their deadlines are supposed to stand by them. By reaching out to students and changing their financial aid terms, these institutions change the rules of the game, manipulate students’ decisions, and entice students to renege on their commitments to other colleges.

2) Reopens a College Decision Process. Students are forced to revisit what can be an agonizing decision process. As one example, colleges may offer more money but not enough to make it affordable.

3) Makes Students Narrowly Money Minded. Importantly, the practice puts money front and center, making it a determining factor for why a student would choose one school over another, (I compare this to someone who takes a job solely for the salary without regard to the mission or methods of the employer.) Schools that dangle money likely are not a student’s first choice school, and students who accept such offers likely have compromised other possibly more valid considerations.

4) Turns Students into Commodities. Students literally become something that can be negotiated, haggled over, and bought. Colleges are supposed to offer an education, not be bazaars.

5) Takes Advantage of Students and Other Colleges. Finally, colleges that dangle money after the decision deadline engage in a bait and switch, if not a price-gouging scheme. By holding back funds until the last minute, these colleges can tactically collect as much tuition revenue as possible and in the process take advantage of other colleges who have played by the rules and locked in their commitments.

For these reasons, one might assert that if the college cannot make it ethically, it should go out of business. But are there reasons to think that the practice is not actually unethical?

1) Giving an Option. Looked at another way, these colleges do not force students to compromise on their values but give students a chance to re-evaluate them. Because the college has more unfilled seats than it expected, it now has the flexibility to offer stronger discounts to students. There may be nothing nefarious nor manipulative about this fact.  Indeed students also may be better able to take advantage of collegiate opportunities.

2) All Colleges Compete for Students. Colleges often compete for students based on less than ideal considerations, including beautiful landscaping or gleaming residential and gym amenities – unnecessary expenses that drive up the cost of college. Colleges also may match financial aid packages of a competitor, even if a student may have initiated the conversation.

3) Mission-Minded. Such tactics increase the likelihood that the campus can survive; offer an education that is worthy; and make an educational opportunity accessible to a broader swath of the population.

How can we reconcile these competing arguments? Having very briefly laid out some of the dimensions to this ethical issue, I suggest that colleges can be transparent about the role of money in their enterprises. For example, with regard to this specific issue, colleges can explicitly declare:

-Whether they will or won’t re-open financial aid considerations after the decision deadline. In that way, all players will know the situations they may confront; and

-Whether they allow students to make multiple deposits, and whether they actively rescind admission offers to students discovered to have made multiple deposits.

Going beyond the issue under discussion, colleges should also be candid about other less than ideal practices, such as: (i) whether they “gap” students by admitting students with aid that falls short of a student’s financial need, (ii) engage in “need-sensitive” admissions, (iii) give preferences to legacies, (iv) allow donations to influence offers of admissions, (v) offer merit aid to attract financial returns rather than to reward academic performance, or (vi) lower admission standards for athletes.

Such candor would allow us to open up a conversation about whether practices that may be appropriate in business are also suitable in higher education, and whether compromises in this regard align with the ethical fiber of higher education.

Barbara Hou is a doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

The Future of the Professoriate: Personal Reflections

In the fall of 2015, I launched this blog, The Professional Ethicist. There were two impetuses:

1. The “distal” impetus was the fact that, as part of the GoodWork Project, my colleagues and I had been studying the professions for many years. I have a particular interest in ethical quandaries that professionals regularly confront and address, with more or less success.

2. The “proximal” impetus was the publication, in 2016, of The Future of the Professions by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind—a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of the likely disruption of major professions in the period ahead. Having developed my own views of the role of the professions, particularly in their handling of ethical issues, I decided to write a major essay… and then to contribute shorter blogs at approximately two week intervals.

In the course of this maiden exercise in blogging, I have had occasion to write about many professions—ranging from prototypical professions, like medicine and law, to aspiring professions, like philanthropy and journalism. And yet, perhaps surprisingly, I have not written much about my own professional expertise—as a scholar and as a professor. I intend to correct that record in the period ahead.

Suspending The Professional Ethicist, at least for a while, I am launching a blog on education on my website HowardGardner.com. This new blog is titled “Life-Long Learning: A Blog in Education.” Initially, the blog will be far-ranging and its contents (at least to me) unpredictable. Over time, the blog will focus increasingly on higher education—the sector of education that I know best and the one that my colleagues and I have been studying intensively since 2013. You can follow me on Twitter @DrHowardGardner for all of the latest announcements.

Context for This Entry: A Scholarly Meeting

When I first read The Future of the Professions, and, indeed, when I first wrote about it, I did not know the Susskinds personally. But as sometimes happens, my writing came to their attention, and we arranged to meet—over brunch in our home. My wife Ellen and I enjoyed the encounter very much and invited Richard and Daniel (father and son) to speak to the American Philosophical Society, a membership organization in which speakers deliver papers on a wide range of topics.

From their home base in England, the Susskinds traveled to Philadelphia at the end of April 2017 and introduced their innovative ideas to the gathered scholars. As is typical of meetings of the Society, the program included a wide range of topics—from climate change to the 2016 election to the evolution of Indo-European languages. Indeed, on the afternoon when the Susskinds spoke, the first paper was by Naomi Zemon Davis, a humanist; the second paper was by David Spergel, an astrophysicist; and the joint paper by Richard and Daniel can be described as a contribution from the social sciences (law and economics, respectively).

In their presentation, the Susskinds talked about the emergence, over the last few decades, of extremely powerful computational approaches (hereafter, CA). In many cases, these CA accomplish the tasks that in earlier times would have been carried out by trained professionals—and these new approaches typically execute the procedures more quickly, more accurately, and at a fraction of the cost. As examples, sixty million disputes arise each year among users of eBay, and most of them are settled quickly and amicably. At the University of California at San Francisco, a single robot completes over two million prescriptions each year; and half the doctors in the United States use Epocrates, a resource that indicates how different drugs interact. In 2014, in the United States, almost 48 million taxpayers filed their returns without an accountant, using online systems provided by TurboTax and H&RBlock at home.

The availability of these and many other CA permit far more individuals-in-need to obtain high quality services—as opposed to the current situation where most of the population cannot afford the extremely high fees charged by professionals. And the success of these CA raises questions about whether there remain important tasks and challenges that only human beings can carry out—hence preserving the professions in recognizable form—or whether the professions will be decisively disrupted and, if so, which groups and institutions, if any, might emerge in their stead.

The Susskinds recognize that computational delivery of hitherto professional services raises significant questions—for example, who is responsible if an application causes unanticipated destruction; what happens when complex moral or ethical issues arise; what kind of training is appropriate for para-professionals and professionals in a computational society; who designs the applications and how one decides among those that are available. The Susskinds rightly point out that at present the professions are themselves struggling with these issues—and, indeed, once-hallowed professions have become more like businesses and less like undertakings that are deliberately carried out at some remove from the marketplace. As the Susskinds might put it, once we define what problem(s) the professional is trying to solve, we can then determine to what extent, and in what way, that problem can be solved satisfactorily in the absence of, or with minimal involvement of, the trained professional.

A Continuing Place for Scholarly Work?

In the question-and-answer session directly following the presentation by the Susskinds, and in the considerable discussion among attendees in the aftermath of the meeting, one issue kept emerging. And given that the American Philosophical Society is composed primarily of academic scholars, that question is not surprising. To put it succinctly: in the world that has been described, is there a place for scholarly work, and, if so, what is that place and how does that work get carried out?

It is appropriate that this question arose at APS. The society was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, while America was still very much a British colony. APS followed the example of the Royal Society of London (the Society that many of us associate with Sir Isaac Newton), founded in 1660. At these organizations, scholars presented ideas—typically in the form of brief papers or reports—and then other scholars, some from the same field, many from other fields of scholarship, made comments and criticisms, raised questions, and sometimes suggested new lines of work. In the intervening centuries, many other scholarly organizations have of course arisen, but the general approach of paper delivery and commentary has proved remarkably robust.

What conditions prompt the creation of such learned societies, with their scheduled meetings and predictable program of papers and discussion? One needs individuals (or groups) who work in one or another scholarly tradition—perhaps as broad as history or physics, or much narrower, such as early medieval history or string theory. These individuals probe an issue or problem or paradox that has intrigued them; they have mastered the relevant research; they have thought long and hard about the puzzle and if possible collected relevant data; they probably have drafted some notes and run them by informed colleagues; and then they have submitted the paper to a committee which decides whether they should be invited to make a formal presentation at a scholarly meeting.

Enter the Professoriate, with its Two Branches

The practice I’ve described is presumably carried out nowadays in most developed countries, particularly ones with universities, research centers, or laboratories. I see the practice as relatively new (centuries old, not millennia) and one closely tied with the emergence and growth of a profession that can loosely be described as the professoriate.

Originally, the professoriate focused on the sharing of knowledge and writings that had been deemed worthy by appropriate authorities (Aristotle being the prototypical authority). The European universities of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance were primary entities that transmitted knowledge. Even today, a large part of the profession of the professoriate is devoted to the dissemination of knowledge, especially that knowledge which is considered to be consensual within the disciplines.

Only on the eve of the Enlightenment, about the time that the Royal Society was founded, did the professoriate broaden its portfolio to include the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, from various disciplinary perspectives. And only at this time did the role of teacher/disseminator gradually enlarge, so that its practitioners saw themselves as contributing new knowledge—whether it is adding a single brick to an already existing edifice (what Thomas Kuhn calls “paradigmatic” scholarship) or, less often, opening up a new branch of knowledge (launching a new paradigm).

Rightly or hyperbolically, those who attend such scholarly meetings think of themselves as individuals who are creating new knowledge and sharing it with informed and interested peers. In effect, here is the question that attendees at the APS were posing to the Susskinds: Computational approaches can carry out many, if not most or all of the work of a professional practitioner, but are such approaches capable as well of creating new questions, coming up with new ways of approaching them, and adding significantly to human knowledge? Indeed, in the future, will there be the need for scholarly societies, and, if so, will they be attended by human beings, by robots, or some amalgam thereof?

I don’t know how the Susskinds would respond to this question. When asked a similar question with respect to the arts, Richard Susskind replied that even if computational approaches can produce works of art that are powerful, we will still admire those works of art produced by a human being—just as we appreciate a great chess player, even if she loses a match to IBM’s Watson, or a great runner, even if the average gazelle can run more rapidly. And, with respect to societies like the APS, the Susskinds added that individuals will similar interests will continue to congregate and converse, as the group gathered in Philadelphia has done for centuries.

Returning to the Professoriate

I can readily see a time when much of teaching, particularly of certain subjects to individuals who are no longer young, can be handled more proficiently and at much less cost by star teachers whom students encounter online or by well-designed programs which do not feature human teachers at all. In that case, there will be little reason for each institution of higher learning to have its own faculty. (I am less confident that young persons can or should be taught by individuals or programs with whom the youth have no personal ties.)

But if the time comes when computational devices can both come up with the kinds of questions that trained art historians or microbiologists are able to formulate, and then provide answers that are judged adequate (by humans or robots), then the need for and the place of the professoriate will surely be challenged. And even if human beings still gather at scholarly meetings, the robots that now control the scholarly agenda will smile benignly at the human beings… and then plan the agenda for the gathering of their own far more innovative Robotic Philosophical Society.