Following is a presentation given by Sue Odhner, teacher in the Girls School, before the Academy Board/Corporation Education Committee on September 29, 2006. Sue talked about her course, The Formative Years, as an example of how moral education is different and distinctive at the Academy.
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Part I: Origins of The Formative Years:
I want to thank you for having me here to discuss one of my favorite
subjects: moral education in the context of New Church education.
I am fortunate to be an instructor in the Girls School and the Social
Director in both the Boys and Girls Schools. I teach many subjects:
European History to Sophomore girls, Local and Church History to
Junior and Senior boys and girls, Accelerated American Literature
to Junior boys and girls, and The Formative Years to Junior
girls.
Last year I had the opportunity to speak at the Assembly on the subject of moral education — specifically as seen in The Formative Years. This course has been around since the early 1980s. I have been teaching it for about the last eight years. I decided that before I spoke on the subject again I needed to find out more about it and why it is so important for our girls.
This course was created by a group of concerned women in Bryn Athyn,
who wanted students exposed to life issues such as birth, old age
and death, and to gain a working knowledge of balancing a checkbook
and managing credit cards. The course ended up in the lap of Donnette
Alfelt, who quickly made it her own — examining topics
such as advertising, prejudice, anger, moral and spiritual values,
and femininity. The course flourished under her care and for the
most part has remained the same, although current issues are addressed
as they come up. The goal is to give our students life skills and
tools to move forward confidently in the light of the Lord's Word.
I have always known that this course is unique. It addresses problems and situations through turning to the Word and the Writings. But how unique, different and distinctive is moral education at the Academy? This is what I sought to discover.
Part II: The Public Sector
To look at moral education in a broader context I needed to go beyond
the Academy's vision. I delved into academic journals specifically
dealing with moral, and to a degree character, education, for in
some ways they go hand in hand. I found myself looking at public
schools throughout the country. We live in a time of the No
Child Left Behind Act, where academics appear to come first.
There is an emphasis on high stakes testing of student achievement.
Where is the place for moral education? With this act in place there
is a call to not only contribute to students' academic performance
but also to their character.
Unfortunately we live in a world without many role models. Students are often taught the wrong values or no values at all. This culture has led to crime, violence, teenage pregnancy, tobacco and alcohol abuse, and a staggering achievement gap. So how do teachers in our public schools handle moral education?
They do it in many ways. Some educators incorporate character and moral education through stories told to their students. They integrate this education into the fabric of the curriculum and into extracurricular activities. I saw a sense of community, with the intent that this will lead to moral/character education. It appears that good schools with both moral education and high academics believe in several principles. They ensure a clean and secure physical environment, promote and model fairness, equity, caring and respect, and promote a caring community and positive social relationships. The overriding theme, however, is that sense of community and working together.
Part III: The Friends Schools
My next step was to look at schools that might be similar to ours. I decided to look at the Friends Schools, for they are religious-based, are private and have high academic standards as we do. They are the schools that we appear to be the most aligned with. We have been in the Friends League for years, for it provides our athletes with competitive teams who share our values for rules and sportsmanship. I interviewed people at George School, Moorestown Friends, Abington Friends, Friends Central and Germantown Friends about moral education in their curriculum.
The information was varied but there was a central theme. They do not have an explicit curriculum on the subject; they tend to put more emphasis on what it means to be a member of a Quaker society and community. These schools base their values on the ideals of Quakerism, and morals and values are infused into the curriculum with this in mind. These schools promote a spiritual life and their mission is based on the idea that their students are part of the big picture and that there is someone bigger than them in charge.
The idea of teaching morals is integral in all that they do, and
I learned that there are Quaker "testimonies" derived
from The Faith and Practice Book and The Body of the
Quaker Meeting. They promote six testimonies: Simplicity, Peace,
Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship. They have worship
once a week and everyone is required to attend. It is a silent worship
service, although anyone is invited to bring up a moral or ethical
issue. The schools also focus heavily on the concept of community
— in the classroom, in the dorms and in community service
beyond the school.
They stress morality in many ways, although their programs are not specifically geared toward the subject. These schools are not heavily attended by those baptized Quaker: 6-10% of the student body and between 6-38 % of the faculty are Quaker. They do expect those who attend their schools, however, to live within the confines of their mission and tenants.
Part IV: The Formative Years
This brings me to moral education at the Academy and why we are
so different and distinctive. I have brought a tool box to this
meeting. What does this have to do with moral education at the Academy?
I don?t have tools in this box. It appears to be empty but actually
has cards in it with words on them: Confidence, Will Power, Self-Reliance,
Empathy, Courage, Kindness and Usefulness. These are some of the
tools for good character we at the Academy strive to have stored
in our students' tool boxes.
My goals and those of the entire faculty are to provide our students tools like these to go forward after life at the Academy, so that they may live a life from the perspective of New Church values and ideals. We work on these character attributes every day in some aspect of whatever students are being taught, be it in athletics, social life or academics. Our hope is to provide them with the spiritual and natural tools which will help them move forward with confidence toward a productive and useful life as an adult.
How are these tools forged at the Academy? Every teacher has her
own responsibilities and her own style. Most of us wear many hats.
Though I teach many classes, I feel my opportunity arises to integrate
these tools and skills learned and experienced by the girls in The
Formative Years.
Though the classroom may be where I primarily get to fill this box, one cannot overlook the learning that takes place in all facets of Academy life.
To look at it from a social perspective, our students are exposed to a safe and highly structured social program. They not only learn how to respect the opposite sex, they are expected to exhibit manners and decorum in how they handle themselves in the context of our social events. This may sound tricky in this day and age, but we hope to instill in them the ability to interact with others in a proper and moral way.
We encourage friendship among our students at these social events
instead of dating, for it can be seen in Conjugial Love
214: Friendship introduces the love and causes it to be truly
conjugial; and then the love in turn causes this, its friendship,
to become also conjugial — a friendship which differs greatly
from that of any other love, because it is a full one.
We carefully plan for every event that we sponsor. The social tools they carry away will be invaluable in college and in their future lives as husbands and wives, or just as polite and mannerly adults.
Social life is important but our academics are also full of tool-building opportunities. I only speak for myself but I see it every day in all aspects of everything that we do in our school. Not only do we give the students the natural and practical means to grow through hard work and diligence, we also give them a deeper and more spiritual rationale using course material that we teach. Since I am also a teacher of English and History I can see this happening across the curriculum. Not only are there the usual life lessons to be studied, but the classroom is also a safe place where adverse issues can be discussed. They can be addressed in the open, without fear of ridicule or embarrassment. It is better for them to be prepared in our safe environment than perhaps experiencing a life situation over which they may have little control.
Though I have the chance to teach moral education in History and
Literature, I feel one of my most pivotal opportunities arises within
the confines of The Formative Years. This is where I make
a special effort to provide instruments to fill this tool box for
the students. The setting is a life skills class where the students
look at real life situations from the perspective of healthy relationships.
It is a great opportunity to teach and examine the need for spiritual
ideals and values in a natural world.
We begin from a foundation grounded in the man/woman relationship and the intrinsic beauty of the differences between the sexes. Today, we live in a world and mindset where equality is considered imperative in most aspects of life. My goal, however, is to instill in the girls the value of being different from the guys, and that we should embrace these differences without shame.
I provide them with both New Church material and secular videos
created by Gary Smalley. We look at various numbers in Conjugial
Love and study passages, such as 160, which states: Women
are born of love and men recipients of love. Then we read the
next number, 161: Conjunction is inspired into the man by his
wife.
While we are studying relationships we also look at what is really
important in the relationship between a man and a woman. A major
focus is the fact that we are not our bodies; our spirit is the
true essence of who we are. This can be seen clearly in Heaven
and Hell 432: Whoever duly considers the subject can know
that the body does not think, because it is material, but that the
soul, which is spiritual, does. My hope is that with a solid
foundation like this we can move smoothly into more tricky life
applications and that our discussion and growing knowledge about
relationships will contribute to the acquisition of adequate tools
for life outside of the Academy.
Once we move through the material on relationships, specific topics
are studied. We look at and examine child rearing and childbirth,
foster care, adoption and raising children with disabilities. The
students see first hand, and not exclusively through me, what these
experiences look like. I invite many guest speakers whose own experiences
are communicated to the girls. They get the opportunity to see,
through the stories of women and men in our community, how people
live, love and even just cope with their children — each in
his and her own way. The girls also get to discuss with a parent
the impact that a child with a disability has on a marriage and
a family. They learn empathy, compassion and kindness.
Many girls have had limited experience taking responsibility for
children. In this course they also have the chance to experience
quasi-parenthood on their own. This is done through a teaching concept
called Baby, Think it Over. Each girl gets a computerized
baby who cries, coughs, eats and sleeps — all while keeping
track of its caregiver. The baby is programmed to react as a newborn.
This sounds simple enough, but it is not. The girls come to the
project ready to learn and experience the joys of parenting, and
find that it can be rewarding and joyful but also difficult at times.
My hope for them is to see that becoming a parent is a wonderful
experience. Children can bring out the best in us and the presence
of angels can be felt through them. We see this in Conjugial
Love 385: An atmosphere of innocence flows into little
children, and through them into the parents so as to affect them.
They learn in a controlled and supportive environment that
while being a parent is great, it could be arduous if experienced
as a teen.
After this experience we go beyond the subject matter of children and childbirth. We take a look at the tougher side of life issues through topics such as drugs, alcohol, abortion, eating disorders, premarital sex, abuse and depression. The subjects are definitely more delicate, but once again through the generosity of community members, the students see some of the mistakes that people make and how the Lord is there to love, forgive and guide them into an opportunity to grow, to learn, and to rise above these mistakes. Some of these serious problems will come up during their lifetime and through the confines of the classroom they can see this for themselves without the pain of their own experience. This is powerful, and I feel that the girls leave my class armed with tools that will help them as they learn to become wise and spiritually healthy adults.
But we don't stop at adulthood. We move on to the finality of life
on this earth, looking at subjects such as old age, grief, dying
and above all, our spiritual selves. This piece is very important,
for the girls get the chance to talk to the elderly and to find
out what it is like to be old. These people were young once! There
is often prejudice and misunderstanding by both the young and the
old toward each other. This interaction between them is invaluable
as it dispels some myths and fosters communication between our young
people and those in the age of wisdom.
This brings me to our spiritual selves. It is imperative that students
know that we are not our bodies and this lesson is taught repeatedly
throughout the course. With so much emphasis on physical beauty
it is hard being teenagers in today's world. We give them a chance
to observe and learn through videos and involvement with the elderly
that true beauty emanates from within, and our soul and our mind
are who we really are. As one wise man once said to me, "Our
bodies are like suitcases, and they wear out just like suitcases."
I want to have them discover that their bodies are temporary and
that the Lord is guiding them always to an eternal life beyond this
physical one.
Now, to return to the tool box: Yes, it may appear empty. There
are no hammers, nails or screwdrivers in it, only cards. But these
cards represent tools – the tools my students hopefully have
acquired by completing The Formative Years course. They
have learned about the tools that will help them lead a life full
of spiritual and moral ideals, a life of moral integrity, a life
of service to others and a clear knowledge of the Lord's Threefold
Word.
This class is just one small piece of the bigger puzzle at the Academy. All of our teachers are tremendously dedicated, and all contribute to the unique tool box. We know in religion that they learn ideals of Conjugial Love; in the dorms they learn cooperation, charity and inclusion; and on the athletic fields they learn to work as a team with perseverance and heart. Our goal it to guide each girl so that she can move forward with confidence into a future life as a productive and useful woman, making spiritually based moral decisions. She will learn that through a life of use she can be genuinely happy. Most of all she will learn that the Lord provides unconditional love, and is always there to help her in hard times and in good times, provided she makes use of the tools He has made available to her.
Part V: The Response of Students
Though the course is great in all that it attempts to do for our girls, I felt that it was important to talk to the students, to find out if it really did provide them with tools to move forward into their adult lives.
I put together some questions for them. Some of these questions were simple: What did you like? What do you remember about children, marriage, etc? But some of the questions were not so simple and these are the ones I felt were the most important. I would like to share three of them with you.
1. The class was single sex. Was this beneficial to
you?
This was answered in a positive way. The girls felt that the classroom gave them a safe environment where they could talk freely and without fear of embarrassment and ridicule. It provided a safe haven and created a bonding experience for them.
2. Is there anything in particular that stands out in
your memory about the class?
I think the one thing the girls really remember are the babies.
They were different and for the most part fun, but what I heard
over and over is that the girls felt supported — supported
by their peers, supported by me, and supported by our numerous speakers.
They loved the guest speakers; their stories were often sad but
hopeful, and this gave the girls inspiration and insight into situations
that may arise in their own lives.
3. Has the course helped you in your life in college
and beyond the Academy experience?
Many of the girls could see direct correlations between what they learned and the decisions that they have made, and they were confident that the material in the course helped guide them in the right direction. They found that they did think twice when issues arose such as drinking, drugs and sex, and that there were tools that they could use to help them make the right decisions.
Part VI: Conclusion
Our teens are being raised in hard times. They are exposed to so
much: the internet and questionable web sites such as MySpace and
Facebook, sitcoms that mock the sanctity of marriage, violence,
drugs and people everywhere saying that if it feels good it must
be OK. How can they come away from this environment able to make
solid morally and spiritually based decisions?
We see it in the public sector as teachers incorporate moral education into their classes through stories, through a sense of community and safety in the school environment. It is also going on in private schools through, once again, the sense of community in all that they do and also through studying their testimonies: integrity, community, peace, equality, simplicity and stewardship.
But what makes us different? We incorporate a sense a community
into our curriculum, we strive for safety, and we work on qualities
such as stewardship, equality, peace, integrity, simplicity. What
makes moral education distinctive and unique at the Academy? Are
we providing the tools that will lead our students to lives as productive
and morally responsible adults? The answer to these questions, I
believe, is YES! And the reasons are simple. We are fortunate to
have a working relationship with the Lord as He guides and helps
us in all that we do. We have His Threefold Word as our compass
to point us in the right direction. Our students are blessed in
many ways. They have the opportunity to take the tools that we offer
and move forward with confidence in their journey. With the Lord
on their side they can become the moral and spiritually grounded
adults that we hope for them to be.
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