Exploring Moral Development in School
Elliott Witney continues his conversation with Deborah Meier today.
Dear Deb,
I wanted to start by saying that I hope everyone you know in the Boston community through your extensive work there is safe and has been able to weather what must have been an emotional storm over the last several days. I can only imagine how challenging last week was for so many people whose lives you've touched directly or indirectly.
In addition to this thought, I wanted to acknowledge how heartening it has been to hear from readers commending our exchange as an attempt to reach depth about a complex range of topics in civilized discourse.
With that context, I want to push us even deeper. For example, is SLANT— as you've characterized it—"5 Rules for Success?" SLANT should not be contrasted, as you've done, with other techniques schools use to foster social and moral behavior. At the school where I served as principal, we used both SLANT and complex approaches to teaching moral development. After my first couple years teaching, I explicitly referenced it less and less in my own teaching. I was far more focused on how to help 7th and 8th graders both engage in the type of compelling literary analysis required of them in college and develop character strengths that would help them
Dear Deb,
I wanted to start by saying that I hope everyone you know in the Boston community through your extensive work there is safe and has been able to weather what must have been an emotional storm over the last several days. I can only imagine how challenging last week was for so many people whose lives you've touched directly or indirectly.
In addition to this thought, I wanted to acknowledge how heartening it has been to hear from readers commending our exchange as an attempt to reach depth about a complex range of topics in civilized discourse.
With that context, I want to push us even deeper. For example, is SLANT— as you've characterized it—"5 Rules for Success?" SLANT should not be contrasted, as you've done, with other techniques schools use to foster social and moral behavior. At the school where I served as principal, we used both SLANT and complex approaches to teaching moral development. After my first couple years teaching, I explicitly referenced it less and less in my own teaching. I was far more focused on how to help 7th and 8th graders both engage in the type of compelling literary analysis required of them in college and develop character strengths that would help them