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Monday, June 18, 2012

Helping kids become better people

There's an honors program at my school. It's broken up by year. Kids have to apply to get in, and then it's a series of out-of-school sessions and pow-wows, and there are a couple field trips too. At the end of high school the kids do a capstone project. The sessions with the kids are typically about culture, big ideas and enrichment. For example, one pair of teachers runs a series of sessions where kids read some ancient philosophy and then debate the views. Other teachers have kids read great works and then discuss it as a group. It's very humanities-focused, it's very culture-focused, and very intellectual-focused.

This stuff doesn't really excite me very much, but next year I'm running the honors program for 11th graders. I'm finding myself trying to design a course for the kids that I think is worth their time.

The theme that's prescribed for the kids in their 11th grade program is "Self and Society," which I'm choosing to interpret as "People are pretty damn self-centered. Let's figure out how to help a group of young people become more likely to help other people." That means that we're trying to affect at least two changes in our students:
  1. Change their views about the things that deserve their help
  2. Make them more likely to help those things
I'm giving myself just the next two weeks to figure out how to implement this stuff, because this is very much NOT my main gig. Still, there are a ton of difficult and fascinating questions that I'm encountering as I work on designing this course:
  • How do we measure how likely a person is to help others? Are there standard instruments of measurement that we can steal?
  • How prescriptive should we be about what sort of things a person has obligations to? If a kid thinks that the most important thing to support is a political party, should we push him to think about his obligations to support anti-malarial efforts? 
  • What sort of things make a person more likely to help others? Will practicing things as a group  support a change in the personal lives of these kids? Does reading articles help? What sort of reading helps? Do activities help? What sort of activities work for this?
  • Can we create a community in just a few sessions spread out over the course of the year?
I'm not sure about any of these, and I'll be sweating some of this stuff out over the next few weeks. My next step is to figure out how to measure success of this course. Will we do pre- and post-assessments using some sort of ethical attitudes instrument? Will we ask students to put together a charitable portfolio? Will either of these measure what we're aiming for?

If you've got anything that you think could help us change the lives of a bunch of high school boys, PLEASE email me, or leave a note in the comments.
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8 comments:

  1. UnknownJune 18, 2012 at 9:49 PM

    This isn't exactly what you're looking for but might help some ... I normally teach high school math; this year we had a one week long "intersession." I choose to teach an intro to philosophy and critical thinking class because "People are pretty damn self-centered. Let's figure out how to help a group of young people become more likely to [understand] help other people." (Your quote works pretty well for the purpose of the course as soon as I add that one word). http://prezi.com/i5fgbezc65f_/intersession-ithink-details/ Maybe some of the clips I used to motivate discussions will be helpful - TED.com is a great way to get a conversation among teens going based on my experience with it this year - they listen better than if it were you presenting a 10ish minute discussion starter.

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    1. Michael PershanJune 18, 2012 at 9:52 PM

      Thanks for the presentation and the idea about the TED talks. That's a good call. Any ideas on how to measure success of this program?

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    2. UnknownJuly 1, 2012 at 4:04 PM

      I skimmed the more recent post with your plan and then came back to this one (as I was pretty sure I had already offered the prezi/TED idea). If any of my questions are due to just skimming the plan I apologize, is 'giving to charity' monetary or volunteer hours or both? I think using a class blog to get kids to reflect on how their opinions change as a result of presentations/discussions/investigations is great. I also really like the idea of making a modern teen sit down and write (by hand) a letter of gratitude and then go read it to the person suggested by another comment. However, trying to making people decent is hard to measure - how much of their decency is the result of any program? I think I've asked more questions than I've answered so sorry ...

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  2. UnknownJune 18, 2012 at 9:59 PM

    One thing I've wanted to try the idea of a "gratitude visit", where you compose a single page letter of gratitude to someone, and then set up a visit to read that letter to them. I think this cold be incredibly powerful with students. You can read more about the idea here.

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    1. Michael PershanJune 19, 2012 at 9:13 AM

      I can see this being a really powerful exercise. Thanks so much for the tip.

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  3. RivkyJune 18, 2012 at 11:40 PM

    I'm not sure how receptive parents would be to this, but I generally think it would be very powerful for students to spend time tutoring in prisons.

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    1. Michael PershanJune 19, 2012 at 9:13 AM

      Any place around NYC that you have in mind, or that you know takes volunteers?

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  4. UnknownJuly 19, 2012 at 2:18 PM

    There's a book that may be helpful to you in your pursuit. I have not read much in this genre, but this book seemed like a good research-based overview:

    "Education in the Moral Domain" by Larry P. Nucci

    Mail me sometime - I suspect we have many interests in common. I'm a high school math teacher interested in moral education (empathy amplification), love philosophy, and found your blog through your post on Philosophy, et cetera.

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