CORE CURRICULUM

A lot of column inches have been written about colleges instituting a "core curriculum" of the classic literature and values of Western civilization. I wish there could be as much dramatic attention paid to a much more important core curriculum played out almost every day in the streets and backyards of our neighborhood, a hotbed of moral education and struggle that makes the senior seminar on Dante look pale and anemic.

I once lived with a woman and her two girls in a good neighborhood, where we enjoyed all the privileges of a good neighborhood: reliable neighbors, lack of fear, unlocked doors. But the neighborhood wass also a fishbowl where the usual stresses of living could easily inflate into a fearsome Cold War. There was always tactical maneuvering between our two girls and the girl across the street over who would be the leader in the neighborhood tribe. Several other friends goaded this process along because while they had a vested interest in being friends with all three girls, they also wanted the wiggle-room to move to the more advantageous side as the tension heated up. There were other campaigns as well concerning who would sleep over whose house and what kinds of games they'd play and how to petition the powers that be for a special treat.

This was the crucible in which these children learned to struggle with moral decisions about personality, compromise, integrity, honor, truth, justice - in short, the struggles we attach to becoming "civilized." It's a knowledge that came straight from their skin, from the flash of anger in blue eyes and the modulated tones of apology. Inevitably we were drawn into these arrangements (which, in their complexity, rivaled Europe in 1914) to negotiate terms or assess triage. We tried, as good mentors, to help them acquire the habit of thinking about themselves, so that they could form the raw stuff of their feelings into insights and etiquettes, into a footer upon which the walls of their life's house could sit securely.

No core curriculum can substitute for this daily accumulation of truth winnowed from the irascibility of neighborhood skirmishes, the truces that allow for sincerity, solutions to the fair distribution of candy. In fact, all schools might be better off if they crafted their core education along the lines of what happened in our front and back yards. At least then the curriculum wouldn't be ceremonial and dry, an acquired taste that came from exams rather than from hair and breath, from the snap of anger or the gift of compliment. We saw the core curriculum made flesh every day, and if we did our jobs well, then when the children read Plato for the first time, it will really be, for them, a re-reading. The words will be different, but the passions will be familiar.

Learn more about this author, Michael Bettencourt.
Click here to send author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Teaching children ethics?
We want to hear your view. Write now!