February 25, 2016
How do you promote and assess ethical and intellectual engagement? That is the question addressed in a recent report issued by Harvard University regarding the college admission process. It was the result of the “Making Caring Common” project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Through a series of recommendations to schools, students and their families, and higher education, the report directs the college admission process away from too much emphasis on academic achievement. Instead, it encourages a commitment to serving the common good and challenges our larger culture’s overemphasis on individual achievement.
Author William Deresiewicz writes of a crisis in our educational system with “its reliance on bureaucratically prescribed content and a misdirected emphasis on high scores on standardized test, graduation rates and college placements. Is it about getting into the right college in order to get the right job?” He contends that today’s schools “look more like a factory and are focused on producing outcomes rather than human beings.” Yet, any healthy society depends on citizens who are concerned about others and the common good. Research quoted in the Harvard report suggests that “we are not preparing large numbers of youth to create this kind of society. Too often, today’s culture sends young people messages that emphasize personal success rather than investment in others or our collective future.” (Konrath et al., 2011; Putnam, 2005; Putnam, 2014; Weissbourd & Jones, 2014)
MPA has it’s own Making Caring Common project, beginning with the Lower School CHAMP program, the Middle School citizenship project, and the Upper School service program. What unites these programs is a common purpose of empowering students to recognize, understand, and address the political, economic, and social problems that exist within their communities and to work towards a more just and equitable world.
At MPA, we strive to challenge learners to think in new ways by a thoughtful balance of critical thinking skills and deep content knowledge. Woven throughout the MPA curriculum and embedded in co-curricular opportunities, our focus on serving the common good is cultivated through collaborative tasks and perspective taking, and creating an environment where students are respected, valued, and heard. As we seek to incorporate elements of interdisciplinary and project-based learning, we do so with an eye towards how our learning can lead to improving our local community, society, nation, and world.
Several examples of how our emphasis on serving the common good comes to life in our students and alumni include:
– As middle school students, two current ninth graders turned an English project into a very generous fundraising effort. As students in Ms. Atchison’s class, they were all given one dollar, wrote poems about the power of a single dollar, and told to do something positive with it. The outcome they created was a project to raise money for Gillette Children’s Specialty Health Care.
– For several years running, Upper School students have created a non-profit utilizing their passion for photography to take senior pictures for students that cannot afford the cost of a professional photographer.
– Together with a friend and classmate, MPA alum Zach Quinn founded Love Your Melon, an apparel brand run by college students across the country with a mission to give a hat to every child battling cancer in America. Founded by the two friends in an entrepreneurship class at the University of St. Thomas, Love Your Melon has given over 45,000 hats to children with cancer.
As the Harvard report highlighted, these types of activities can develop in young people important emotional and ethical skills, including problem-solving and group skills, that are required for many jobs in the modern economy and that are important in many other aspects of their lives. These activities can also deepen students’ understanding of and commitment to our civic life.
Our new strategic plan, Momentum 2020, challenges us to prepare students to live, learn, and thrive in today’s 21st century globalized society. Service to the common good is not just a sentiment, it is an imperative. It is not just an aspect of an MPA education, it is an outcome.
