Judging from recent math and reading scores, it appears that Illinois’ teachers have a tough enough task getting their students to master the three R’s.
Yet as the public becomes more convinced that today’s young are an unruly and violent bunch, teachers are getting pressed from all sides to instruct students to mind their P’s and Q’s–imparting small parental lessons on good behavior to restore a level of respect and civility to the classroom.
The idea of schools as laboratories for fine citizens dates to the early days of public education. But a new push is under way, and as if to underline the need, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has introduced an amendment to the state school code requiring that Illinois’ 120,000 public school teachers instruct their students in the values of discipline and respect for others.
The bill, expected to go before the full House by Thursday, is Madigan’s attempt to breathe life into a piece of the school code that has been collecting dust for the past 37 years. That section, titled “Honesty, kindness, justice and moral courage,” was adopted in 1961 and requires teachers to instill students with core values “for the purpose of lessening crime and raising the standard of good citizenship.”
It’s a relatively obscure piece of the code. And while such groups as the Illinois Education Association and the Illinois Association of School Boards agree with the thinking behind Madigan’s proposal, they doubt that simply adding words to the existing code will have any dramatic impact on classroom behavior.
Nevertheless, scores of districts unknowingly have abided by it over the years, buying into the growing industry–and booming trend–of character education.
“We’ve taken for granted that kids know these things, but they don’t,” said Young Jay Mulkey, president of the San Antonio-based Institute for Character Education.
“The point here is every sensible person knows that there is a growing lack of respect for authority,” said IEA spokesman George King. “As far as legislating discipline, in the final analysis it’s up to the (local) school districts. School districts are going to operate on a high moral code no matter what’s on the legislative books.”
Madigan’s staff acknowledges that the proposal is more symbolism than substance. It carries no mandate that local schools or districts develop a program for the teaching of values, for instance. Nor does it provide for any policing mechanism to ensure that schools are complying with the law.
“This amounts to suggesting that more emphasis should be put on this in the school,” said Madigan spokesman Steve Brown. “These are ideas that you put out there, but you have to let the teachers and the school boards decide how to put them to work.”
But while it has no teeth, Madigan’s proposal underscores an apparent shift in focus in today’s classrooms: after several frantic years of finger pointing and introspection over declining reading and math scores, the behavioral side of education is being revisited.
“It’s the human side of the curriculum that drives the performance side,” said Cheryl Gholar, an educator with the University of Illinois. “Historically, schools have been viewed as social institutions with a focus on intellectual and moral development.”
Still, it begs the question of whether such a task really belongs in the classroom because values–unlike math and science, which hold universal truths–are much more difficult to define.
“For some parents, that’s very scary,” said Cassandra Ma, a coordinator with Northwestern University’s Family Institute. On the other hand, she said, “Today, more people are needed to take part in the rearing of a child . . . and teachers are a very powerful influence.”
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“You can wring your hands and say it’s not our job as educators, but so what,” said Iroquois Community School Principal Thomas Ray. Figuring it’s more important to teach than punish, the Des Plaines school earlier this year ditched traditional detentions, with its blank walls and empty rooms, and began remanding troublemakers to specially tailored behavior classes.
Similar programs have been adopted in districts as varied as the Chicago Public Schools and Palatine District 15, where many schools recently have adopted a values-based curriculum to put a lid on behavior problems in the school.
“Somebody’s got to do it,” Ray said. “And if you don’t, you’ll never get around to doing what is your job.”