1. 1. I have recently completed writing an article for the August Back to School Issue of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) newsletter "Classroom Leadership." It is called "Teaching Caring, the Essential Subject." I was asked to include a 'call to action.' Naturally, those points will find there way to this section of our website. If you have any suggestions regarding a campaign on understanding and building caring, I would be happy to hear your ideas. Marty Kirschen

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2. Dear Editor, 30 August 00

"To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." - Theodore Roosevelt

The world is a mess because we have some educated people who have little character. I propose that we dramatically change this through societal education, in each county and/or state. Societal education includes all levels of society - see some ideas below.

We should have a set of character traits that all people could easily support. We would truly transform education into a continuance of a QUALITY CULTURE. We would have less violence, an improvement in test scores, and less social ills. I am a Physical Education teacher in the process of integrating Character Development in Van Nuys Middle School.

I realize that it should be a component in all schools of the world. Could we design a task force to develop a Character development program for sharing with ALL educators? Keep the focus on the higher reasons for education, developing our future compassionate leaders and conscientious and wise followers.

> > How can you help?
President Kennedy once stimulated America to a greater vision for our society. He stimulated the creation of the Peace Corps and the landing of people on the moon. We had a focus of the three R's and achieved great things in science and medicine. But our social structure was degenerating.

> > We need a greater vision to manifest for America for the new millennium. Let's focus our efforts on creating a better society by bringing America's focus to developing character qualities in everyone. This may be done through the full inclusion of character education throughout the curriculum of our education systems.

> > Here are some ideas for stimulating our schools and our society in the area of character consciousness:

> >1 By setting up a task force as was done for the space program, bringing together the best academicians, practitioners/teachers at all levels of education, and experts in the field of character development/education.

> > 2 Individuals now could share the vision with their elected > representatives (school board members too) and all their friends, etc.

> > 3 Organizations may do the same and put it on their web page, offer grants for implementation, and more...

> > 4 Who would support it? The UNESCO, National and State/regional governments, interested business and industries, and in general, the public.

> > 5 The Music industry could suggest the singers to create discs that are focused on one or several character. This could be at all levels of music from children's to adolescent and adult styles.

> > 6 The television/movie industry could have theme movies illustrating a > particular or set of character traits. A set of 52 character traits could be spread out for one a week, on each station.

> > 7 The print media could emphasis the character traits daily, weekly or > monthly with a feature article/story/page. A good example is the Investors Business Daily's - Leaders & Success page.

> > 8 The Internet could have as site banners some great character quotes, stories or illustrations/cartoons depicting character qualities.

> > 9 The art scene could have murals developed for the cities of America illustrating particular character traits. Students at all levels could be the artists that paint murals around the schools, and cities, thus empowering them to manifest the quantities depicted.

Looking at an education model example:
Statistics in a three school study that I am aware of show that character education helps to drop detentions, as well as physical and verbal aggression. And at least as important, many behaviors correlated with academic success improve. All these schools did was to integrate each character building activity into their daily lesson plans.

> > How do you want to help?

Truly,
Kurt Krueger
kakrueger
, if busy 377-4012
Please recycle and reuse
Blessings

3. Archive transcript of focus session from Teachers.net
"Caring or Coercion - What are the costs of high stakes testing
and other methods of coercing students?"  with Professor Nel Noddings.
(You may view some of her writings on caring on our own site)

The discussion took place Thursday, March 23, 2000
http://teachers.net/archive/testing032300.html