Educators haven't "dug deeply" enough into the question of what qualities a good citizen in a democratic society needs, Deborah Meier told her overflow audience. Meier is the founder of Central Park East High School in Harlem and author of The Power of Their Ideas.
If we look on schools as existing first and foremost to defend democratic principles, what qualities should educators help students develop? she asked. "We have to have the guts to defend our answers."
Meier proposed several essential qualities that schools should nurture. The first was skepticism. "The youngest child displays this quality daily," she said, noting that toddlers always want to explore "wrong" ways of doing things. "They're looking for a pattern, not a certainty." In matters of civic concern, absolute certainty is not possible, Meier said; therefore, "informed skepticism" among citizens is vital. But rather than helping students maintain their skeptical mindset, most schools "close it up."
Another essential quality, Meier said, is empathy. Good citizens need to be able to put themselves in another's shoes. This quality is cognitive as well as affective, she emphasized; to be empathetic, one needs to know about the other, which can be "enormously complex."
Schools must also nourish hope. "We need to explore [skepticism and empathy] in an environment where kids maintain a sense of hopefulness," Meier said. A sense of anticipation is "a precious commodity," and one that is "very fragile for children in the city."
Hopefulness requires a sense of the generations who came before and who will follow after, Meier said. Children love the notion of a chain of generations; knowing that "we came from somewhere, and we're going somewhere" gives them "an interest in possibility." Yet most schools are designed to "cut us off" from intergenerational contact, she noted.
Meier also underscored the importance of respect. People are "longing" for the kind of schools where all three parties—students, parents, and teachers—are respectful of one another, she said.
"It is doable to create schools that are respectful places," Meier said. But "respectfulness does not come naturally or easily," she cautioned. "We must think through its meaning for each person," and it will require "plenty of time for listening and explaining."