One goal of education is even more important than teaching the three Rs, said Rabbi Harold Kushner, who addressed a General Session at ASCD's 56th Annual Conference. "It is to teach children what it means to be a decent person."
Rabbi Harold Kushner
Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People, described how educators can transform classrooms into "sacred spaces" for students. "The classroom as a sacred space means the school as a safe place," he said. "As I read some of the accounts of Santee and Columbine, the common thread is that before the classroom became physically dangerous, it became emotionally dangerous." Schools, he said, have an obligation to tell bullies that certain behaviors will not be tolerated on school grounds.
In addition to being emotionally safe, Kushner said, schools "should also be places where each child learns that he or she has something unique to contribute." Teachers can readily recognize students who are athletically or intellectually gifted, he noted, but have they learned to recognize the kind child or the one who has a "caring and sensitive soul"? "Every child has something to offer," Kushner said. "Every child has something unique."
Finally, schools must teach students to cope with success and failure. "Children need to learn to deal with failure, because young people want to know where they stand on the ladder of success," Kushner said. "So long as there is something that they do well, it will not destroy them to learn that there are some things that some people do better than they do."
This lesson in particular, Kushner said, is critical if students are to be prepared for the realities of life when they leave school. "When children graduate, they're going to go out into the real world—the business world—and they are going to lose," he said. "They are going to lose out on jobs, relationships, promotions, and other facets of life. And failing to educate them about this [reality] means we will not have prepared them for what they will face."
Although the job of the teacher is difficult in many ways, it remains one that offers promise and hope for students, Kushner said. "There will always be days when you ask yourself if you really are making a difference," he acknowledged. "But if you read interviews of people who rose above trying circumstances—absentee fathers, poor schools, street gangs, no heat in their homes—and who nevertheless became successful doctors, government officials, and athletes, when they are asked how they overcame such terrible beginnings, their answers always begin with the same four words: ‘There was this teacher. . . .'"