Both school leaders and their constituents need to step back from strategic plans, assessment devices, external reviews, competitive rankings, diversity definitions, and formulaic mission statements for the sake of posing straightforward questions about vision and effectiveness. Imagine that a mother and a father, looking out for the best interests of their son or daughter, are attracted by a church-affiliated school. Appreciating this school’s commitment to nurturing each child’s whole self, these parents seek answers to such questions as these:
Given that this institution’s raison d’être is the development of each student’s body, soul, and intellect, are this school’s promises being realized? Do its programs, including required chapel services and classes in religious education, not only meet high standards but also enable all students to reach their full potential? Most honest observers of schools, both secular and religious, would acknowledge a gap between what’s sought and what’s regularly accomplished.
Which is where those of us who care about raising up young people as beneficiaries and trustees of the treasures of Western civilization might proffer a notion: In thinking about these little educational platoons, consider invoking some concepts from the world of political theory. Which balance of individual, community, and nation is best for the commonweal? Which arrangement of order, justice, and liberty is most propitious both for the good of each citizen and for the general welfare?
Conservative liberalism is a phrase that connotes both a realistic appraisal of human nature and a hopeful approach to human possibility. At its center, this political outlook incorporates a liberal understanding of fundamental human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. It stands for equality before the law and equality before our Creator. It embraces equal opportunity and basic fairness. It acknowledges—indeed it celebrates—the right of all citizens to rise and to make something of themselves.
Conservative liberals also recognize that habits of moral excellence are necessary if a free republic is to prosper. As Benjamin Franklin averred, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” Freedom succeeds when influenced by habits of the heart that incline citizens toward temperance and patience, toward justice and mutual respect. Conservative liberalism is bounded and informed by tradition, which comprises the accretions of practical wisdom and worthwhile experience over time. And prescription—long-established, authoritative custom—is ever open to prudent reform.
The most salubrious option for the Republic, conservative liberalism is also the most fitting and helpful, the most workable and inspiring, stance for academic institutions today. In fact, what I have in mind in relation to schools is exactly what New Whiggery extols in respect of the polity at large. Within the limits of civility, students must be free to raise questions and to voice doubts. Pupils should enjoy freedom of expression, necessary for academic inquiry and forming reasoned positions. In no school is either militant woke fundamentalism or militant Christian fundamentalism desirable as either policy or practice.
Within the shared setting of intellectual inquiry, the atmosphere should be conducive, as the philosopher Michael Oakeshott says, to conversation, which needs to be respectful, charitable, patient, nonviolent, noncoercive—and free. Hence each school—like the best colleges—must have a liberal grounding.
At the same time, each school should make it clear what it holds to be true belief and right conduct. Church schools strike me as the freest of all. Within their walls, students and teachers may openly affirm both Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and the writings of C. S. Lewis. At the best schools, no ideology is imposed, no rigid conformity enforced.
The problem that arises, however, is the poor fit—sometimes appearing as friction, sometimes as disconnect—between inner freedom and outer structure, between individual liberty and institutional tradition. Church schools have much to offer, but they have trouble meshing church and school.
The best way for Christian schools to overcome this problem is to teach the ancient virtues, which can function as ball bearings between the inner, liberal ring of school life and the outer, conservative ring of institutional tradition. But how can virtue be taught?
“Teaching” is defined as helping students to learn. In relation to the virtues, that function implies learn in the strong sense of becoming fixed in mind, heart, and will—for life: a tall order, perhaps an impossible demand.
In his Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman appears to be grappling with exactly this issue when he distinguishes real assent from merely notional assent. The former is what teachers of the virtues are hoping to bring about: an apprehension of realities that are “concrete,” that make “an impression on the mind which nothing abstract can rival.” In fact, the goal in teaching the virtues is to move instruction from the notional, which results in nodding agreement with abstractions, to the real, which is rooted in lived experience, in students’ daily lives.
Real beliefs, Newman says, give to persons strength of will and character, confidence, seriousness, and energy. They “have the power of the concrete upon the affections and passions.” Their “moral and imaginative properties” excite the mind. They comprise not only what is true but also “what is beautiful, useful, admirable, heroic.” They lead the way “to actions of every kind, to the establishment of principles, and the formation of character.”
What these ideas mean in practice is that education in the virtues stands the greatest chance of success when it occurs in the interstices of our charges’ lives—in, with, and under (to adapt the Lutheran prepositions about the Real Presence) the customary claims on pupils’ attention. Then students will perceive and, we hope, truly take to heart the meaning and worth of what is taught.
Of course, teachers must begin by defining and explaining both “virtue” and each particular virtue. Then teachers might guide discussions of the virtues, including their richness and mutual dependence, in history, literature, and film. Teachers can also lead their pupils to deepen their understanding of the virtues through an examination of their complications and corruptions.
Before long, students should have a heightened awareness of the presence of good—and bad—habits in their own lives. Most of their activities may not be immediately cognizable as “moral”; they may be seen, on the surface at least, as nonmoral. Students will probably not think of writing, for instance, as implicating the virtues. But in such practices the virtues abound. What is notable about these examples is that they represent major activities on students’ part, practices that students are already committed to and concerned about. Thus these cases draw students into the habit of discerning the meaning, worth, and applicability of the virtues in the midst of their daily tasks and assignments.
Moreover, students’ formation in the virtues is effected and enhanced through immersion in such explicitly moral practices as honor, which entails loyalty to a community of trust. In various ways, students should grasp what virtues mean and what goods they accomplish. Increased familiarity will be obtained not only by way of explanations and examples but also—and principally—through students’ exercise of their own intellectual and moral strengths.
Gradually, to cite the key terms of a familiar educational method, pupils should become better at noticing and naming the virtues. Thus students will move in their learning from dependence to independence, as the weight of responsibility shifts from teacher to pupil. At the same time, this educational strategy advances from deductive learning, starting with definitions, which are necessarily abstract, to inductive learning, which is rooted in students’ experiences.
In this way, pupils become more fully and personally occupied with mastering the traits of excellence. In brief: instruction, example, and exercise together. That’s how people learn anything, whether it’s reading, math, writing, dancing, tennis, medicine, drawing, carpentry, chemistry, or philosophy.
The approach of my new book, Teaching the Virtues, is traditional in its outlook, realistic in its assessment of human nature, and practical in its procedure. It construes the virtues not as detached and lofty but as embedded and grounded. Bereft of a clear framework of meaning, the virtues are blind. In its main features, therefore, my strategy differs from the ways that character education has been taught in the public schools over the last century or more.
A church school is different principally because it offers a structure that incorporates what James Davison Hunter calls “thick normative meanings.” In these academic settings, the most important good habit is piety, which is the key orienting trait. Embedded in the school’s liturgy and theology, the virtues take on meaning and real force. As Newman writes, these habits will give strength to the subject’s character and will; they will bolster confidence and impart energy. They will become truths to live by.
Virtuous people will be humble, grateful, and generous. I may not recognize these attributes in myself, but I have known persons consistently marked by these traits. In every case, these women and men were the sort who recognized their need for true authority. Like General George C. Marshall, they have been aware of their individual responsibility but not of their complete personal autonomy. Thus, like Marshall, many of them have sincerely recited the Collect for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Book of Common Prayer, 1928):
Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent [precede] and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
