Letter to the Editor: Focus on values is insufficient for working against systemic racism and inequitable practices in schools

At the June 22nd Mahomet Seymour School Board meeting, members of the public spoke on the proposed anti-racism resolution, offering a variety of personal testimonies and perspectives on issues of systemic inequities.  Afterward, members of the board responded. A few board members in particular forwarded the notion that efforts to combat racism belong at home and with parents–within the general frame of “family values”–rather than at school. While well-intentioned, these arguments miss the mark, in particular when considering racial and other inequities. 

In this commentary, I argue two primary points regarding this issue: 1) Values are always (and always have been) taught at school, as well as in households, both implicitly and explicitly; and 2) A focus on values is simply insufficient for working against systemic racism and inequitable practices in schools.

We Already Teach Values

Values and “moral” education have been a part of American schooling since its inception (Kliebard, 1995; McClellan, 1999). Indeed, John Dewey (1916/1966) wrote that the school itself is “a form of social life, a miniature community” (p. 360). Values are present in theories of learning going back decades: in calls for moral education in the colonial era (McClellan, 1999); in teachers’ attention to the “affective domain,” in which students’ emotional states must be considered when crafting learning objectives (Popham, 1972); in student behavior models such as “Character Counts”; and in the current emphasis on social-emotional learning. Indeed, Goal 3 of the Illinois Social/Emotional Learning Standards states that “…dealing honestly and fairly with others, and contributing to the good of one’s classroom, school, family, community, and environment are essential to citizenship in a democratic society,” and describes the importance of students’ “honesty,” “respect,” “fairness,” and “personal responsibility in making ethical decisions.” If those aren’t values, I don’t know what are. 

Additionally, values are directly addressed in our own district’s documents. In the 2020-2021 district parent and student handbook there is an entire section titled “Core Values, Responsibilities, and Restrictions” (p. 27). For example, the handbook states, “we value communication” and using “language that is pertinent and appropriate,” and states, “we value respect for self and others.” 

In addition to standards documents and specific social, emotional, and affective curricular initiatives, values are ubiquitous within just about any teacher’s efforts to manage classrooms and build classroom community. These are most visible as classroom rules, and typically include rules such as “Be respectful,” “hands to yourself,” “try your best,” “raise your hand,” and the like. 

In short, values are taught at school, and arguably they should be. Classrooms are crowded spaces, and young people are of course still learning how to participate in different social and academic settings. The question is not if they should be taught, but how they should be taught. 

How Do We Teach Values?

Values are often explicitly taught within character education programs. However, these programs privilege individual students’ acts (be kind, don’t lie, wait your turn) while leaving unaddressed values related to inequities and social justice (Westheimer, 2016). This individualist focus deflects attention away from root causes of social problems and inequities. According to educational scholar Joel Westheimer, the emphasis of most programs “is how to please authority, not how to develop convictions and stand up for them” (2016, p. 209).

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) falls prey to a similar over-emphasis on individuals. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) outlines five core competencies: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. However SEL is typically taught in ways that are decontextualized from and fail to confront racial violence and other forms of inequity (Simmons, 2019). When interviewed on the topic, Dena Simmons, Assistant Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, asked, “What’s the point of teaching children about conflict resolution skills…if we’re not talking about the conflicts that exist because of racism or white supremacy?” Without addressing such systemic traumas, SEL is simply “white supremacy with a hug” (Madda, 2019). (The term “white supremacy” here is not about white robes and pitch forks. Rather, it characterizes the persistent valuing of white mainstream language, cultural norms, and systems that privilege white people.)

The widely-promoted value of grit is susceptible to the same individualist critique. Based on psychologist Angela Duckworth’s work (2016), grit emphasizes perseverance in the face of difficulties. Students are encouraged to always “try their best,” and push forward through challenging tasks. While hard work and perseverance are indeed excellent values to promote in schools, grit is most often taken up in ways that place the onus on students to overcome systemic inequities. Further, critical race scholar and educator Bettina Love explains that character education, including SEL and an emphasis on grit, has replaced civics education: Instead of learning how to be informed and engaged citizens in a democracy, students “learn now how to comply and recite affirmations about their grit” (2019a, p. 70). Love writes, “Measuring African-American students’ grit while removing no institutional barriers, then watching to see who beats the odds, makes for great Hollywood movies (i.e., “Dangerous Minds,” “The Blind Side,” “Freedom Writers”) and leaves us all feeling good because the gritty black kid made it out of the ‘hood” (2019b, para. 2). However, it often functions as an educational version of The Hunger Games. Of course, surviving 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and ongoing racism is a fairly good indication that Black people have grit (Love, 2019b). But pushing for students to engage in emotional self-control and to move through their school days with grit as the primary sanctioned routes to success will do nothing to confront and dismantle racism. 

Anti-Racism is a Value we Should Teach

Schools teach values–that much is clear. Our values are both tacit and explicit in our actions and words as educators. They are in our policies and on our classroom walls. However, “because the majority of teachers in the U.S. are White and middle class, character and values initiatives tend to reinforce whiteness” (Milner & Delale-O’Connor, 2016, p. 217), not out of malice, but simply because it is hard work to teach outside of ourselves. 

But we have to embrace and do this difficult work. We cannot limit ourselves to implementing social-emotional learning, offering platitudes about grit, or telling kids to just be kind and expect things to improve. We must not focus narrowly on individual behaviors, blinding ourselves to history and social structures. And we certainly can’t rely on deflecting to “family values,” particularly since few families (particularly White families) specifically talk about race and racism or instill anti-racist values. Rather, schools and communities must work together to understand how policies and practices function to privilege some and marginalize others, and work to disrupt them. Consonant with the draft anti-racism resolution being considered by the board, I urge the school board to embrace anti-racism as a core value of the district, including all of its teachers, staff, and students. 

-Lara Handsfield

Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2020). Core SEL Competencies. Accessed on June 24, 2020 at https://casel.org/core-competencies/. 

Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and Education. New York, NY: Macmillan. (Original work published 1916).

Duckworth, A. (2016). Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. Scribner/Simon & Schuster.

Kliebard, H. M. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Love, B. L. (2019a). We want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

Love, B. (2019b). “Grit is in Our DNA”: Why Teaching Grit is Inherently Anti-Black. Education Week. Accessed June 24, 2020 at  https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/02/13/grit-is-in-our-dna-why-teaching.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB&fbclid=IwAR1EdwAE5J6nt4rGMQDSFjfbx32022HOHVdNGcGleaw2ZIdnPns8L6IpH8Q

Madda, M. J. (May 15, 2019). Dena Simmons: Without Context, Social-Emotional Learning Can Backfire. Ed Surge. Accessed on June 24, 2020 at https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-05-15-dena-simmons-without-context-social-emotional-learning-can-backfire. 

McClellan, B. E. (1999). Moral education in America: Schools and the shaping of character from colonial times to the present. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Milner IV, R. H. & Delale-O’Connor, L. (2016). Toward (Whose) Morality in Teacher Education? Action in Teacher Education, 38(3), 217-220, DOI: 10.1080/01626620.2016.1194787.  

Popham, J. W. (1972). An evaluation guidebook: A set of practical guidelines for the educational evaluator. Los Angeles, CA: The Instructional Objectives Exchange.

Simmons, D. (2019). Why We Can’t Afford Whitewashed Social-Emotional Learning. ASCD Education Update, 61(4). http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education_update/apr19/vol61/num04/Why_We_Can’t_Afford_Whitewashed_Social-Emotional_Learning.aspx

Westheimer, J. (2016) The Trouble With Moral Citizens: A Response to “Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education” by Daniel Lapsley and Ryan Woodbury, Action in Teacher Education, 38(3), 207-211, DOI: 10.1080/01626620.2016.1194784